Golfing News & Blog Articles

The 162-yard par-3 seventh at Winged Foot is the shortest of the one-shotters and if the green is hit in regulation, a solid birdie chance.

But this Tillinghast original is not “right in front of you”, with the elevated green likely making club selection of a nine iron or wedge to tricky for today’s under-par living Adonis’s.

The USGA flyover thanks to Deloitte:

The 162-yard, par-3 7th is Winged Foot’s shortest hole. Its challenging greenside bunkers sit 7 feet below the putting surface.

In collaboration with @DeloitteUS. pic.twitter.com/lr6ZOg0d61

Well he’s certainly not wrong.

Kevin Kisner, as quoted by Rex Hoggard at GolfChannel.com on the eve of the $45 million Tour Championship.

“We need the fans back. Without the fans, the tournaments aren't the same. The revenues aren't the same,” said Kevin Kisner, one of four player directors on the Tour’s policy board. “We need them back.”

As a player director he’s privy to more numbers than the rest of us, so there is no reason to doubt him. Still, the Tour’s commissioner outlined a robust charitable outlay vision yesterday while holding firm on purses while others cut back. It’s hard to imagine ticket sales will aid as much as taking a million off a purse here and there. But it’s nice to see Kisner misses fans, as do most players and TV audiences.

One identifying characteristic of woodpeckers: they repeatedly slam their heads against a hard surface, often with little discernible progress.

Given how this mirrors the USGA’s approach to distance gains in the game over the last 20 years, maybe it’s fitting that North Carolina’s “Project Woodpecker” is rolling out the red carpet for a United States Golf Association move.

As Richard Craver reported for the Winston Salem Journal, the North Carolina state Senate—and subsequently the state House on Thursday—approved a bill offering up to $42.4 million in performance-based incentives to an unidentified group.

The nonprofit would have to create at least 35 new jobs and have an overall workforce of 50. The average annual salary could be $80,000. The project is projected to produce an $800 million economic benefit over 10 years.

Bill sponsors said during Wednesday's Senate Commerce and Insurance Committee that an announcement on the project could be made as soon as next week.

The Pilot of Southern Pines reported Friday that Pinehurst and Moore County elected officials will discuss in separate hearings Tuesday a $25 million business development project in Pinehurst that is expected to generate 50 jobs.

Both groups will vote on providing performance-based incentives to an unidentified organization that intends to build a new facility within Pinehurst’s village limits.

The Pilot said local officials have been tight-lipped about “Project Woodpecker” since early March.

The most recent version of House Bill 807 provides an obvious clue about the sports organization in question:

With temperatures expected to range between 105 and 115 degrees at next week's ANA Inspiration, the LPGA is letting caddies use carts during the tournament.

Connor Syme birdied his last three holes to shoot a 2-under 69 Thursday and join a four-way tie for the lead after the first round of the Andalucia Masters.

The PGA Tour, which hasn't had any spectators at 14 events over the past 13 weeks, hopes to have them back on the course in early 2021, policy board member Kevin Kisner said.

Rory McIlroy is the last of 30 players to arrive at the Tour Championship and couldn't be more thrilled. His wife gave birth to their first child.

OK, no Tiger. No Koepka or Phil or Jordan, either. But the top three players in the world enter at the top of the list. At stake is $15 million, the No. 1 ranking in the world and more momentum heading into the U.S. Open in two weeks.

True inspiration can come any time, anywhere. Sometimes the innovation is purely accidental, like vulcanized rubber, the microwave oven or Viagra. Other times, as with Batu Okur and the Rapsodo MLM launch monitor, the innovation is purpose-driven to solve a specific problem.

The Rapsodo Mobile Launch Monitor (MLM for short) was Best Outdoor Launch Monitor in 2019. And as we prepare for the 2020 Personal Launch Monitor Buyer’s Guide, we’d like to give you a deep dive into last year’s top performers. Last week, we looked at the Sky Caddie SkyTrak, and this week it’s the Rapsodo MLM.

And, as we’ll learn, you won’t need Ancestry.com to find their shared DNA. So, without further ado and with apologies to Messrs Mercury and May, let’s get this Rapsodo Rhapsody on the road.

The Rapsodo MLM: Is This The Real Life?

According to Merriam-Webster, a rhapsody can be “an effusively rapturous or extravagant discourse or musical composition of irregular form with an improvisatory character.”

I know the bubble’s thick down there in PVB—is it Norman Foster designed?—but this quote still gave me a hearty chuckle.

From Commissioner Jay Monahan’s state of the Tour press conference at East Lake:

Given that golf lends itself naturally to social distancing, recreational play has seen a surge in recent months. As one of the few professional sports competing earlier this summer, I'm certain our tournaments and our players played a role in inspiring participation during the last few months, and we look forward to building on all this momentum as we head into the end of the year and into 2021.

