Most-Picked Players: the Memorial Tournament

Jon Rahm is coming off a forced layoff. The Bryson/Brooks feud enters a new chapter. Oh, and Phil Mickelson goes searching for that missing major title.

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NORTON, Mass. – For the past three or four nights, nearly two dozen people, give or take a few, have taken refuge from Hurricane Harvey in Chris Stroud’s Texas home. He lives on high ground in Spring, which is about 20 miles north of Houston, among the areas hit hardest by the freakish, furious storm. Friends have fled suburbs to come to Stroud’s house, which he says is “built like a fortressâ€� and mercifully has stayed dry despite being pounded by more than 50 inches of rain. Neighbors without power have come knocking, as well. “The kids have been getting along well,â€� Stroud says. “A couple of guys have been cooking. That’s usually my job. I like to cook a lot. “But I’ve got a big wine cellar and (we’re) trying to ease the pain a little bit.â€� Stroud is doing more than letting his displaced friends camp out at his home, though. He has pledged $10,000 and 10 percent of his winnings this week at the Dell Technologies Championship to the relief effort and hopes others follow suit. Stroud was inspired by Houston Texan defensive end J.J. Watt, who started a fund-raising campaign on youcaring.com earlier this week that has taken off like a rocket. As of Wednesday afternoon, more than $6.7 million had been pledged through the page that Watt set up. “So I saw that yesterday that he was raising money, and I thought, that’s exactly what I’m going to do,â€� says Stroud, who also wants to organize a charity pro-am. “So I called the TOUR and I said, ‘What can I do?’ … And I said, ‘How do I do this? Who do we use?’â€� The TOUR, which has more than 30 members who live in the Houston area, responded with a $250,000 donation to the Red Cross. Fans can also make donations at (add link) as well as at kiosks on site this week at TPC Boston. Still, the stories of sadness and struggle are everywhere – and some hit very close to home. Patrick Reed, who also lives in Spring, says the Weather Channel has replaced the baseball games and other sports he normally watches on TV. He took out his phone Wednesday afternoon beside the putting green at TPC Boston and showed a sportswriter a photo of his back yard at 7 p.m. at night – and another, taken 11 hours later after Harvey started to punish the area. “(We live) 200 yards from Spring Creek and it’s 92 feet below our property line,â€� Reed says. “I got a call from my buddy, frantic, and this (photo) was at 6 p.m. the next morning. The whole thing’s under water. “This is a basketball goal that is 6 feet and the water was already over it,â€� Reed continued, pointing at the picture, which shows the outline of a pool under the muddy water. “It came up so fast, it was scary and I know a lot of people got trapped.â€� Luckily for Reed, the water, which spread across his 4-acre property, stopped just shy of the front door of his house and has steadily receded. His in-laws rode out the storm there, along with his daughter, Windsor Wells, her nanny and the director of his charitable foundation. “They barricaded everything and it got six inches short of the house and it receded,â€� Reed says. “… The worst is done. The sun was out yesterday afternoon. So hopefully, the water just keeps receding. It’s tragic what happened in Houston. For that storm just to sit over us like that and to watch how many people got affected, it’s going to be hard to bounce back but Houston will be able to do it.â€� Jhonattan Vegas has lived in Houston off and on since 2002 when he moved to the United States from Venezuela to follow his dream of playing on the PGA TOUR. His wife and their 17-month-old daughter were in Houston when Harvey hit while Vegas was preparing for the Dell Technologies Championship and playing a Presidents Cup practice round at Liberty National. “(They) haven’t been able to leave the house for five days,â€� Vegas says. “We were lucky enough that around our area nothing flooded but all the rain coming down, all the lightning, a tornado hit not far from my house. So, it’s always tough, sleeping well or doing anything around here when you’re dealing with Mother Nature that way.â€� Stroud says Dawie van der Walt, who was on the PGA TOUR last year and currently plays the Web.com Tour, has 4 feet of water in his Kingwood, Texas home. “His house is completely devastated,â€� Stroud said. “He texted me some pictures yesterday. It’s really sad.â€� Shawn Stefani, who lives in Baytown, which is southeast of Houston, barely beat the worst of Harvey’s fury as he headed to Ohio to play in the Web.com Tour Championship. “On the way up to Dallas, he passed a 200-truck convoy of what they call the Cajun Navy,â€� Stroud says. “I’m sure you’ve heard of this. It’s guys from Louisiana bringing their boats, their jacked-up trucks to help. And he said there was a subdivision probably 500 or 600 homes under four feet of water, and all these trucks were in line to back up their boats and go save people.â€� Stroud has a similar truck that he estimates extends about 4 feet into the air and can drive through 5 feet of water. So his buddies made good use of it, driving around the neighborhood to rescue people and pets. Stroud originally was supposed to make a quick trip home to Texas on Sunday. When he missed the cut at THE NORTHERN TRUST, he considered trying to get a jump on Harvey, which ended up sitting over southeast Texas for five days and dumping several trillion gallons on rain on the area. “I talked to my wife, my family, my friends, and the thing they were concerned about, if I did get back home, how could I get back out.â€� Stroud says. “And it was tough. My heart goes out to all the people there. Obviously I was extremely worried about my family being at home.â€� His wife considered taking the couple’s two daughters and going to their house at a lake about two hours north of Spring. Stroud didn’t know how to advise her from afar, but some of his buddies, one of whom is a retired Navy SEAL, stepped in and helped make the decision to stay. “I think it was Sunday night where it really got scary,â€� Stroud says. “There was lightning, flood, tornado threats. There was a tornado that hit in my neighborhood, north Houston, and just scary. And the power was going in and out. … I couldn’t get to them. I couldn’t call them — and the landline’s down. “So it was scary for me to just sit here. My heart is somewhere else and I’m supposed to be getting prepared for golf. It’s just, you know, it makes you realize what’s most important in your life is your family and friends.â€� One of those friends, former TOUR player Kelly Gibson, has reached out to Stroud several times in the last week. He’s from New Orleans and weathered Hurricane Katrina, even helping to serve food to first responders during the devastating hurricane, and watched as his beloved city resurrected itself. Stroud, who picked up his first TOUR victory last month at the Barracuda Championship, said Gibson’s most recent text was “humongous,â€� estimating that it clocked in at 70 lines. Among other things, he wanted to give Stroud advice on how to compartmentalize. “When you’re on the golf course, focus on the golf and when you’re off the golf course, focus on what you can do to keep your family everything and safe,â€� Stroud recalls Gibson writing. “The things that I did read on the text last night that I haven’t finished was it’s going to take months and years for this rebuild of Houston, and he said, just, you know, just be prepared for that. Be prepared for the process of what it takes to rebuild a city. “It’s really, really sad.â€�

