Tour News

Full steam ahead: Bradley wins the WGC-Bridgestone

Published

12 years ago

Aug 5, 2012

Every week on the PGA Tour, more than a hundred competitors start out at the beginning of the week and only one man wins. But this year, seemingly more than most years, in addition to one clear winner there is one clear loser. This week, Jim Furyk was the tragic victim, relinquishing the lead he had held for the entire tournament with a double bogey on the final hole to give Keegan Bradley the win in the 2012 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. Bradley carded a 6-under par 64 to finish at 13-under 267 for the tournament, one stroke ahead of Furyk and Steve Stricker.

Furyk played brilliantly through the first three rounds, hitting fairways and greens and raining every put the looked at. For Sunday’s final round, Furyk racked up three consecutive birdies on the first three holes on the rain-softened Firestone South Course. But he played the next 12 holes 1-over, opening the door to the streaking Bradley, Stricker and South African Louis Oosthuizen.

Bradley played brilliantly, carding six birdies and no bogeys. His intensity, fidgeting and death stare over his putts make him look like Henry Hill from GoodFellas out for a round, but that same intensity served him well as he inched his way closer to the lead. After clutch par saves on Nos. 16 and 17, Bradley went into the final hole just one shot behind Furyk.

For Furyk it was déjà vu all over again, as he snapped-hooked a drive to the left that evoked memories of his misshaped effort off the tee on the 16^th hole at the U.S. Open. Furyk caught a break when the trees spit his ball back onto the fairway about 170 yards out. Bradley striped his drive, leaving himself 164 to the pin. With the tournament on the line, both Bradley and Furyk hit sub-par approaches. Furyk left himself an almost impossible downhill chip over a bunker to a green sloping away from him, while Bradley was plugged in the bunker that Furyk had to negotiate. Furyk took two shots to get himself to six feet from the hole. Meanwhile, Bradley splashed out to 10 feet and literally frightened the ball into the hole for his par. Amazingly, Furyk had to hit his putt to tie and earn a playoff. He motored it past the hole, giving Bradley his 3^rd PGA Tour win and the first since his win at the 2011 PGA Championship.

Bradley is the kind of player that everyone likes to watch and no one wants to play against. His piercing gazes and countless gestures are almost Sergio-esque, but he looks like he’d wack anyone who’d try to heckle or rush him. There is no quit in Bradley, no relaxing. No matter where he is on the leaderboard he is sweating the details and grinding so hard he leaves a trail of brake dust on the fairway.

While being one of the Tour’s most popular players amongst his peers, Bradley reminds longtime Tour observers of the great competitors of previous generations, guys like Hale Irwin and Raymond Floyd who had to have the right combination of talent and nasty to notch victories while competing against the likes of Nicklaus, Palmer, Watson, et al. The nephew of LPGA great Pat Bradley is golf royalty who has learned from the best what it takes to be good, and what it takes to be great. As he now heads for Kiawah to defend the Wannamaker Trophy, Bradley is seeking to break the string of 17 different winners in the last 17 majors. There are probably a lot of people who would pick somebody else to win, but there aren’t a lot who would tell him to his face.

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

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.

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Equipment

Spotted: Putter roundup from the 2024 3M Open

Published

23 hours 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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