Jackson Koivun, an Auburn freshman, faced stiff competition Monday evening from his two fellow Ben Hogan Award finalists. He still prevailed.
The post Auburn freshman wins Ben Hogan Award for excellence in college golf appeared first on Golf.
Golfing News & Blog Articles
Stay up-to-date on golfing news, products, and trends from around the world.
There‘s a lot of cool gear in the golf world that doesn’t always fit into Most Wanted Tests or Buyer’s Guides. You still want to know how it performs. In our We Tried It series, we put gear to the test and let you know if it works as advertised.
What We Tried
Stix Golf Perform Series
Your Reviewer
Phillip Bishop – I get to test golf clubs and write about it. Who doesn’t love that?
We Tried It: Stix Golf Perform Series
For MyGolfSpy, one of the key reasons we exist is to provide a platform for golf equipment from companies small and large that we believe is worthy of your consideration. Bringing power to the player (golfer) is our main objective.
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) golf equipment is booming. Stix Golf is a prime example of an underdog, a no-name if you will, that is making a name for itself.
The next time you line up a putt, pay attention to the grass. Get down and look at it. Touch it. Smell it. Listen to it. Dare we say… taste it? All right, so we can’t actually recommend you do any of that but our point is that the type of grass on the green can affect how your ball rolls. Being able to identify what’s between your ball and the hole could be the advantage you need.
Generally, putting greens are covered by one of three grasses: Bermuda grass, bentgrass or Poa annua. Courses in warmer areas, like the southern United States, usually use Bermuda grass while those in cooler places typically plant either creeping bentgrass or Poa, says Jordan Booth, an agronomist and senior director of the US Golf Association’s Green Section.
Courtesy of the USGA“Without getting deep in the weeds about what the different grasses are and how to see them… if you knew which variety you had, it would impact your short game and putting the most,” Booth says, emphasizing that these impacts will be most pronounced at the highest levels of amateur play and in the professional game.
Just knowing which type of climate you’re playing in and asking the pro shop what kind of grass they use on their greens will go a long way toward helping you identify the turf you’re dealing with. That said, identification gets a little more complicated when you’re playing in Virginia, North Carolina or some other climate transition zone.
Bermuda grass
Courtesy of the USGABermuda grass (genus Cynodon if you want to drop that in casual conversation to psyche out your opponents with your enormous brain) is a tough, versatile plant native to Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia, but not Bermuda. Its dense growth can recover from damage quickly and tolerate droughts, making it a top choice for golf courses and other professional athletic fields in warm locations like Florida and California.
The best (and one of the only) compliments I can give LIV is the positive effect the league has on Bryson DeChambeau.
Bryson had became something of a pariah on the PGA Tour, and it was a well-earned distinction. He repeatedly proved his selfishness and lack of self-awareness, whether it was unfairly blaming manufacturers, calling Augusta National a par-67 or giving nonsensical lessons in pseudo physics.
Fans may have respected his willingness to think about golf in a unique way, but the respect didn’t go much further than that. He came across as an immature know-it-all who was a serious golfer but not a person to take seriously.
Well, Bryson haters among us, it’s time to admit he’s become a lot more palatable in the past year or so.
And he’s more than just palatable. I would even argue that Bryson is now all of the following:
What do you do if you accidentally play from the wrong set of tees in a match? Can you avoid a penalty? Rules Guy has the answer.
The post Rules Guy: What’s the penalty for accidentally playing from the wrong tees in match play? appeared first on Golf.
Patrick Reed withdrew from U.S. Open qualifying on Monday, ending a streak of playing every major since the 2014 Masters.
Scottie Scheffler's arraignment on multiple charges stemming from an incident prior to the second round of the PGA Championship has been delayed until June 3.
About The Testing Opportunity
MyGolfSpy Forum staff selected 30 members to participate in a detailed testing of Bridgestone’s new Mindset golf ball with the goal of providing comprehensive feedback on their experiences. The evaluation focused on key aspects from data collected from their Shot Scope devices. (Shot Scope is the official on-course data partner of MyGolfSpy.)
Some of these data points were driving performance, fairway accuracy, greens in regulation and putting efficiency. Subjective feedback, such as overall satisfaction compared to their usual golf balls, was also solicited.
Selected testers went through the ball fitting guide on Bridgestone’s website to make sure they got the proper golf ball for their game. In addition, prior to receiving the Bridgestone Mindset golf balls, testers filled out a survey collecting baseline data. All testers had a minimum of 10 rounds collected on their Shot Scope accounts. Over the course of testing, the members played in tournaments, casual rounds and collected launch monitor data. All of this was used to compare and provide an overview on how their games changed using the Bridgestone Mindset golf balls—for better or worse.
