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Morning 9: Nelly No. 1 I Cam Smith’s major plea I LIV Golf’s Australia controversy

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By Ben Alberstadt with Gianni Magliocco and Matthew Vincenzi.
For comments: [email protected].
November 15, 2022

Good Tuesday morning, golf fans, as attention turns towards the RSM Classic.

1. Nelly No. 1 again

Keely Levins for Golf Digest…”Korda secured her eighth LPGA title. She’s projected to regain her spot as No. 1 in the world rankings.”

  • “There has been more downs than ups this year I think, and I think that that’s what makes this so much sweeter to me,” Korda said.
  • “The win is a jolt of confidence for Korda as the tour heads into the final event of the season: the CME Group Tour Championship. The 60-player field will compete for one of the biggest purses of the season in Naples, Fla.”
  • “Playing well in the season-ending championship is definitely a big goal of mine. Again, it’s kind of like a home game. I’ll have my parents there, which will be really nice,” Korda said. “But for now I’m just going to enjoy this win, and once I wake up tomorrow, I’ll make my way down to Naples and get ready, get my body ready, mind ready to prep going into a new week.”
Full piece.

2. Cam Smith: Majors “have to stand above all the politics”

Evin Priest for Golf Digest…“In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald in his native Australia, Smith called for LIV golfers to be able to tee it up in the four majors in 2023.”

  • “I think the majors really have to stand above all the politics,” Smith said. “If they really want the best product and the best players playing against each other in the world, they have to let us play. There’s no reason other than playing another tour that should suggest we shouldn’t play. We’re definitely good enough players. We should have those spots.”
  • “Smith is in a unique position in that he is exempt into the majors for the next five years courtesy of winning the 150th Open at St. Andrews in July. As a LIV player, it comes as no surprise he feels his peers should be free to play.”
Full piece.

3. Nelly and Petr are in for the PNC

Adam Woodard for Golfweek…“The field for the 2022 PNC Championship keeps getting better and better.”

  • “Nelly Korda, who won the Pelican LPGA Championship and regained the No. 1 ranking on Sunday, and 2022 PGA Championship winner Justin Thomas highlight the second wave of commitments for the family hit-and-giggle event at Ritz-Carlton Golf Club Orlando, Dec. 17-18.”
  • “Korda will play with her father, former tennis champion Petr Korda, while Thomas will play with his father, Mike. Justin and Mike Thomas won the event in 2020.”
  • “We absolutely loved our experience last year and are delighted to have been invited again this year. It was such a fun week for the whole family,” said Korda via a release. “It truly was special for my dad and me to compete inside the ropes together. We are definitely looking to improve on our 12th place finish last year and I can’t wait to share this amazing experience with him again.”
Full piece.

4. Tadd Fujikawa: Sea Island pickleball pro

Cameron Morfit for PGATour.com…”Tadd Fujikawa will not sweat making the cut at The RSM Classic at Sea Island this week, and while others worry about staying out of the rough at the last official PGA TOUR event of 2022, Fujikawa will preach staying out of the kitchen.”

  • “The head pickleball pro at Sea Island, Fujikawa is no longer a golfer – at least for now.”
  • “I taught a little bit of golf, so the teaching part of it transferred,” Fujikawa, 31, said on a warm fall day as he hosted the PGA TOUR at the bustling Sea Island pickleball complex.
  • “One man in his time plays many parts, the Bard wrote, and so it is with Fujikawa. You may recall his smile and uppercut as he eagled the 18th hole to advance to the weekend at the 2007 Sony Open in Hawaii (T20), his hometown tournament. At barely 16 (and barely 5 feet tall) he was the youngest in a half-century to make a PGA TOUR cut.”
Full piece.

5. Davis Thompson’s left-hand low putting transformation

PGATour.com’s Sean Martin…”After missing the cut in the Korn Ferry Tour’s Nashville stop last year – his fourth missed cut in five starts – Thompson played a local par-3 course with a friend and started tinkering with his putting grip. Admittedly a creature of habit, the Korn Ferry Tour rookie was reluctant to depart from a traditional grip. But, as they say, desperate times call for desperate measures. Thompson decided to try the cross-handed, or left-hand-low, style of putting.”

