Tour News

Top amateur Cantlay turns pro, joins Tiger’s camp

Published

12 years ago

Jun 21, 2012

On Tuesday of this week the opening line of the Wikipedia entry for Patrick Cantlay read: “Patrick Cantlay (born March 17, 1992) is an American amateur golfer who is the number one golfer in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.”

Wednesday it read, “Patrick Cantlay … is an American professional golfer who was the number one golfer in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.”

What a difference a day makes.

With a simple announcement and the signing of representation documents with Tiger Woods’ agent Mark Steinberg, Cantlay went from the pinnacle of the amateur scene to one of the many young hopefuls on Tour.

“I feel like it’s time for me to play as a pro,” Cantlay said during a news conference at the Traveler’s Championship. “I think it’s best for my golf game, and that’s just what my — when I talked it over with my mom and my dad and (swing coach) Jamie Mulligan, that’s just what we thought would be best for me and my game right now.”

Cantlay has been the best amateur player in the world for some time. His resume at that level is impressive, including runner-up finishes in the Western Open and the U.S. Amateur Championship. Cantlay was also the California State High School Championship, an honor previously held by Rickie Fowler. He was was the PAC-10 Player of the Year in his freshman year at UCLA, and won the Ben Hogan Award for top collegiate golfer in the country and the Mark McCormack Medal in 2011 as the top ranked amateur in the world. The latter included an invitation to the 2012 U.S. Open, where he finished tied for 41st.

The decision to turn professional was a move that came as no surprise to the golf world, as Cantlay had displayed talents ranging from the precocious (low amateur and a T-47 finish at this year’s Masters) to the prodigious — he fired a 60 at last year’s Travelers Championship, the lowest round ever recorded by an amateur in a PGA Tour event). Cantlay will make his pro debut this week at the 2012 Travelers Championship. In addition to his proven abilities, Cantlay’s decision was likely influenced by the major changes to the PGA Tour’s qualifying school and Nationwide Tour that take effect next year.

Cantlay, who has carded four top-25 finishes in eight career Tour starts clearly has the game to win enough money to make him comfortable for the rest of his life. The question is whether he has the mental fortitude to withstand the grind of the every day Tour as well as the fireworks of the four majors and various international Cup events. By signing with Steinberg, a key player in Team Tiger, Cantlay has, fairly or unfairly, set the expectations just a little higher. Whenever you cast your lot with a living legend, just earning a living probably won’t be enough.

Click here for more discussion in the “Tour Talk” forum.

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Equipment

Spotted: Putter roundup from the 2024 3M Open

Published

1 day 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

3 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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