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The Club Championship

Published

13 years ago

Aug 6, 2011

Let's be honest, there's nothing like the Club Championship. It's the competition that allows us to pretend that we are playing a Major, a Ryder Cup. Weeks in advance, for the better players the Club Championship is the only topic of discussion. You can keep your monthly medals and your winter stablefords, nothing is even close to the grand prize that is the Club Championship; thirty-six holes in one day to decide the best player and with no handicaps it means that it really is the best player.

So you've been playing well and practicing better. Maybe this year will be your year. The face of your lob wedge has a dime sized discoloration from where you've worn it away from your incessant chipping and pitching. So what the strike marks on your 3 iron are all over the place, the knowledge that if your can get it within 80 yards you can mix it with the best gives you hope. All you need are two of the best rounds you've never played and you stand a chance.

It's an early start. As one of the unfavored, you tee off at the crack of dawn. You're up at 5.30am to make sure than you're up early enough for a good breakfast before getting to the club to warm up. When you get to the club you nod at the other guys there and wonder if your face looks as drawn as theirs does.

Start simple. Pitching practice first. Nothing too fancy, just some 20 yard pitches and chips. The first one sails way past the flag, the second barely makes it to the green and the third is, oh bollocks, thinned into the woods behind the green… aaaaaaargh! Ten minutes later and the ball is making friends with the flag again. The trajectory is low and the ball is sticking to the face long enough to leap off with a fizz and grab on the second bounce. Your confidence is restored and you even feel a little bounce in your step.

Onto the putting green, the nerves are back. What a stupid game this is, where a 4 foot putt counts as much as a 200 yard long iron. To start you aim at the edge of the green just to get the pace before knocking some at the hole. By some miracle, your practice at home has had an effect (maybe Gary Player was on to something!) and you're pouring it into the cup from short range and lagging it close from distance. Even some of the better players are paying attention. "That's right" you think to yourself, 'I can be one of you'.

Five minutes to your tee time so you make your way to the first tee and visualize the first hole; the par 5 is a genuine 3 shotter with danger all the way down the left so a long iron on the tee is all that's needed. Your name is called and you stride onto the tee, place the ball down, address it and mutter the immortal phrase of the competition golfer "Please please please, just don't screw up".

The 3-iron in your hand manages to feel like a sledgehammer and a feather at the same time. All you are aware of are the watching crowds of your fellow competitors. The twenty people feel like a thousand. You bring the club back as fluidly as a rusty clockwork man, hearing your joints click and pop as you wind up into a position that feels wildly unfamiliar and hope against hope that you don't miss as the club drops back down to the ball.

The ball sings as it flies off the middle of the club face and climbs into the sky. Your heart is in your mouth. It finally comes to rest a fair distance over 200 yards down the fairway in the very edge of the fairway. You control the emotions as you look to your friends who you are playing with… HA!, IN YOUR FACE PLAYING PARTNERS! FOLLOW THAT!

After nearly perfect start, what could go wrong? How about everything? How about no putt over 6 feet dropping? How about 4 lip-outs in the round? How about a 50 yard bunker shot that took a hard bounce and ended up in a tree. IN A TREE DAMMIT! THREE FOOT OFF THE FLOOR! You can't point to a single bad shot and say 'that cost me a double' but it's uphill all the way and you grind it out as well as you can.

At the end of the first round, you shake the hands of your playing partners. Your death's head grin hopefully hides your desire to throw your bag into the nearest lake as you realize that you are comfortably out of the running.

Rather than sit and stew, you take it out on the putting green. All those putts that didn't make it are forgotten in a barrage of drills. All the lip-outs, all the ones that caught the grain and slid from the hole, all forgotten as you drive the ball into the back of the cup. Sod avoiding a 3-putt, make sure you bang the ball home.

Back on the first tee for the second round, you've learned your lesson. A hard cut and the ball is in the middle of the fairway. A lay up and a good wedge leaves you 10 feet from the hole. The putter swings back and forth and the ball is in the hole for a birdie start.

A regulation par at the second but a bogey at the third brings you down to Earth with a bump. Suddenly it's back to being a grind except this time a couple of putts drop and you hold it together. It's still a fight but this time you're not taking a battering. You even make the turn a couple well under what you would expect. Still no threat to the leaders but your playing partners are struggling and reports are that many others are wilting in the heat.

Then it all changes at the turn. Suddenly the game is simple; Tee shot to the middle of the fairway, a mid iron or wedge in and 2 putts. Rinse and repeat. The 3 hardest holes on the course are up next and where better players have faltered, you ghost through them like they were pitch and putt. You even managed to sneak a birdie at a short par 3 when the ball takes a nice kick off a bank from the front of the green and you roll in resulting the 6 footer.