Recreational play was strong during the COVID-19 quarantine(ish) before the Tour restarted in June and was robust from the outset thanks to golf’s outdoor setting, safety and most of all, a huge increase in free time for active participants or wannabe players. Only in Cult Ponte Vedra could they believe they inspired the robust increase in play.

The shortest par-4 at Winged Foot West is a dandy and often listed with the best short four’s in the land.

Long known as the place Ben Hogan used 5-iron off the tee for the best approach distance, the sixth had seen a left greenside bunker added to guard the creek (oy!) and huge build-up on the rightside bunker. That’s been taken down and the green shape fully recaptured.

On this flyover the 321-yarder doesn’t not look particularly appetizing to drive with rough and water looming left of the green, but with such a narrow fairway and today’s players traveling with flexibility-inducing foam rollers, they may just bomb and gouge their way to the hole despite the baggage coming with such an approach. The rough may render the creek’s role fairly meaningless, so we’ll just have to wait for tournament week to see what today’s Hogan’s are thinking.

No. 6 is Winged Foot's shortest par 4 at just 321 yards, but it also has the narrowest fairway. Aggressive players might attempt to reach the green from the tee.

In collaboration with @DeloitteUS. pic.twitter.com/Ov124AQdMe

Other than the forthcoming Asia swing moving to the western United States, there are not many major changes to the PGA Tour schedule in the name of minimizing travel. The various “swings” remain in tact, with some maneuvering in Florida that will not help the Honda Classic much.

There are just 10 days between the end of The Open and the rescheduled Tokyo Olympic Games, should they go forward.

As for other changes and venues to look forward to, Brian Wacker at GolfDigest.com notes:

Other notable changes include the Bermuda Championship, scheduled for Nov. 26-29 in the week after the Zozo, being elevated to full FedEx Cup point status after the WGC-HSBC Champions in China, originally slated for the same week, was officially canceled earlier this week. Likewise, the Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship also will be played with full points available.

Meanwhile, as previously reported, the tour’s Florida swing has been reconfigured with the Honda Classic moving to the week after the Players Championship, March 18-21, while the Valspar Championship moves to the first week of May, after the Zurich Classic of New Orleans.

Five new venues will also be featured in the 2020-21 season: Shadow Creek and Sherwood; Memorial Park (Houston Open); TPC Craig Ranch (AT&T Byron Nelson) and Caves Valley Golf Club, outside Baltimore (BMW Championship).

The full schedule can be viewed here:

Reading Jay Monahan’s State of the PGA Tour press conference, it’s tempting to pull out a calculator to comprehend some of the dollar figures bandied about. Particularly given recent news of the PGA Tour letting go or retiring 50 lower-pay staffers not on the executive, Dr.-Conformity-in-Atlanta track to a Ponte Vedra Boulevard (ocean side) residency.

Virtually all of the money mentioned by the Commissioner will be on tournaments to raise, an interesting task with so much uncertainty about pro-ams and spectators. Monahan sounded a very cautious note on that front, which was a refreshing take given some other major sports pushing to get people in seats despite being way less conducive to a safe situation than golf spectating.

When we feel like it's safe to return fans out here, that's when fans will return. We owe that to them, to make sure that we feel like -- and we're supported locally in every market we play in, that that is supported by the local government authorities.

Now to the money.

Monahan said in the press session today at East Lake that the Tour has raised $35 million this summer for COVID-19 related charities.

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said Wednesday that he anticipates no reduction in purses going forward as the golf circuit navigates the coronavirus pandemic without spectators for the foreseeable future.

I now realize that when we change to a slower swing speeds for any club, it tends to change our release rhythm. That results in poor directional control for our shots. By this I mean that our muscles fire at different rates during the swing and cause us to push or pull shots. The result can be a DISASTER!

Bryson DeChambeau may be on to something good with his uniquely designed identical iron shaft length for all of his irons. He sets up with the same athletic stance and tilt at his waist so that he can feel the same motion with every iron shot.

Consistent swing speeds are critical for consistent muscle firing. This is why we need to setup squarely along the target line for our maximum swing speed with our DRIVER and possibly with a more open stance for slower controlled swings with our IRONS and especially with our WEDGES. If you know that you have too much club for the distance of your shot, choke down on the club and take a practice swing to feel the different depth of your swing at your NORMAL SWING SPEED. (NOT FASTER AND NOT SLOWER).

Clay Ballard who creates the TopSpeedGolf blog is a real promoter to generate longer drives with faster Swing speeds. [It’s a fact that an extra 1 MPH impact speed increases your driver distance by about 2.5 yards.] In the past I have provided blogs from others who promote “controlled” swing speed or “limited” back swing for recreational golfers to land more drives in the fairway and to hit more Greens in Regulation. Now I personally find that inconsistent swing speeds result in inconsistent direction control.

