A one-liner for each TOUR Championship participant

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Quail Hollow Club, the venue for this week’s Presidents Cup, is rightfully regarded as a big ballpark. But don’t focus solely on the length of this layout that measures at more than 7,500 yards. With two drivable par-4s, a range of more than 60 yards in the par-3s and reachable par-5s mixed in with beastly par-4s, every piece of equipment will be challenged, especially when you consider the variety of formats in use this week. As the International Team looks to win its first Presidents Cup since 1998, and the United States team hopes to continue its winning streak, GolfWRX has broken down the five key golf clubs for each team, with insight from the respective players. Below are the clubs that we think could play a big role for the underdog International Team if it hopes to score the upset. TAYLOR PENDRITH’S DRIVER Ping G410 LST (9 degrees; Project X HZRDUS Smoke Green Small Batch 70TX) 2022 stats: 12th in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee; 10th in Driving Distance (316.1 yards) Pendrith says: “It’s an older model, but I’m comfortable with it. Just when I set it down, it looks great to me. Sits a little open. …I’ve got lots of confidence with it. I’ve been using the same model for three years, probably, now, and I’ve driven it great the last three years. So the numbers, I don’t think, really can get much better. I’m quite happy with it.” GolfWRX says: If there’s an older model driver in a PGA TOUR pro’s bag, it’s probably for good reason. As one of the best drivers on TOUR, Pendrith seems to find confidence with the familiarity of his Ping G410 LST, which hit the market in May 2019. It’s important to remember that if new technology doesn’t provide better numbers than your current gamer in terms of dispersion and distance, then don’t feel the need to upgrade. As a PGA TOUR player, Pendrith has access to the latest and greatest drivers on the market, but he still sticks with his 3-year-old model. When it’s crunch time with a tournament or match on the line, Pendrith has three years of good memories to lean on, especially after a successful rookie season on TOUR that included a runner-up at the Rocket Mortgage Classic and top-10 in a FedExCup Playoffs event (T8, BMW Championship). SUNGJAE IM’S WEDGES Titleist Vokey Design SM7 (48, 54 and 60 degrees) 2022 stats: 12th in Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green; 12th in Proximity from the Sand (8’, 1”); 5th in Scrambling (66%) Im says: “I use an SM7, Titleist SM7, which is maybe a couple generations old with 4 degrees of bounce – not a lot of bounce – with a little bit of relief on the back and have used it for about four years. Nothing really special, but that’s the model that I like and I’ve been using for the last four years.” GolfWRX says: With Quail Hollow playing so long, as well as birdie opportunities for those who can get up-and-down on the short par-4s and par-5s, Im’s scrambling could be key. Titleist has new SM9 wedges out on the market now. The company’s SM7 versions came out in 2018. As some of the most personal clubs in the bag, wedges must be selected based on look and feel preferences, but it’s also important to match the sole construction and grind to how you deliver the club to the ball, and to the course conditions you typically play on. High bounce wedges are typically better suited for those with steep angles of attack (i.e. players who take deep divots), or soft conditions, whereas low bounce wedges – like the ones that Im uses – are better for those with shallow angles of attack, or firmer conditions. Higher bounce wedges (10-12 degrees) often provide greater margin for error, so beware of using a 4-degree option like Im. COREY CONNERS’ DRIVER Ping G400 LST (8.5 degrees, UST Mamiya Elements AU shaft) 2022 stats: 5th in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee; 78th