Reed takes 1-shot lead at FedEx Cup opener

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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AUGUSTA, Ga. – Golfer Kevin Kisner and his wife Brittany have been recognized with the annual Augusta University President’s Award for outstanding philanthropic support to the Children’s Hospital of Georgia. President Brooks A. Keel, PhD, announced the news May 5 during the President’s Spring Celebration. “One of my greatest honors as president of Augusta University is to present the President’s Award to those who have made a remarkable impact on our institution,” Keel said. “It takes a leadership gift from people in our community like Kevin and Brittany Kisner to truly make a difference in what we do here. The Kisners are not just giving money, they are helping us build a dedicated program in pediatric development and behavioral health that will serve children and impact them for their lifetimes.” Since the Kisners could not attend the spring celebration, President Keel presented them with the award earlier in the week when the couple visited the Health Sciences campus to present a $1 million check to Children’s Hospital of Georgia, Augusta’s only children’s hospital. “I’ve always wanted to give back once I reached a platform such that I could give back,” said Kevin Kisner, an Aiken native and professional golfer who has earned four PGA Tour victories and 45 Top 10 finishes. “Everyone can give something, and we hope we inspire others to give,” said Brittany Kisner, co-founder and board chair of the Kevin & Brittany Kisner Foundation. Brittany Kisner said she first noticed a need for more pediatric development and behavioral health services at Children’s Hospital of Georgia several years ago when she worked there as a speech pathologist. Health experts report that the pandemic has intensified this need. The Kisners presented a $50,000 gift to Children’s Hospital in December 2020 to help start a part-time clinic for children with these health challenges. A year later in November 2021, the Kisners pledged $5.3 million to help establish and name a center for pediatric development, behavioral health and wellness. Their $1 million gift this week was the first installment of this substantial commitment. “We felt like we started so small in what we were able to do, but through personal giving and giving of the foundation, and then going out to other donors and asking them to give to this endowment, it is unbelievable that we can reach a point where we could receive an award like this,” Brittany Kisner said. “To be thought of by the president that we’ve done enough to get an award with his name on it – that’s pretty spectacular,” Kevin Kisner said.

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Conditions were difficult during the first round of THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES, where the 78 players in the field averaged a score of 1.3 strokes over par. Interestingly, 3 of the 4 par-5s played over par, a rare occurrence at PGA TOUR stops.  Our pre-tournament probabilities indicated that Justin Thomas was the class of this field by a wide margin. We estimated Thomas to be about two strokes better per round than the average PGA TOUR professional, while Brooks Koepka was the second-highest rated golfer at +1.6 strokes relative to an average professional. This may be surprising to readers, given that Koepka is fresh off being voted the PGA TOUR Player of the Year. Here is a closer look at Thomas’ and Koepka’s performances since 2014 (Thomas above; Koepka below): Indicated on these graphs are a player’s average adjusted (for field strength) strokes-gained at each event (their “True SG�). Thomas has shown incredible consistency over the past year and a half, which is why the model favors him over Koepka. The top of the leaderboard after Thursday’s first round is mostly comprised of golfers in the middle or bottom of the skill distribution in this field. As a consequence, no single player is capturing a significant share of the win probability. Here are our current top 10 win probabilities: It’s not common for three of the top four win probabilities after Round 1 to belong to players outside of the top 10 of the leaderboard. None of the top golfers played particularly well on Thursday, but our model expects them to make up the ground they’ve ceded over the next three rounds. NOTE: These reports are based off the live predictive model run by @DataGolf. The model provides live “Make Cut,� “Top 20,� “Top 5,� and “Win� probabilities every five minutes from the opening tee shot to the final putt of every PGA TOUR event. Briefly, the model takes account of the current form of each golfer as well as the difficulty of their remaining holes, and probabilities are calculated from 10,000 simulations. To follow live finish probabilities throughout the remainder of THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES, or to see how each golfer’s probabilities have evolved from the start of the event to the current time, click here for the model’s home page. Follow on Twitter

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