Stricker earns U.S. Open berth in qualifier

Back in May 2021, Sergio Garcia returned to TaylorMade’s TOUR staff with a multi-year equipment deal to use the company’s clubs, ball and bag. Garcia left TaylorMade in 2017 after being with the company for nearly his entire professional career, but he came back to the company after an intermission of nearly three years. This week, ahead of the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play, TaylorMade provided an in-depth look into the bag of the 11-time PGA TOUR winner, whose victories include the 2008 PLAYERS and 2017 Masters. Garcia also has 16 wins on the DP World Tour. Check out below what the 42-year-old Spaniard has in the bag this year, and why. GRIPS Arguably the most interesting tidbit about Garcia’s gear is the grip he uses on all of his clubs, except the putter. Garcia uses SuperStroke S-Tech grips in a blue-and-yellow colorway, matching the colors of his beloved European Ryder Cup team. It’s not just the color that makes them unique, though. Garcia has weights added to the butt-end of his grips to effectively counterweight the clubs and make the heads feel lighter. This provides multiple benefits. “Since 2004, I have extra weight – counterbalance, it’s called – on the top of my grips,” Garcia said. “It helps me do two things. It helps me have a heavier club, but … it’s not too head heavy. When I have a club that’s too head heavy, the way I swing, my shots get too spinny. So this way I can bring my spin down, and at the same time, it also helps me throw the club a little more on the downswing so it doesn’t get stuck behind me. Even though it’s still a heavy club, it comes out as a lighter (swing weight) overall, because the balance is closer to the middle of the shaft.” THE DRIVER After using a TaylorMade SIM driver throughout most of 2020 and 2021, Garcia upgraded to the new TaylorMade Stealth Plus driver (with a Fujikura Ventus Black 7X shaft) this year. “I love everything about it,” Garcia said. “I love the look of it, the performance, the sound. It’s just a great driver. To me, it’s like an updated version of the SIM driver, which is a driver that I loved. Probably, I thought, it was the best driver that TaylorMade has made until they came out with the Stealth. So I’m super happy about it, and I’ve been driving the ball well.” Garcia ranks fourth in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee this season, gaining nearly eight-tenths of a stroke per round with his driving. Although his driver says “10.5 degrees” on the head, he actually adjusts the hosel for a lower loft (around 8.5 degrees). The adjustment helps the club face point more to the right at address so it doesn’t look shut to the target for Garcia. FAIRWAY WOODS As with the driver, Garcia also transitioned from TaylorMade’s older SIM models into the new Stealth Plus fairway woods this year. He uses a 3-wood and a 5-wood, and like the driver, he turns down the lofts using hosel adjustments in order to keep the faces from looking too closed. “I like having a little more loft and then turning them lower because that way it squares (the face) a little bit more and it doesn’t aim to the left,” Garcia said. He equips his 3-wood with a Fujikura Ventus Black 7X shaft to match his driver, and his 5-wood has a slightly heavier Fujikura Ventus Black 8X shaft in it. “There’s guys who like to have different driver shafts than their fairway woods,” Garcia said. “I like to have the same feel throughout. … I feel like that’s what works best for me. There’s no right or wrong, it’s just a matter of what you want to see and what you want to feel, and what works best for you.” IRONS AND WEDGES Garcia, who’s been one of the premier ball-strikers in golf for the past two decades, opts to use TaylorMade’s blade-style P-730 irons (3-pitching wedge). The P730 irons first hit retail in November 2017, and they’re forged from 1025 soft carbon steel with faces and grooves that are precision-milled. They’re designed with thin toplines, thin soles and a compact shape that elite ball strikers like Garcia prefer. He also uses just two additional wedges, TaylorMade Milled Grind 3 52- and 58-degree clubs. While many of his professional contemporaries use four wedges in total, Garcia uses just three. Having three wedges allows him to have two fairway woods, as well. “I’ve always had it like this,” he said. “This way the gaps between my wedges are good enough. Also, I have the 58, and if I feel I need more loft, I just open it up. If I go 60, and then 56, and 52, it just feels like there’s too much stuff. I always like to have my 5-wood in, so this wedge setup works.” Each of his irons and wedges are equipped with Nippon N.S. Pro Modus3 Tour 130X shafts. As with his driver and fairway woods, Garcia prefers to have the shafts of his irons and wedges match so the feel is similar throughout the set. PUTTER Although Garcia started this year using a new TaylorMade Spider GT with a red crown, he switched into an older TaylorMade Spider X putter with a silver-and-white crown at THE PLAYERS. Ahead of Wednesday’s first-round match, however, Garcia was spotted testing out a Ping PLD Anser-style putter with an all-black finish. It seems that Garcia is still unsettled with his putter decision, so it’s currently a work in progress. BALL For the only piece of equipment that Garcia uses on every shot, he opts for the 2021 TaylorMade TP5X golf ball. According to Garcia, he finds that the five-layered urethane golf ball offers both greenside control, and control in windy conditions. “I feel like it matches perfectly with my game,” he said. “I hit my windows perfectly with the spin and everything. I’m able to do a lot around the greens, but at the same time, even when it’s windy, I can bring it down and it doesn’t over spin or anything like that, so it works out perfectly.”