in Driving Distance (302.7); 20th in Driving Accuracy (66.8%) Conners says (about his swing): “I think just having good rhythm has always been sort of a hallmark of my game and something that I focus on every week. The last few days (at the Presidents Cup), just been feeling the good rhythm. That allows me to hit the ball solidly, and usually it results in it going where I am looking. I … just take some practice swings, try and feel the body moving in sync, (take) a few practice swings … with my right foot kind of behind me a little bit, feeling the body moving, club staying in front of the body, and that helps with my rhythm, as well.” GolfWRX says: Like Pendrith, his fellow Canadian and former Kent State teammate, Conners is one of the TOUR’s top players in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, but he does it differently. He gains strokes with his accuracy off the tee, a hallmark throughout his bag. Conners also was second in greens in regulation last season. Another similarity between Conners and Pendrith is that they both play older Ping drivers. Pendrith’s G410 LST came out in 2019, and Conners’ G400 LST is even older, hitting the market in July 2017. By coupling low-spin technology with a stable design, Ping’s G400 series of drivers was a killer in the market and on TOUR. Clearly, it’s still making an impact half a decade later. HIDEKI MATSUYAMA’S SHORT IRONS Srixon Z-Forged (4-9 iron), Cleveland RTX 4 Forged wedges (46, 52, 56 and 60 degrees) 2022 stats: 6th in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green; 1st in proximity from 125-150 yards (19’, 1”) Matsuyama says: “To be honest, I feel like I wasn’t playing that good. So I’m not really sure about that stat. I wasn’t playing very well.” GolfWRX says: Matsuyama famously has high standards, as evidenced by the many times we’ve seen him hit a shot, hang his head and take a hand off the club in disgust, only to see the ball land near the hole. His above quote also shows that he is not easily pleased with his play, even though it resulted in two wins last season. After triple-checking the stats, Matsuyama did indeed finish sixth in Strokes Gained: Approach – the eighth time in the last nine years he’s finished in the top 10 of that stat — and he finished first in proximity from 125-150 yards. It’s scary to think what it would look like if he hit the ball as well as he thinks he’s capable of. Matsuyama made big equipment headlines when he switched to an unreleased Srixon ZX5 MKII LS prototype at last week’s Fortinet Championship. His irons and wedges are a bit older – his Srixon Z Forged irons came out in 2019, and the Cleveland RTX4 wedges released in 2018. CHRISTIAN BEZUIDENHOUT’S PUTTER Odyssey White Hot OG #7 2022 stat: 6th in Strokes Gained: Putting Bezuidenhout says: “I recently changed to an Odyssey No. 7, that fork one. I actually changed to it five months ago. I used to putt with a similar putter when I was younger. I just changed to that. I feel like I’m starting the ball on-line better, and the stroke of the putter just flows better with that. … I’ve always used a mallet putter, face balanced mostly. What I’ve got now, it’s a face-balanced mallet. So it’s basically the same style of putter that I grew up putting with.” GolfWRX says: To celebrate its 20-year anniversary of the original White Hot insert, Odyssey released a lineup of White Hot OG putters last year. Bezuidenhout’s putter model is part of the White Hot OG family, and his specific option comes with a double-bend hosel. The hosel construction allows the putter to be face balanced, which means the putter face will face the sky when fixated on its balance point on the shaft, i.e. if you balance the shaft on your finger; this helps add stability to the stroke and keep the face from rotating. It’s best suited for golfers with a straight-back and straight-through stroke style (as opposed to having an open-and-closing arc style stroke).