  • “I was in a bad place mentally with my putting. … I needed to make a change,” he said recently at Sea Island Golf Club, the venue of this week’s RSM Classic and a course Thompson knows well. His father, Todd, is the RSM’s tournament director and Davis Thompson makes his home in St. Simons Island.”
  • “He has already played the RSM three times, but this will mark his debut as a PGA TOUR member. He arrives home at 54th in the FedExCup thanks to two top-15 finishes, and credits his mid-season putting switch with making him a TOUR member at just 23 years old.”
  • “He relied on two drills to get accustomed to the new grip, and they bore almost immediate fruit. He finished fifth in his second event with the new grip – before the final round, he watched putting highlights of Jordan Spieth, the gold standard for the left-hand-low grip – and won his next start. A month later, he’d earned enough points to officially clinch his first TOUR card.”
Full piece.

6. LIV’s Australia announcement sparks controversy

James Corrigan for the Telegraph…”Greg Norman appeared at the Adelaide Oval to declare that the city’s Grange course will host the country’s first LIV event and while the league’s CEO stated his well-trailed belief that the likes of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy should be thankful that the start-up Tour has forced the PGA Tour to increase its incentives for the big names, in the background a vitriolic row in the corridors of power was unfolding.”

  • “If there was any lingering doubt concerning LIV’s propensity to divide, then the wide difference of opinion between the incumbent South Australian premier and his predecessor has surely made that point unarguable”
  • “Peter Malinauskas declared that this is an “unparalleled opportunity for the state” while Rex Patrick is adamant that the money of taxpayers should not be utilised to “assist foreign leaders in washing away unconscionable acts such as the murdering of a journalist for doing his job”.
Full piece.

7. Finau finally fulfilling potential

PGATour.com’s Sean Martin…”We’re quick to ascribe a player’s Sunday struggles to a deficit in his mental game, an inability to handle the pressure of a tournament’s final holes. Finau possesses preternatural physical gifts, so it was especially easy to blame his five-year winless drought on an intangible characteristic.”

  • “The easy answer isn’t always the correct one, however. And now we can cease the inquiry.”
  • “The narrative is no longer, “Can Tony Finau close?” The question is, “Can he be stopped?” His four-shot win Sunday at the Cadence Bank Houston Open was his third in past seven TOUR starts. While Finau admits that winning breeds confidence, that momentum has him moving in a positive direction, listening to him speak Sunday must make one wonder if perhaps we had it backwards. It was the continued progression of his physical gifts that allowed Finau to fulfill his potential.”
  • “The son of a Delta baggage handler, Finau got started in the game with a 6-iron purchased for 75 cents and pounded balls in his garage until his hands bled. There were times he slept in his car at junior tournaments, and the scars are still visible on his forearms from the fire-knife dancing he did to raise money for his junior tournaments. He turned pro at 17 and endured years on the mini-tours before reaching the Korn Ferry Tour.”
Full piece.

8. Rory says Norman must go

Iain Carter for the BBC…”Greg Norman must quit as commissioner of the breakaway LIV Tour to end the “stalemate” in golf’s acrimonious civil war, says Rory McIlroy.”

  • “The world number one is at the season-ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai where he is in pole position to land the European tour’s order of merit title for the fourth time.”
  • “But the future of the men’s game remains firmly on McIlroy’s mind.”
  • “Greg needs to go. He needs to exit stage left,” said the 33-year-old.”
  • “He’s made his mark but I think now is the right time to say you’ve got this thing off the ground but no one’s going to talk unless there’s an adult in the room that can actually try to mend fences.”
Full piece.

9. Photos from Sea Island

  • Check out all of our galleries from this week’s Tour stop!
Full Piece.
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Equipment

Did Rory McIlroy inspire Shane Lowry’s putter switch?

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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.

The timing of Lowry’s putter changeup was curious: Was he just using a Spider putter because he was paired with McIlroy, who’s been using a Spider Tour X head throughout 2024? Was Lowry just being festive because it’s the Zurich Classic, and he wanted to match his teammate? Did McIlroy let Lowry try his putter, and he liked it so much he actually switched into it?

Well, as it turns out, McIlroy’s only influence was inspiring Lowry to make more putts.

