Tour News

Dufner, take two

Published

12 years ago

May 20, 2012

Michael Williams

By Michael Wiliams

GolfWRX Staff Writer

Jason Dufner has had probably the most eventful 40 days and nights since Noah floated his boat. Dufner birdied the 18^th hole and final hole of the HP Byron Nelson Championship to secure a one shot victory on Sunday by one stroke over Dicky Pride, becoming only the second multiple winner on the PGA Tour this year. But his run of outstanding golf began at the Masters, where he held the 54-hole lead and looked like a potential champ until the fates took a shine to Watson. But Dufner bounced back to capture his first Tour victory with in New Orleans at the Zurich Classic two weeks later. He then took a week off to get married, and after an understandably shaky showing at The Players, bagged his second of what could be the start of a slew of Tour wins. If he had taken time to buy a Powerball ticket, he probably would have won the jackpot. It was that kind of month.

Dufner has all the pizazz of a glass of cold buttermilk. You could call him the anti-Matt Kuchar, who busts a hundred smiles to every one that Dufner manages. After his win in New Orleans, Dufner displayed none of the tearful breakdowns of most first time winners. You could find more emotion in the long line at the motor vehicle administration than Dufner gave off after the career-changing win.

But the soft-spoken third-year pro is making a lot of noise on Tour these days. His swing produces majestic draws or elegant fades on demand. His short game exhibits touch and imagination, and his putter has stood up to the jitters that are an occupational hazard for the Tour professional. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Dufner discovered golf when his family moved to Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. He earned a scholarship to Auburn University and cut his teeth on the Nationwide Tour before earning his way the Big Show in 2004. Dufner played hide and seek with the cut line for six years, coming close to winning on occasion but never breaking through.

He burst into the public consciousness at the 2011 PGA Championship. On a layout that was both praised and vilified as one of the toughest in the history of the championship, Dufner lost in a playoff to Keegan Bradley. But even in the midst of the heartbreaking defeat, he displayed the laconic style that is perfectly suited to the high-stakes golf found in the majors and Ryder Cup. And at 35, he seems to be moving into that magic moment when lie skills and golf skills converge to create a birdie-making, tourney winning monster.

The word is that success won’t change Jason Dufner. But after establishing himself as a strong horse in this year’s U.S. Open race, Dufner won’t be able to sneak up on anyone, no matter how quiet he is.

Michael Williams is the contributing editor of Newschannel8 Capital Golf Weekly and Bunkershot.com, as well as a member of the Golf Writers Association of America.

You can follow Michael on twitter — @Michaelontv

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Equipment

Spotted: Putter roundup from the 2024 3M Open

Published

2 days ago

Jul 25, 2024

Brian Knudson

Every week we spot some really cool and custom putters out on the putting green and in tour players’ bags. This week is no slouch with some really interesting and beautiful putters being tested. Let’s take a look at some of the standouts we found.

Tyler Duncan: Scotty Cameron Phantom T-11.5

The Phantom 11 is a pretty wild putter by Scotty’s standards with a multi-material design that boosts MOI for more forgiveness. Duncan’s T-11.5. takes the stock model and moves the shaft to the center of the putter head. We don’t mean a center shafted version, but the shaft is installed in the center, behind the face as well. We don’t have any official details on this T-11.5 but it looks like that setup should create a putter where the face points towards the hole or target, similar to a L.A.B. putter.

Zac Blair: Scotty Cameron 009.M Cameron & Co. “Longneck”

Blair might be in possession of the largest Scotty collection on tour! It seems like every week he has something new, and flat-out gorgeous, that he is trying out. I have seen a lot of 009.M putters over the years, but never one with a long plumbers neck on it. This 009 is a Masterful that utilizes additional CNC machine work to reduce the amount of hand polishing needed to complete the putter. The long, or tall, neck on the putter usually is used to reduce the amount of toe hang and make the putter more face balanced. The face contains a very shallow milling while the sole features a tour truck, tour only, diamonds, and the rare Circle L stamp. The Circle L was made for Scotty’s close friends who lost matches or games and was meant to poke a little fun at their misfortune.

Paul Barjon: PXG Prototype

There are a lot of putters out there that become so widely used and popular that other manufacturers will borrow some of the design cues. The Spider is one of those putters and it looks like PXG has made a prototype putter for Barjon that has some similar features. This proto has a tapered mallet shape with twin wings that come out from either side of the rear. Twin movable weights sit in each wing on the sole and the sole features a plate that is bolted in place at the corners. The top contains a single siteline and the face uses PXG’s advanced pyramid face structure.

Odyssey Ai-One Cruiser Broomstick #7

More and more long, counterbalanced, and alternative putters seem to be showing up recently. The long, or broomstick, putter is making a comeback and more than a few players have joined Adam Scott in using that style. Odyssey has thrown its hat in the broomstick arena with a new Ai-One Cruiser model. The head shape is the very familiar #7 model, but with the shaft going into the center of the club head. An Ai-One face is there to help keep ball speed consistent on off-center hits and three white lines are on top for framing ball and aligning the putter.

TaylorMade Spider Tour S Broomstick

Another option in the long putter is TaylorMade’s Spider Tour S broomstick that we saw around the putting green. The head looks to be a little larger than the standard Tour S and that makes sense with the broomstick-style putters demanding heads near or over 400g. A TPU Pure Roll insert is installed in the face and the shaft is a more traditional double-bend design, just much longer! There isn’t the True Path alignment on top, just a full darker grey finish with a single siteline. Two moveable weights are out in the wings of the putter to dial in the specific weight a player might want.

Check out the rest of our photos from the 2024 3M Open

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Tour Photo Galleries

Photos from the 2024 3M Open

Published

4 days ago

Jul 23, 2024

GolfWRX Staff

GolfWRX is on site this week at TPC Twin Cities for the 2024 3M Open for the penultimate event of the PGA Tour’s regular season.

The photos are flying in from Blaine, Minnesota. We’ve already assembled general galleries and a fresh Tony Finau WITB.

Check back throughout the week for more photos!

General Albums

WITB Albums

Pullout Albums

Chris Gotterup’s TM P-7CB irons – 2024 3M Open

See what GolfWRXers are saying in the forums.

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Equipment

Collin Morikawa’s pre-Open equipment adjustments

Published

1 week ago

Jul 18, 2024

GolfWRX Staff

Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from a piece our Andrew Tursky originally wrote for PGATour.com’s Equipment Report. Head over there for the full article.

Three years later, Morikawa has once again changed his irons to deal with the unique Scottish turf.

Morikawa has been using TaylorMade P730 blade short irons (7-PW), P7MC mid irons (5-6) and a TaylorMade “Proto” 4-iron with a cavity-back construction this year.

However, he switched into a new set of TaylorMade P7CB irons (5-PW) before finishing T4 at last week’s Genesis Scottish Open, to go along with his familiar “Proto” 4-iron. TaylorMade’s P7CB irons are the finalized versions of the “Proto” 4-iron that Morikawa has been using, except they remain unreleased to retail.

According to TaylorMade, Morikawa switched into a full set of the new P7CB irons to aid with turf interaction, just like he did prior to his 2021 Open victory.

Morikawa is honing in on his winning formula overseas.

Morikawa also has switched from his usual TaylorMade Qi10 5-wood to a lower-launching TaylorMade P790 3-iron equipped with a Project X HZRDUS 105 Hybrid shaft. The loft of the club has been bent down to 19 degrees.

TaylorMade says that Morikawa switched into the new driving iron In order to “have an option to hit something lower that will roll out in the fairways.”

Head over to PGATour.com for the full article.

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