Keegan Bradley won twice at BMW Championship

The TOUR Championship has wrapped, concluding the 2020-2021 PGA TOUR season. Patrick Cantlay hoisted the FedExCup trophy thanks in no small part to a putter switch he made late in the season. We may be slightly biased here at the Equipment Report, but we think it’s the perfect time to look back on some of the most significant PGA TOUR equipment stories of the year — and we had some good ones! Harris’ HoHum In January, Harris English won the Sentry Tournament of Champions with the same putter — a Ping Scottsdale HoHum — he used for his 2013 Mayakoba Golf Classic victory. Unique-looking putter, and a unique equipment tale here as we got the story from Ping TOUR Rep Tony Serrano about what English loves about his HoHum. Hideki’s Scotty switch Eternally in pursuit of the perfect putter, Hideki Matsuyama made a switch two weeks prior to the Masters, putting a 2012 Scotty Cameron Newport 2 Tour Prototype in the bag that was outfitted with a different grip than his Cameron Timeless. Rory returns to old Protos Rory McIlroy made a number of equipment changes in 2021. Most significant among the switches, certainly, was his return to his 2017 TaylorMade Rors Prototype irons prior to winning the Wells Fargo Championship. Phil’s PGA Championship-winning driver En route to his incredible PGA Championship victory, Phil Mickelson wielded a Callaway Epic Speed driver with a 47.9-inch shaft (right up against the USGA limit of 48 inches). We got the inside story of Phil’s build. Morikawa finds a putter that performs Struggling with alignment, Collin Morikawa built himself a custom TaylorMade TP Juno putter using the same MyTP custom putter builder that’s available to the public. While his gamer was ultimately slightly different, it was a wild “they’re just like us” tale. Rahm’s U.S. Open-winning wand Jon Rahm switched to an Odyssey Rossie S the tournament prior to his epic U.S. Open triumph. We got the full story of what happened at the Ely Callaway Performance Center in Carlsbad and why Rahmbo made the move away from the 2-Ball Ten putter he had been using. Rory calls a Cameron into Olympic duty Full-bag TaylorMade staffer captured the full attention of the golf equipment world when he arrived in Tokyo not with his TaylorMade Spider putter but with a Scotty Cameron 009M flatstick. We went in search of the story, and even though Rory has now made a return to the TaylorMade mallet, it was a fun feature to fill out. Phil takes the armlock plunge Always willing to experiment with his equipment, Phil Mickelson tried his hand (and arm) at armlock putting. Additionally, he used a prototype putter that featured an interesting backstory. And while the experiment is over, the story is well worth digging back into. JT takes a teen’s advice A question from a 15-year-old junior golfer prompted Justin Thomas to reconsider benching the Scotty Cameron Phantom X 5.5 with which he won 14 of his 15 PGA TOUR titles. Little changes, big playoff payoff for Cantlay Most recently on the “significant equipment storylines” front, Patrick Cantlay switched to a Scotty Cameron X 5 putter with a sightline (from an alignment aid-free version) and had the best performance in strokes gained: putting history. He then rode the red-hot putter to a FedExCup victory at East Lake. Sometimes the smaller adjustments pay the biggest dividends!

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Tiger Woods was slowed by a tough-putting front nine at the Players Championship but rebounded on the back for an even-par 72 that was good enough to make the secondary cut.

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ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. — Moving on from a devastating summer of losing his child, Camilo Villegas made a 10-foot birdie putt on his final hole Thursday for a 6-under 64 and a share of the lead with Matt Wallace in The RSM Classic. RELATED: Final leaderboard | The healing has begun for Camilo and Maria Villegas Villegas and Wallace each finished on the Seaside course at Sea Island with big putts. Villegas capped off a bogey-free round on the ninth hole for his lowest score on the PGA TOUR in four years. Wallace hit into a hazard on the 18th and saved par with a 30-foot putt. They were a shot ahead of eight players, a group that included Sea Island resident Patton Kizzire and Robert Streb, who won his only PGA TOUR title at Sea Island five years ago. They each had 5-under 67 on the Plantation course, which played about three-quarters of a shot harder. Villegas was trying to return from a shoulder injury that kept him out all of 2019 when he and wife learned early this year their 2-year-old daughter, Mia, had tumors developing on her brain and spine. She was going through chemotherapy when she died in July. He’s trying to move on and hang on to memories, and he had one immediately while warming up with his brother, Manny, working as his caddie. "Got on the range and see a little rainbow out there. I start thinking about Mia and said, ‘Hey, let's have a good one.’ Nice to have Manny on the bag and yes, it was a good ball-striking round, it was a great putting round. I was pretty free all day." Villegas, a 38-year-old from Colombia, is a four-time winner on the PGA TOUR, including the last two FedExCup Playoff events in 2008. He has missed the cut in three of his five events of the new PGA TOUR season, which began a little more than a month after his daughter died. "I can’t change the past and since I can't change the past, I've got to focus on the present," Villegas said. “It's not about forgetting because you never forget your daughter. It’s about being in the moment, being in the now and this is my now. It's not with her, but it is with her at the same time. "I love playing golf, I love doing what I do. The game of golf has been great to me," he said. "I happened to have a shoulder injury there for the last couple years that kind of set me back a bit, but I'm excited. I think things are rolling the right way and obviously if I keep doing what I did today, it should be fine." Wallace tied for 46th last week at the Masters Tournament, and then learned on his way to Sea Island about three hours away that his caddie, Dave McNealy, tested positive for the coronavirus. Wallace tested negative, but he was in need of a caddie. With two courses in the rotation he didn’t know, he decided on a local caddie named Jeffrey Cammon. "He’s really chill," said Wallace. "He said, ‘What do you want me to say?' That was the first question. I was like, ‘Listen, mate, I don't need anything. I’ll ask you a question and you answer it just with pure facts of what you think.’ It worked well today." Wallace has slipped in and out of the top 50 in the world in recent months, and with the year winding down, returning into the top 50 would set him up for a return to the Masters in April. The weather wasn’t as pleasant as it was at Augusta National, with cooler temperatures, strong wind and heavy clouds. Nearly half the 156-man field was at par or better. Sungjae Im, a runner-up at the Masters, began his round at Plantation with double bogey and brought it back to even-par 72.

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