When asked if McIlroy had an influence on the putter switch, Lowry had this to say: “No, it’s actually a different putter than what he uses. Maybe there was more pressure there because I needed to hole some more putts if we wanted to win,” he said with a laugh.

To Lowry’s point, McIlroy plays the Tour X model, whereas Lowry switched into the Tour Z model, which has a sleeker shape in comparison, and the two sole weights of the club are more towards the face.

Lowry’s Spider Tour Z has a white True Path Alignment channel on the crown of his putter, which is reminiscent of Lowry’s former 2-ball designs, thus helping to provide a comfort factor despite the departure from his norm. Instead of a double-bend hosel, which Lowry used in his 2-ball putters, his new Spider Tour Z is designed with a short slant neck.

“I’ve been struggling on the greens, and I just needed something with a fresh look,” Lowry told GolfWRX.com on Wednesday at the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship. “It has a different neck on it, as well, so it moves a bit differently, but it’s similar. It has a white line on the back of it [like my 2-ball], and it’s a mallet style. So it’s not too drastic of a change.

“I just picked it up on the putting green and I liked the look of it, so I was like, ‘Let’s give it a go.’”

Read the rest of the piece over at PGATour.com.

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Equipment

Spotted: Tommy Fleetwood’s TaylorMade Spider Tour X Prototype putter

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Tommy Fleetwood has been attached to his Odyssey White Hot Pro #3 putter for years now. However, this week at the Wells Fargo Championship, we did spot him testing a new putter that is very different, yet somewhat similar, to his current gamer.

This new putter is a TaylorMade Spider Tour X head but with a brand new neck we haven’t seen on a Spider before. A flow neck is attached to the Spider head and gives the putter about a 1/2 shaft offset. This style neck will usually increase the toe hang of the putter and we can guess it gets the putter close to his White Hot Pro #3.

Another interesting design is that lack of TaylorMade’s True Path alignment on the top of the putter. Instead of the large white center stripe, Tommy’s Spider just has a very short white site line milled into it. As with his Odyssey, Tommy seems to be a fan of soft inserts and this Spider prototype looks to have the TPU Pure Roll insert with 45° grooves for immediate topspin and less hopping and skidding.

The sole is interesting as well in that the rear weights don’t look to be interchangeable and are recessed deep into the ports. This setup could be used to push the CG forward in the putter for a more blade-like feel during the stroke, like TaylorMade did with the Spider X Proto Scottie Scheffler tested out.

Tommy’s putter is finished off with an older Super Stroke Mid Slim 2.0 grip in blue and white. The Mid Slim was designed to fit in between the Ultra Slim 1.0 and the Slim 3.0 that was a popular grip on tour.

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Rickie Fowler’s new putter: Standard-length Odyssey Jailbird 380 in custom orange

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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. 

…The Jailbird craze hasn’t really slowed down in 2024, either. According to Odyssey rep Joe Toulon, there are about 18-20 Jailbird putter users on the PGA TOUR.

Most recently, Akshay Bhatia won the 2024 Valero Texas Open using a broomstick-style Odyssey Jailbird 380 putter and Webb Simpson is switching into a replica of that putter at the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship.

Now, Fowler, who essentially started the whole Jailbird craze, is making a significant change to his putter setup.

Fowler, who has had a couple weeks off since the 2024 RBC Heritage, started experimenting with a new, custom-orange Jailbird 380 head that’s equipped with a standard 35-inch putter build, rather than his previous 38-inch counter-balanced setup.

According to Fowler, while he still likes the look and forgiveness of his Jailbird putter head, he’s looking to re-incorporate more feel into his hands during the putting stroke.

He told GolfWRX.com on Tuesday at the Wells Fargo Championship that the 38-inch counterbalanced setup “served its purpose” by helping him to neutralize his hands during the stroke, but now it’s time to try the standard-length putter with a standard-size SuperStroke Pistol Tour grip to help with his feel and speed control.

Although Fowler was also spotted testing standard-length mallets from L.A.B. Golf and Axis1 on Tuesday, he confirmed that the custom Odyssey Jailbird 380 is the putter he’ll use this week at the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship.

Head over to PGATour.com for the full article. 

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