Round 2 highlights from Wells Fargo

The PGA TOUR and WHOOP, the human performance company, announced a multi-year partnership naming WHOOP as the "Official Fitness Wearable of the PGA TOUR and PGA TOUR Champions" and a "Sponsor of PGA TOUR Active." To activate the partnership, WHOOP and the TOUR will implement a WHOOP Live for Charity initiative to highlight player biometric data and heart rate during defining moments throughout the season with those real-time metrics integrated into video content. Featured players will receive a $10,000 contribution to the charity of their choice on behalf of WHOOP and the TOUR. Fans can follow these moments at #WHOOPLIVE beginning in 2021. "We are excited to grow our partnership with WHOOP and utilize their health technology to optimize the way our athletes train, recover and sleep," said Brian Oliver, PGA TOUR Executive Vice President of Corporate Partnerships. "Our athletes understand the importance of maintaining their health to ensure peak competitive performance, career longevity and overall well-being. The WHOOP Strap will help our athletes unlock actionable insights via physiological data to help them understand and prepare their bodies for competition. We're eager to begin a first-of-its-kind activation at the TOUR that will incorporate player biometric data with defining moments from the golf course to create fascinating content for fans." This summer upon the TOUR's return to golf over 1,000 WHOOP Straps were distributed for players, caddies and other essential personnel at PGA TOUR, Korn Ferry Tour and PGA TOUR Champions events, with accompanying membership for health monitoring. WHOOP collects physiological data that helps an individual optimize workouts, recovery and sleep - and can identify changes in respiratory rate with industry-leading third party validated accuracy. This official partnership is a natural evolution from the collaborative efforts to find new solutions to support TOUR athletes at all levels. "WHOOP has organically grown amongst the world's best golfers for years and we are proud to take our relationship with the PGA TOUR and all athletes to the next level," said Will Ahmed, WHOOP Founder & CEO. "This partnership is particularly new and innovative in that it will bring heart rate and other engaging physiological metrics directly into the fan experience." WHOOP will activate and create custom content within PGA TOUR Active (www.pgatour.com/active), a new TOUR initiative highlighting health, fitness and lifestyles of professional golfers, where fans get an inside look into the techniques and activities helping the best players in the world perform at their peak. Throughout the partnership, PGA TOUR, PGA TOUR Champions and Korn Ferry Tour players and trainers will receive the latest products and technology from WHOOP to assist in monitoring their health. WHOOP will have an amplified onsite presence at all PGA TOUR events to provide VIP support and incorporate that technology with training and recovery staff on the PGA TOUR's state-of-the-art Player Performance Centers that travel to PGA TOUR and PGA TOUR Champions events and bring state-of-the-art fitness equipment and care to its athletes throughout the season.

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Hudson Swafford remembers when it really hit home. He was 12 years old. Maybe 13. But he distinctly remembers his father giving  his mother Jean a pendant with the number 10 spelled out in diamonds.   “And I was like, well, what’s that for?â€� Swafford recalls. His parents told him that the pendant symbolized Jean’s 10-year anniversary of being free from breast cancer. “And I was like, oh, that’s, that’s amazing,â€� Swafford says. “I mean, it was incredible. So that was big for me because I kind of understood.â€� Swafford knew what cancer was. Friends of his parents had died from the disease. But since he was just 2 years old when his mother was diagnosed, he didn’t remember the worst of times. Jean Swafford underwent radiation and chemotherapy. Her son says she lost her hair and it grew back even curlier than before. Fortunately, though, the cancer was caught early and she’s closing in on 30 years of survival. “I can’t really remember what diagnosis she had — but she also had melanoma when she was coming out of college,â€� Swafford says. “So she actually beat cancer twice, which is pretty incredible. “It’s definitely something, I’ll always be very grateful for. And she was kind of the one that pushed me to do anything that I wanted to do.â€� Like play golf. And Swafford is one of many men on TOUR with women in their lives who have had breast cancer. Wives, mothers, sisters, friends — all have battled the disease, and October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Swafford and his wife Katherine, who is president of the PGA TOUR Wives Association, support charities that help fund breast cancer research, as well as the cancer community as a whole. Katherine is on the Victory Board of the American Cancer Society in their home of St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, and is working on the organization’s 50th anniversary gala for next year. “It’s near and dear to our family,â€� Swafford explains. When he was a toddler, Swafford says, he made his mother’s life “even more miserable.â€� Of course, he didn’t know what she was going through and he was a kid. He wanted to play. “I would get out and run away from her and make her chase me around,â€� he remembers. “(I was) always wanting to throw the ball or just be outside and be active. I didn’t know why at the time, well, what was going on or know why she didn’t want to play. … “Later on life, obviously, it was explained to me and I could comprehend it. It’s definitely kind of eye-opening that she fought through it and, and it really hadn’t slowed her down, you know?â€� While the 31-year-old didn’t want to make his mother “relive those kind of miserable days,â€� Swafford says that once he got older he talked with her about her battle. “She was great about it. She’s a pretty happy-go-lucky person; (she) talks too much anyway,â€� he says, chuckling. “But no, she was great.  Told me all about her chemo, which she had to go through and how she was throwing up, trying to chase me around. “I’m just running out of energy and (she) just needed somebody to help her. It was tough at the time. But she said I was just kind of the one that kind of pushed her, helped push her through things.â€� So at the same time, having an active 2-year-old like Hudson may have helped Jean Swafford fight the disease.    “She always just said I was kind of her energy and would keep her moving,â€� Swafford says. And thirty years later, the 2017 CareerBuilder Challenge champion is still giving his mother plenty of support.  

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