The Bridgestone Mindset Golf Ball
Mindset golf balls are a new addition to the Bridgestone Tour B lineup as a visual aid to help golfers in their shot preparation. The Mindset design consists of three colors and shapes that represent different stages in a simple three-stage process.
The outermost red circle and arrow are meant for alignment and identifying the target.
From Xander Schauffele securing his first major championship to the soft conditions at Valhalla Golf Course, here are the biggest winners and losers from the 2024 PGA Championship.
In the summer of 2018, I wrote a story for our Know Your Japanese Golf Brands series that summarized more than 100 years of Mizuno history.
At that time, Mizuno was well into a revitalization of its iron business. Though it enjoyed a stellar reputation among better players, the lineup had grown bloated and arguably stale. Despite the best efforts and best intentions, Mizuno had shanked its way through the game-improvement category for years. Player’s irons are nice but game-improvement is where the industry makes its money.
Fortunes changed when Mizuno launched the Hot Metal iron as part of the JPX900 series. Clean by category standards, Hot Metal proved to be the game-improvement iron that established Mizuno as a serious player in the segment. Several revisions later, Hot Metal is Mizuno’s best-selling model. Not bad for a brand once regarded as exclusively for better players.
By any reasonable measure, Mizuno’s iron business was moving in the right direction. That was only the beginning. Behind the scenes, the company was laying plans to tackle an even bigger challenge: reestablish the Mizuno brand as a credible player in the driver category.
The Demise
Once a mainstay on the PGA Tour, the quick version of what led to Mizuno’s fall from grace with the driver can be summarized as a series of unfortunate events: a misreading of the tea leaves, PING’s release of the G2 (seriously) and the bad decisions that followed. The finer points are for another day but the summary version is that as a Tour driver brand, Mizuno had lost all credibility.
That should be—and probably will be—the last major championship we see at Valhalla.
As much as I enjoyed seeing Xander Schauffele wrestling the PGA Championship away from Bryson DeChambeau and Viktor Hovland during a dramatic back-nine showdown, Valhalla is not worthy of major championship golf.
It’s no judgment on the city of Louisville or the state of Kentucky, which has provided outstanding support of four PGA Championships dating back to 1996. Hospitality sale records were broken this year. The fans were enthusiastic.
The problem is in other areas.
On the financial side, the PGA of America, which bought Valhalla in 2000, sold the property in 2022 and have built a course at their headquarters in Frisco, Texas, which will soon begin intermittent hosting duties (2027, 2034 and beyond). There is a lot less incentive for them to go back to Valhalla, which effectively turned into a lame duck host. The tournament is heading to larger markets in the coming years—areas like Charlotte, Philadelphia, Dallas, New York, San Francisco and Washington D.C.
Grips are an oversight for some golfers and a breaking point for others. Most know the big names in golf when it comes to grips: Golf Pride, SuperStroke and Winn, for example. But how many know about a company that offers a three-year guarantee on their grips?
That company is Star Grips and we had our members put their grips to the test. Star Grips also has another key feature that sets them apart. Their grips are purpose-built to be blown on with an air compressor. While the conventional method of grip installation can still be used, the Star Grips are built with a special compound of rubber that is more receptive to being blown on and does not lose its shape or integrity during the process.
The Testing Opportunity
We selected four golfers to install, test and review a full set of Star grips. Testers had their choice of color and grip options and received the air installation gun to test.
As a community, we wanted to know how these grips performed, how they felt and how durable they were.
The Installation Method
As mentioned, Star Grips has a unique installation and removal process that requires use of an air compressor. This method has benefits and drawbacks but, at its core, it’s a faster and cleaner method to install grips without having to deal with solvent and sticky double-sided tape.
Less than a week after independent director Jimmy Dunne resigned, effectively immediately, and hours after the PGA Championship was decided, Mark Flaherty, another independent director, resigned from the PGA Tour's policy board Sunday night.
Xander Schauffele entered PGA Championship week widely regarded as the best current player to not have won a major. He left with the Wanamaker Trophy.
Xander Schauffele secured his first major victory Sunday, and he did it with the lowest winning score in a major championship.
Nelly Korda won a back-nine showdown with Hannah Green of Australia with a par on the 18th hole to capture the Mizuho Americas Open by a stroke Sunday for her sixth win in seven starts on the LPGA Tour this year.