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Throughout his professional career, Tiger Woods has always used prototype irons that have a different design than retail releases. That is about to change, however, because TaylorMade is releasing replicas of Tiger Woods’ P-7TW Milled Grind irons to the general public. “Consumers have never had the opportunity to play irons like mine…until now,â€� Tiger Woods said in a press release. The P-7TW prototype irons that Woods started using in 2019 are the second versions of TaylorMade irons that he’s used since becoming a company staffer in 2017. The first TaylorMade irons that Woods used were called “TW Phase1.â€� He used those prototype irons throughout 2018, and he used them to win the 2018 TOUR Championship. In 2019, however, Woods switched to the P-7TW prototype irons that had TaylorMade’s Milled Grind soles, showcased by the ridges in their soles. Much like with the Milled Grind wedges that Woods uses, the Milled-Grind-process allows TaylorMade to construct each iron to exact specifications without the need for hand grinding. This means that Woods can change irons more often, and know that he’s getting irons that are identical to his previous set. “The first step with Phase 1 was creating an iron for Tiger that met his needs and what he had been used to and was giving him exactly what he wanted,â€� Bovee explains. “Phase 2 is taking that foundation, the knowledge of the Phase 1, and improving upon it and adding in features like the Milled Grind sole, where we can repeat Tiger’s grind every single time he wants a new set of irons… we knew he was in love with the Milled Grind in his wedges and being able to get a new wedge every week if he wanted. That was something we wanted to bring to him in the irons, as well. He usually goes through two [iron] sets a year, and now there’s no hesitation.â€� The retail P-7TW irons made available to the public will match Woods’ prototype P-7TW irons “in every way that really matters,â€� according to TaylorMade’s manufacturing engineer Matt Bovee, which includes the head shapes, sole grinds, sole geometries, offset, bounce, grooves and stampings. Woods prefers a very specific look from his irons, a look that differs from TaylorMade’s other retail blade irons: the P-730. “His irons have a very distinct look and shape, and that’s what the P-7TWs really embody,â€� Bovee told PGATOUR.COM. “So if you were to look down at those and really compare them to the 730, you notice right away that they have a longer blade length than the 730, and they actually get longer as they transition into the shorter irons. So that’s different compared to a normal blade iron where the stay the same length. They have a shorter face height in the long irons, and a taller face height in the short irons, in a way that’s a bit more than you would typically see in a set as well. His offsets aren’t necessarily progressive… you don’t see a consistent trend for offset for his gamers. So it’s all very specific to Tiger and what he likes to see.â€� Woods’ irons, and the retail P-7TW irons, also have flatter sole radii, flatter lie angles, thinner toplines, more bounce, more grooves, narrower score-line widths, and grooves that go higher on the face, according to Bovee. The iron numbers stamped on the soles are also larger than the P-730 irons, at Woods’ request. Forged from 1025 steel – a different metal than the irons that Woods uses — the P-7TW retail irons have Tungsten plugs in the heads, just like Woods’ irons. The inclusion of Tungsten helps to get the CG (center of gravity) in every head exactly where Woods wants it, and it offers a feel Woods prefers. “The real golf gear heads, the Tiger fans, have speculated that he has Tungsten in his irons for some time, and that’s absolutely correct,â€� Bovee told PGATOUR.COM. “That’s really developed into a feel story for him, and we’re excited to be able to have that Tungsten in the production model.â€� The TaylorMade P-7TW irons will be available through custom order and in select retail stores. While Woods’ set is equipped with True Temper Dynamic Gold X100 Tour Issue shafts and Golf Pride Tour Velvet Cord grips, the production sets will come stock with True Temper Dynamic Gold S400 Tour Issue shafts, but additional shafts and grips will be available through custom. TaylorMade is also offering a special packaging experience along with purchase of a set, although the company is staying tight-lipped about exactly what that entails. “When you receive this box, when you receive your Tiger irons, and you open that box for the first time, I really think golfers are going to be blown away in terms of the overall packaging experience,â€� Bovee said. “I don’t want to give too much away because it is something special, but let’s just say it’s a premium packaging level that we’ve never offered, and I don’t think the industry has ever offered to be honest.â€� Available on May 1, the P-7TW irons (3-PW, right-hand only) for $1,999.99.

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