Muscle Memory
Clay is now promoting a cutting-edge technology called Neural Adaptation Practice. I Googled this process and found the following: ‘Muscle memory‘ also known as neuromuscular facilitation, is the process by which muscles become familiar with certain motor skills. Furthermore, when signals from the brain are sent to the muscle, a pathway becomes established and this process becomes semi-automatic.”

September 2, 2020

Patriot Golf Day Celebrated This Labor Day Weekend

Benefitting Folds of Honor, PGA HOPE and Military Families

The 13th Annual Patriot Golf Day will honor the sacrifice of our nation’s military heroes across America this Labor Day Weekend (Fri.-Mon., Sept. 4-7), by raising awareness and scholarship funds for the families of fallen and wounded Veterans.

Serving as “the most heroic round of golf you will ever play,” Patriot Golf Day began as a grassroots fundraising initiative over Labor Day Weekend in 2007, with golfers nationwide encouraged to add an extra dollar to their green fees to fund Folds of Honor scholarships. Over the last 13 years, the effort has grown to encompass onsite donation boxes, a variety of fundraising events, tournaments and golf marathons led by PGA Professionals and golfers nationwide.

Folds of Honor, a nonprofit that has provided more than 28,000 educational scholarships to spouses and children of fallen and disabled Veterans, and PGA HOPE (Helping Our Patriots Everywhere) are the hosts of Patriot Golf Day. Beginning this year, the two organizations have joined together to expand and grow annual fundraising efforts for both Folds of Honor and PGA HOPE to better serve the needs of Veterans and their families through the game of golf. PGA HOPE is the flagship military program of the PGA of America’s 501(c)(3) foundation, PGA Foundation, Inc. d/b/a PGA REACH.

After a wild finish at Olympia Fields, a field of 30 players will head to East Lake for the Tour Championship. Here are our experts' best bets.

MyGolfSpy Ball Lab is where we quantify the quality and consistency of the golf balls on the market to help you find the best ball for your money.  An overview of the equipment we use can be found here. To learn more about our test process, how we define “bad” balls and our True Price metric, check out our About MyGolfSpy Ball Lab page.

Callaway calls Chrome Soft “the ball that changed the ball.” Given what we witnessed during last season’s robot ball test and what we found subsequently, it’s fair to say that Chrome Soft is the ball that changed the way we think about golf balls. It’s a large part of why we decided to build the MyGolfSpy Ball Lab. So it only makes sense to kick off Ball Lab with the 2020 Chrome Soft.

In this report, we’ll give you the rundown on what we found in the lab and let you know how it stacks up against other golf balls on the market. Finally, we’ll give you the True Price – how much it costs to get a dozen good golf balls.

About the 2020 Callaway Chrome Soft

We learned at least two very key things when Francesco Molinari took to Twitter confirming he’s still alive and well during this pandemic.

A) The 2018 Open Champion is fine, not changing equipment and is just moving to California and reorganizing his life.

B) Twitter has a handy translate function if you wait long enough.

Joel Beall at GolfDigest.com with the full translation and interpretation from someone who was arguably one of the world’s three best players just 18 months ago, the man who played a flawless Open final round in front of Tiger Woods, and who was a 2018 Ryder Cup star. He recently WD’d from the rescheduled U.S. Open at Winged Foot.

“It will be hard to get back to the levels of 2018 no doubt, you don’t think it was easy the first time. I am the only one who has not returned. I am well aware of it, but it is not the first time that I have made different or unpopular choices (see Rio 2016).”

Molinari, who is exempt into the Masters in November thanks to his claret jug victory at Carnoustie, thanked fans who have patiently awaited his return. Though he hasn’t decided when, Molinari promised he will eventually be playing competitively again.

“I’ll be back in a while, I won’t tell you the exact time because I simply haven’t decided it yet and it will depend on the schedule/preparation,” Molinari wrote.

Having had wedges and short irons into the first few par-4’s, 2020 U.S. Open invitees now confront a dilemma at the fifth: bomb it over the trees and try to carry is 320, or hit a right-to-left tee shot to a semi-blind fairway skirting Tillinghast bunkers?

Yes, we know how that movie turns out.

Another simple and beautiful holes with the cross bunker short of the Hanse Design-restored green providing just another example of Winged Foot’s artistry and distinctiveness. The USGA’s flyover for this year’s tournament, brought to us by Deloitte:

No. 5 at Winged Foot is a 502-yard par 4 that played as a par 5 in 2006. The drive zone is not entirely visible from the tee and recovery shots from the greenside bunkers are particularly challenging.

In collaboration with @DeloitteUS. pic.twitter.com/WRQszv9Vef