Tour News

World’s best go to Mission Hills for HSBC Champions

Published

12 years ago

Oct 31, 2012

Tim Hartin

By Tim Hartin

GolfWRX Contributor

The world’s best golfers continue their international fall schedule on Thursday, as a field of 78 prepare to battle in China for the prestigious title of the 2012 World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions. The tournament’s reputation has steadily developed since its inaugural playing in 2005 and has become even more notable since earning the World Golf Championship tag in 2009.

As with every World Golf Championships event, the HSBC Champions entertains an exclusive field. This year’s edition features seven of the top 10 players from the Official World Golf Ranking. A pair of current major champions (Ernie Els, Bubba Watson), two 2012 World Golf Championships winners (Keegan Bradley, Justin Rose) and 16 Ryder Cup members practically make the field a who’s who of 2012, with World No. 1 and No. 2 being the most notable players absent.

One player who meets a pair of the previous descriptors is Martin Kaymer, who also serves as this week’s defending champion. Last year, Kaymer carded a final-round of 9-under 63 to win his first World Golf Championships event. However, the German won’t be able to draw good vibes from the golf course he won on one year ago. After each of its first seven years were contested at Sheshan International Golf Club, the 2012 HSBC Champions takes place on the Olazabal Course at China’s Mission Hills .

Aside from being part of the famed Mission Hills, golf fans may recognize the course from its hosting of multiple World Cup tournaments, most recently being 2009. The Olazabal Course is the longest of the 12 courses that Mission Hills boasts. At 7,301 yards, the par-72 will surely cater to the long hitters, but also requires an element of accuracy with its 151 bunkers and greens averaging 5,700 square feet. Rolling fairways, doglegs, five par 3s and five par 5s add to the unique characteristics of the Olazabal Course, ensuring yet another entertaining week of golf on the world stage.

The par-5 15^th hole is the course’s longest at 580 yards and serves as the signature hole. Featuring a bunker-surrounded green and bunker-lined fairways, sand entraps the eye but water also stands as a costly hazard. Long hitters can get home in two, but have to carry the water, which is described as a reservoir, nearly the entire distance.

Francesco Molinari may have the best previous experience on the Olazabal Course, having won the 2009 World Cup with his brother Edoardo. The Italian duo finished 29-under-par for the event, playing two rounds of better ball and two rounds of alternate shot. Molinari is also a past HSBC Champions winner, as he took the title in 2010.

The tournament’s only two-time winner is Phil Mickelson (2007, 2009), who returns to the HSBC Champions after skipping last year’s playing. Mickelson is teeing it up for the first time since the Ryder Cup and is seeking the fourth World Golf Championships title of his career.

While the field contains 15 Americans, the global game is truly on display once again this week as 23 total countries are represented. Many players are coming off strong performances last week in either the CIMB Classic or the BMW Masters, including respective winners Nick Watney and Peter Hanson.

Robert Garrigus, Carl Pettersson, Jbe’ Kruger and Gaganjeet Bhullar also recorded top-10 finishes at the CIMB Classic and look to carry momentum into China this week. Meanwhile, Luke Donald, Ian Poulter, Shane Lowry, George Coetzee, Louis Oosthuizen and Justin Rose each bring top-10 finishes from the BMW Masters into this week.

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

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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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