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CROMWELL, Conn. – Pretty much, the stars all seemed aligned against Chez Reavie in Sunday’s final round of the Travelers Championship. To wit: He was starting the fourth round with a six-shot lead, but TPC River Highlands is a place where four times in the previous 14 years, the winner had started Sunday six or seven behind. Reavie was head-to-head with Keegan Bradley, whose four PGA TOUR wins had all been of the come-from-behind fashion, furious finishes almost part of his persona. Related: Leaderboard | Winner’s bag There had been eight birdies in his final 11 holes Saturday, and you have to figure that somewhere, Golf Gods gathered to remind one another that they have quotas for this sort of stuff. Oh, and Reavie is the definition of “unheralded,â€� a man whose only PGA TOUR win came in his rookie season 11 years ago. So, as Bradley whittled the deficit to five at the turn, then to four, then three, then two and, finally, to one at the par-4 15th hole, it was worth a big exhale and a reminder what people who know Reavie say about the 37-year-old. “He’s tough as nails,â€� said Paul Casey, who was a senior at Arizona State when Reavie arrived as a freshman in 2000. “He doesn’t have the physical attributes that seem to be what you need to play nowadays (Reavie is 5-9, about 160 pounds), but he’s always nipping at your heels, like a Jack Russell (Terrier).â€� Pausing to smile and catch his breath, Casey, who had just shot 5-under 65 to nail down a share of fifth, said it was a joy to speak about Reavie. “He’s brilliant.â€� As a person, Casey meant, but on this day, he was as a front-runner, too, and because he was a mere 11 years and 258 tournaments since his first TOUR win. “I was fortunate enough to stay patient,â€� said Reavie, who had to be, because he kept hitting fairways and greens and missing birdie chances. That was a recipe for danger, Reavie reasoned, “because I knew Keegan would come out firing.â€� So, when the birdie tries misfired – from long distance at the 10th, then from 28, 21, 12, 12, 10, and nine feet on each of the next six holes – Reavie stood on the 17th tee, his lead a fragile one. To some, it was time to drag out that list of those who had come from at least six shots back after 54 holes to win the Travelers – Brad Faxon back in 2005, Bubba Watson twice, Marc Leishman, too – and start to engrave Bradley’s name to the rollcall. Those folks clearly don’t know what Justin York knows – that it was the perfect time for Reavie to step up. “He’s a bulldog,â€� said York, who has caddied for Reavie for nearly six years. “He’s as mentally tough as anyone out here.â€� Indeed, it was Bradley who blinked, not Reavie. From 160 yards out in a fairway bunker, Bradley bladed a 9-iron long, made double-bogey, and when, finally, Reavie’s fairway-and-green routine led to a birdie, the game was over. With 69 for 17-under 263, Reavie finished four clear of Bradley (67) and Zack Sucher (67). What came with the $1,296,000 prize and 500 FedExCup points were accolades that might be more valuable – if you cherish the character of a person, that is. “He is,â€� said longtime PGA TOUR caddie Jim “Bonesâ€� Mackay, “off the charts as a person, an awesome human being.â€� For all the times Mackay crossed paths with Reavie for more than 10 years on the PGA TOUR, it’s a small corner of the golf universe where he truly got to appreciate this quiet young man who was born in Kansas, grew up in Arizona, and honed his golf game at Dobson Ranch GC in Mesa. It’s Whisper Rock in Scottsdale, which attracts competitive golfers as members the way the Louvre houses priceless artifacts. “If you golf competitively there, you become mentally tough,â€� said York, who swears that his boss’s improvement as a player is two-fold – the work he’s done with Mark Blackburn and the many days and months and years he has spent at Whisper Rock. “The Rock,â€� as it is called, is where guys you’ve never heard of, amateurs for the most part, don’t want shots and don’t need ‘em. “The members can beat you up – in a nice, friendly way,â€� said Casey, who is one of a long list of PGA TOUR guys who play there. Phil Mickelson, Martin Kaymer, Kevin Streelman, Aaron Baddeley, Geoff Ogilvy, Gary McCord, Peter Kostis … they’re just a sampling of the golf talent that shows up where an unwritten rule greets everyone. “You check the ego at the door,â€� said Casey. Ah, no wonder Reavie loves it. After all, he’s as unpretentious as anyone you’ll meet. For sure, “there were some long years in the middleâ€� of his career, as a wrist injury derailed him, and four times between 2009-2015 he failed to make the FedExCup playoffs. But even Bradley cited Reavie’s doggedness. “That’s the way he plays; he’s tough,â€� said the co-runner-up. “I wasn’t surprised.â€� Back in the days before the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, word got around “The Rockâ€� that Reavie was in great form, having shot 61, 61, 64. “Obviously,â€� said Mackay, “he was playing very, very well.â€� When Reavie took that action to Pebble Beach and finished tied for third, his best performance in a major, no one back at Whisper Rock was surprised. And when Reavie fought off Bradley and closed out a 72-hole tournament with just three bogeys against 20 birdies, Casey, representing Whisper Rock GC and probably a long line of friends who have met Reavie along the way, was there to offer a warm embrace. “He’s a great friend, someone you can trust,â€� said Casey, “and he’s getting better with age.â€�

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