Tour News

Tiger notches third win at AT&T National

Published

12 years ago

Jul 1, 2012

“Is Tiger back?”

It’s the question that is asked over and over in the last year as the golf world obsessively checked the temperature of its meal ticket. At one point even a straight drive or a confident 6-foot putt would ring a chorus of yays or nays with regards to the state of Woods’ game. But with Sunday’s victory at the ATT National in Washington, D.C., Woods made a strong case for the affirmative.

Woods fired a 2-under par 69 to finish at 8-under 268, securing a 2-shot victory over Bo Van Pelt. It was the 74th win of his illustrious career, putting him one ahead of Jack Nicklaus on the all-time PGA Tour victories list and leaving him just eight behind Sam Snead.

The win was Woods’ third of the year, and the 22nd come from behind victory of his career. Woods also won this event in 2009, meaning that all of his 2012 wins have come at courses where he has previously tasted success.

Woods took command at the ninth hole on Sunday with a 12-foot birdie putt that gave him the solo lead that he never relinquished. He stubbed a bit with a bogey on the par 5 16th that left an opening for Van Pelt. But Woods finished with two solid pars on the demanding Congressional Blue Course, while Van Pelt finally withered in the blistering heat, carding bogeys on the final three holes to eliminate any chances he had of catching Woods.

In addition to the course setup that was acknowledged as tougher than the one at the U.S. Open on the same course in 2011, the golfers had to contend with temperatures in excess onf100 degrees, stifling humidity and a destructive storm that hit the nation’s Capital on Friday night and left tournament organizers scrambling to get the course fit for golfers and spectators. While fans were not allowed on the course for Saturday’s round, they were back in droves on Sunday to see Woods patiently dissect the course and the field. When asked what in his game was working this week, Woods quickly responded, “Everything.”

“ My ball striking was good out there, and it is continuing o improve,” he said. “I’m happy with this win, but I still have a lot work to do and a lot of things left to accomplish.”

One of the things that Woods accomplished this week was to move to the top of the FedEx Cup point standings, a position he has not seen for 100 weeks. He can add to his lead at this week’s Greenbrier Classic, an event that will see Woods for the first time.

But like the players, the fans the media and even the course itself, Woods was happy to survive the week’s severe weather.

“It always feels good to win,” Woods said after the round, “But it was damn hot out there.”

It’s still not clear whether Tiger is “back”, but virtually every golfer in the world would like to be where he is now.

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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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