It almost feels too good to be true and at the 18th, it is. The long iron fade becomes a double-cross and you're blocked out behind a tree. The sensible punch out sideways hits a hidden tree root 20 feet away and bounces back almost to your feet. The golf gods giveth and the golf gods damn well take away. On a tough par 4 you walk in with a 7 but still well under what you would normally score.

For a whole hour, you watch the big screen with the scores. Your name is at the top. You take some pictures with your phone knowing that it won't last but enjoying it while it does. Others have crashed in front of you and you are leading the pack right until the final two groups roll in. The very last group is a threeball of the top players in the club. One of them struggled in the second round (you later find out that you scored lower than him) but the other two have dominated the scoring. It was always really going to be between Joe and Sam and this year it's Joe that adds to his trophy cabinet.

You had enough flashes of genuinely great play to trouble the best but inconsistency cost you. Some more practice and maybe a new lob wedge will help. Okay, a lot more practice and some lessons is what you know you need but the way you played is fuel for your dreams.

Who knows, there's always next year…

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Photos from the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship

Published

9 hours ago

May 7, 2024

GolfWRX Staff

GolfWRX is live this week at the Wells Fargo Championship as a field of the world’s best golfers descend upon Charlotte, North Carolina, hoping to tame the beast that is Quail Hollow Club in this Signature Event — only Scottie Scheffler, who is home awaiting the birth of his first child, is absent.

From the grounds at Quail Hollow, we have our usual assortment of general galleries and WITBs — including a look at left-hander Akshay Bhatia’s setup. Among the pullout albums, we have a look inside Cobra’s impressive new tour truck for you to check out. Also featured is a special look at Quail Hollow king, Rory McIlroy.

Be sure to check back throughout the week as we add more galleries.

General Albums

2024 Wells Fargo Championship – Monday #1

WITB Albums

Pullout Albums

New Cobra equipment truck – 2024 Wells Fargo Championship

See what GolfWRXers are saying about our Wells Fargo Championship photos in the forums.

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SuperStroke acquires Lamkin Grips

Published

1 day ago

May 6, 2024

GolfWRX Staff

SuperStroke announced today its purchase of 100-year-old grip maker Lamkin Grips, citing the company’s “heritage of innovation and quality.”

“It is with pride and great gratitude that we announce Lamkin, a golf club grip brand with a 100-year history of breakthrough design and trusted products, is now a part of the SuperStroke brand,” says SuperStroke CEO Dean Dingman. “We have always had the utmost respect for how the Lamkin family has put the needs and benefits of the golfer first in their grip designs. If there is a grip company that is most aligned with SuperStroke’s commitment to uncompromised research, design, and development to put the most useful performance tools in the hands of golfers, Lamkin has been that brand. It is an honor to bring Lamkin’s wealth of product innovation into the SuperStroke family.”

Elver B. Lamkin founded the company in 1925 and produced golf’s first leather grips. The company had been family-owned and operated since that point, producing a wide array of styles, such as the iconic Crossline.

According to a press release, “The acquisition of Lamkin grows and diversifies SuperStroke’s proven and popular array of grip offerings with technology grounded in providing golfers optimal feel and performance through cutting-edge design and use of materials, surface texture and shape.”

CEO Bob Lamkin will stay on as a board member and will continue to be involved with the company.

“SuperStroke has become one of the most proven, well-operated, and pioneering brands in golf grips and we could not be more confident that the Lamkin legacy, brand, and technology is in the best of hands to continue to innovate and lead under the guidance of Dean Dingman and his remarkably capable team,” Lamkin said.

Related: Check out our 2014 conversation with Bob Lamkin, here: Bob Lamkin on the wrap grip reborn, 90 years of history

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Tour Rundown: Pendrith, Otaegui, Longbella, and Dunlap soar

Published

1 day ago

May 6, 2024

Ronald Montesano

Take it from a fellow who coaches high school golf in metro Toronto: there’s plenty of great golf played in the land of the maple leaf. All the greats have designed courses over the USA border: Colt, Whitman, Ross, Coore, Mackenzie, Doak, as well as the greatest of the land, Stanley Thompson. I’m partial to him, because he wore my middle name with grandeur. Enough about the architecture, because this week’s Tour Rundown begins with a newly-minted, Canadian champion on the PGA Tour. Something else that the great white north is known for, is weather. It impacted play on three of the world’s tours, forcing final-round cancellations on two of them.

It was an odd week in the golf world. The LPGA and the Korn Ferry were on a break, and only 13/15 of the rounds slated, were played. In the end, we have four champions to recognize, so let’s not delay any longer with minutiae about the game that we love. Let’s run it all down with this week’s Tour Rundown.