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Will Zalatoris “found the end of Netflix.” He attended the Presidents Cup. He even married his longtime sweetheart, Caitlin. Zalatoris made the most of a four-month rehabilitation process after suffering two herniated discs in his back, but it’s a new year and he’s ready to return to competition at this week’s Sentry Tournament of Champions. It’s the PGA TOUR’s first designated event of 2023, with 17 of the top 20 players on the Official World Golf Ranking set to compete at the Plantation Course at Kapalua. There’s not much time to shake the rust; Zalatoris is quickly back to the throes of elite competition. Bring it on. “I’ve learned a lot about my body, probably more than I think I ever wanted to,” Zalatoris said Tuesday afternoon in Hawaii. “December 1, I think, was the first day I was cleared for full activity, and really just have been doing as much as I can since then … not being able to have a club in my hand for a couple months, I don’t think I’ve done that probably since I was 8 or 9. “But the speed’s the same; everything feels really good. So just keep doing what we’re doing and let the next win get in the way.” After his first TOUR victory at the FedEx St. Jude Championship in mid-August, the first of three FedExCup Playoffs events, Zalatoris was forced to withdraw during the third round of the following week’s BMW Championship due to injury. He then withdrew from the following week’s TOUR Championship, finishing a disappointing 30th in the FedExCup after entering the week at No. 3. During the hiatus, Zalatoris spent time with Greg Rose, a Doctor of Chiropractic at the Titleist Performance Institute, conducting an assessment with the goal of promoting career longevity. They examined the pressures of his swing, concluding a motor pattern was the root cause of the strain on his back. He tends to push off his right side later than most; with his level of side bend, his right hip is high with his spine tilted back. “As Dr. Rose said, duh, no wonder I had a back issue,” Zalatoris quipped. The fix: adjusting his setup, with the goal of reducing the strain on his back. “Be a little more centered, as opposed to having ball forward with more spine tilt at address,” Zalatoris said. “I’m trying to get more centered over it and work more around my right side, so more a turn as opposed to a lateral shift. When my right hip gets high and the spine tilts back, you’re all of a sudden creating all that stress on your back. “It was nice because I was able to bring the ball flight down; living in Texas, you’re used to hitting the ball low, but it’s doing it by itself as opposed to having to manipulate it. So it was actually kind of a nice fix.” Zalatoris led the TOUR last season in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green, after ranking No. 7 the season prior. He ranked top-three in both Total Driving and Greens in Regulation on the 2019 and 2020-21 Korn Ferry Tour, as well. The Wake Forest alum has been a premier ball-striker for four consecutive seasons in TOUR-sanctioned competition, and he admits it’s not natural inclination to want to change anything. But in the name of avoiding future injury, he’s working through the proverbial process. “We’ve looked at everything I was doing, to make sure I was doing all the right things and we were checking all the boxes, and it was strictly a motor pattern thing,” said Zalatoris, who has opted to temporarily decrease his driver length (to approximately 44.75 inches, down from 46 inches) as he works through the setup change. “Which is kind of a good thing and a bad thing, because when I was hitting the ball the way that I was, it’s hard to want to change anything, but at the same time I actually saw some benefits. I’m more efficient in my golf swing — so that’s why the speed is the same with the shorter driver; it’s just because of the efficiency now of how I push into a golf ball.” The 26-year-old has long displayed an aptitude for quickly bouncing back from injury. After withdrawing from the 2021 Open Championship due to a muscular issue, he finished T8 in his next start, the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational three weeks later. Back in 2015, he finished T4 at the Pacific Coast Amateur shortly after returning from an emergency appendectomy. Zalatoris experienced a string of close calls last year – namely six top-six finishes in an eight-event stretch, including runner-up finishes at the PGA Championship and U.S. Open – before his breakthrough victory at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. Suddenly the close-call narrative was put to bed – he memorably exclaimed, “What are they gonna say now!” upon draining a par putt on the 72nd hole to force a playoff with Sepp Straka at TPC Southwind. Zalatoris won on the third playoff hole. That’s the most recent tournament he completed before injury struck, and it’s a feeling he’s keen to recapture. “Being in contention as much as I was last year, there’s just no better feeling than it,” Zalatoris said Tuesday. “Whether you win or lose, it’s just what you practice for.” During Zalatoris’ rehab process, his routine might have looked like “have a few putts and then maybe need to go grab a few beers with my boys.” But he’s an unabashed golf addict who will eagerly play four or five events in a row. He admittedly got bored quickly with his recovery routine. Thursday afternoon in Hawaii can’t come soon enough. “Watching some of my friends play, going to the Presidents Cup, kind of keeping my mind active and spending some time with the guys back home, even just riding around in a cart when they were playing,” Zalatoris described his downtime, “keep my mind active, even though my body wouldn’t let me. “Then once I came back, it was pretty easy to keep the competitive juices flowing.”

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