Tour News

Birdie barrage in China gives Poulter his 2nd WGC title

Published

12 years ago

Nov 4, 2012

Just weeks after a dominating performance at the Ryder Cup, Ian Poulter fired a final-round 65 to recoup a four-stroke deficit from Ryder Cup teammate Lee Westwoood and capture the World Golf Championships-WHC HSBC Champions title in China.

The win came against a limited field of 78 which included seven of the world’s top 10 along with 16 Ryder Cup participants. It was Poulter’s first title since the 2011 World Match Play and 2nd WGC title (he also won the 2010 WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship).

“I’ve only been one season without a victory and I certainly didn’t want to go another one,” Poulter said. “As well as I’ve played this year, it would have been a disappointment personally to have gone the year without winning.”

The tournament was held at the 7301-yard Olazabel course at Mission Hills Golf Club, but it could hardly defend itself from the birdie onslaught over the weekend that consisted of five different lead changes on Sunday by a list of major championship-type pursuers.

For the victory, Poulter had to chase down Round 3 leaders Louis Oosthuizen and Lee Westwood. Also win the mix was Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson, Jason Dufner and Scott Piercy, who all tied for second at 19-under. Mickelson had a legitimate opportunity to win, but with a bogey at the par-4 12th that was followed by a rally killing 4 at the par-3 17th, his chances were squandered.

“I saw what he was doing,” Mickelson said. “I was aware, so I tried to carve a few shots in to some of the pins and wasn’t able to get close enough to them to make birdies to catch him.”

Westwood and Oostheuizen struggled in the final round, shooting rounds of even-par 72. Westwoood’s round was the polar opposite of his 11-birdie 61 on Saturday. After battling a cool putter on the front side, he faltered on the back nine with three bogeys. Oosthuizen repeated his Deutsche Bank performance with white hot play in the first three rounds followed by an uneventful Sunday. Both players finished in a tie for 6th.

Poulter opened his Sunday with four birdies on the front side to push him towards the top of the leader board and he followed that with four more on the back to solidify the victory. Poulter’s only blip came on the par-3 17th, where he made his first bogey of the day. But Poulter composed himself on the final hole, where things started to get nervy for the Englishman.His approach shot on the closing hole left him in a greenside bunker, but he recovered to 8 feet, a putt which he knocked in for a two-shot victory and a $1.2 million pay day.

“I’ve already spent the check last week,” Poulter said after the round. “Yes, it was a vehicle and yes, it was very expensive.”

It’s a good thing he came to play on Sunday.

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Equipment

Spotted: Putter roundup from the 2024 3M Open

Published

2 days 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

4 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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