PGA Tour: TP takes TS at Byron’s place

The 1980s was a decade when a Canadian emergence was anticipated on the PGA Tour. It failed to materialize, but a path was carved for the next generation. Mike Weir captured the Masters in 2003, but no other countrymen joined him in his quest for PGA Tour conquest. 2024 may herald the long-awaited arrival of a Canadian squad of tour winners. Over the past few years, we’ve seen Nick Taylor break the fifty-plus year dearth of homebred champions at the Canadian Open, and players like Adam Hadwin, Corey Conners, Adam Svennson, and Mackenzie Hughes have etched their names into the PGA Tour’s annals of winners.

This week, Taylor Pendrith joined his mates with a one-shot win at TPC Craig Ranch, the home of the Byron Nelson Classic. Pendrith took a lead into the final round and, while the USA’s Jake Knapp faltered, held on for the slimmest of victories. Sweden’s Alex Noren posted six-under 65 on Sunday to move into third position, at 21-under par. Ben Kohles, a Texan, looked to break through for his first win in his home state. He took the lead from Pendrith at the 71st hole, on the strength of a second-consecutive birdie.

With victory in site, Kohles found a way to make bogey at the last, without submerging in the fronting water. His second shot was greenside, but he could not move his third to the putting surface. His fourth was five feet from par and a playoff, but his fifth failed to drop. Meanwhile, Pendrith was on the froghair in two, and calmly took two putts from 40 feet, for birdie. When Kohles missed for par, Pendrith had, at last, a PGA Tour title.

360° and in!

A nervy par save by @TaylorPendrith to remain one back as he seeks his first PGA TOUR victory @CJByronNelson. pic.twitter.com/LVFXUSidSg

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) May 5, 2024

DP World Tour: China Open in Otaegui’s hands after canceled day four

It wasn’t the fourth round that was canceled in Shenzhen, but the third. Rains came on Saturday to Hidden Grace Golf Club, ensuring that momentum would cease. Sunday would instead be akin to a motorsports restart, with no sense of who might claim victory. Sebastian Soderberg, the hottest golfer on the Asian Swing, held the lead, but he would slip to a 72 on Sunday, and tie for third with Paul Waring and Joel Girrbach. Italy’s Guido Migliozzi completed play in 67 strokes on day three, moving one shot past the triumvirate, to 17-under par.

It was Spain’s Adrian Otaegui who persevered the best and played the purest. Otaegui was clean on the day, with seven birdies for 65. Even when Migliozzi ceased the lead at the 10th, Otaegui remained calm. With everything on the line, Migliozzi made bogey at the par-five 17th, as his principal competitor finished in birdie. To the Italian’s credit, he bounced back with birdie at the last, to claim solo second. The victory was Otaegui’s fifth on the DP World Tour, and first since October of 2022.

.@adrianotaegui birdies the 16th to tie the lead at -17 ?#VolvoChinaOpen pic.twitter.com/p4tfE5DRJa

— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) May 5, 2024

PGA Tour Americas: Quito’s rains gift title to Longbella

Across the world, superintendents and their staffs will do anything to prepare a course for play. Even after fierce, nightime rains, the Quito TG Club greeted the first four groups on Sunday. The rains worsened after 7 am, however, and the tour was forced to abort the final round of play. With scores reverting to Saturday’s numbers, Thomas Longbella’s one-shot advantage over Gunn Yang turned into a Tour Americas victory.

64 held the opening-day lead, and Longbella was not far off, with 66. Yang jumped to the top on day two, following a67 with 66. He posted 68 on day three, and anticipated a fierce, final-round duel for the title. As for Longbella, he fought off a ninth-hole bogey on Saturday with six birdies and a 17th-hole eagle. That rare bird proved to be the winning stroke, allowing Longbella to edge past Yang, and secure ultimate victory.

.@TBalla21 eagles 17, shoots 65 on Saturday to take a one-shot lead into the final round of the KIA Open. pic.twitter.com/TTOL2LxSdh

— PGA TOUR Americas (@PGATOURAmericas) May 4, 2024

PGA Tour Champions: Dunlap survives Saturday stumble for win

Scott Dunlap did not finish Saturday as well as he might have liked. After beginning play near Houston with 65, Dunlap made two bogeys in his final found holes on day two, to finish at nine-under par. Hot on his heels was Joe Durant, owner of a March 2024 win on PGA Tour Champions. Just behind Durant was Stuart Appleby, perhaps vibing from his Sunday 59 at Greenbrier on this day in 2010. Neither would have a chance to track Dunlap down.

The rains that have forced emergency responders into action, to save hundreds of lives in the metro Houston area, ended hopes for a third day of play at The Woodlands. Dunlap had won once previously on Tour Champions, in 2014 in Washington state. Ten years later, Dunlap was the fortunate recipient of a canceled final round, and his two days of play were enough to earn him TC victory number two.

Off the green? No worries for @ScottDu12500063

8-under solo leader @InsperityInvtnl pic.twitter.com/hoj5OujL5C

— PGA TOUR Champions (@ChampionsTour) May 4, 2024

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