Tour News

Walmart NW Arkansas Championship recap: Bittersweet scorching heat

Published

12 years ago

Jul 4, 2012

Vince Robitaille

By Vince Robitaille

GolfWRX Staff Writer

The action was heated in more ways than one, last weekend in Rogers, Ark., a former World No.1 rallying late in order to become the third multiple winner on tour this season, a rookie coming out of relative obscurity to make a bid at Venezuelan history, and mercury rising well above the 100 degree mark. Ultimately, it was a slightly bittersweet taste that lingered across the Walmart NW Arkansas Championship’s prime protagonists’ mouths; a friend’s shattered hopes and an array of putts left short dampening the celebrations for both Ai Miyazato and Veronica Felibert.

Going about our business in somewhat of a chronological manner, inspecting the curious case of Veronica Felibert first seems rather appropriate. After enjoying a fruitful amateur career in her homeland, the Venezuelan later packed up her bucket and headed North for South Los Angeles where she recorded two collegiate victories for the Trojans. The two years following her professional debut, however, were less fructuous: a meager tally of three top-10 finishes and no giant check to show for. Despite making it on the big stage by way of Q-School, Felibert seemed doomed to head back down to the Symetra Tour with her tail between her legs; three consecutive missed cuts following her season-best tie for 70th in her very first official event, not raising anyone’s expectations for the summer. Her performance on the grounds of the Pinnacle Country Club this weekend, nonetheless, would go a long way for elevating her name amongst the LPGA’s circles.

Two rounds in, the birthday girl – Felibert turned 27 on Saturday – sat on a rather comfortable cushion, her 12 birdies against a lone blemish extended the gap between her closest pursuers, Mika Miyazato and a peloton consisting of eventual champion Ai Miyazato, last week’s silverware recipient, Brittany Lange, Katie Futcher and Ryann O’Toole, herself to four and five strokes, respectively. Poised to become the first Venezuelan to win on the LPGA Tour – Jhonattan Vegas doing so on the men’s side – and to, perhaps, help lifting the glooming reputation of golf in Venezuela – President Hugo Chávez qualifying golf as a bourgeois distraction and judging that golf clubs should relinquish their lands in order to build habitations for the nation’s homeless, casting a shadow over our sport – the former World No.723 sadly capitulated. Her first round over 70, a 1-over 71 highlighted by a vast quantity of putts that never had a chance as they simply never reached the hole, left the door opened for her adversaries to break in and snatch the trophy that was left unattended on her kitchen table.

The cat burgling Miyazato duo of Ai and Mika, were those who left the crime scene with their paws firmly grasping the prized glassware. Unfortunately for the Japanese compatriots and, most importantly, friends, such pieces can’t be shared or split; thus, an inconvenient ending was to be expected.

Caught in a bind atop the leaderboard at 12-under as Ai recorded a birdie on the par-3 15th, a missed opportunity followed by a sudden error would keep Mika from earning her first LPGA Tour triumph. On the same 15th green, Mika, then facing a straightaway 20-footer, left her attempt 12 inches short of the hole. That mere inch that separated her from a solo lead-worthy, aggregate score of 13 would prove twice as costly due to the subsequent bogey on the par-4 16th. In fact, those two shots enabled Ai to clinch her victory in regulation despite a blunder on the 17th hole; her birdie on the 72nd putting surface getting her back to 12-under. It’s in a tearful embrace that both friends congratulated each other on their respective tournaments. It’s in a disappointing manner that one meteorically rose from World No.723 to No.253. Most importantly, however, it’s in a full throttle that Ai Miyazato enters U.S. Women’s Open week.

Click here for more discussion in the “LPGA/Ladies golf 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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