Cut prediction: Valspar Championship

How do you spend your Saturday nights? If you’re Maverick McNealy – a 26-year-old Stanford graduate who sits 18th in this season’s FedExCup standings – you might find yourself inventing a training aid. McNealy texted Odyssey rep Joe Toulon on the Saturday prior to the start of the Farmers Insurance Open with an idea. He wanted a training aid for his putter that would help him put his hands on the grip the same way every time. In the latest example of a TOUR pro thinking about the tools in his toolbox in a unique way, McNealy wanted to create a mold of the way he currently holds his putter and have that mold put onto a backup putter to use as a training aid. McNealy is 50th in Strokes Gained: Putting this season, gaining 0.31 strokes per round on the greens. To help bottle the positive feelings he has on the greens, the mold can help his hands return to this baseline if he gets lost. “Everybody has seen those clubs that have, like, the training grip on it that shows you where to put your hands,” Toulon told GolfWRX. “And he had this thought, ‘What if I do that off of my own putter grip and make a grip off that, and every time I’m a little bit lost with my putting or my grip feels like it’s changed a little bit, I know what it needs to feel like?’ He’s obviously putting well right now, so he kind of wants to hang onto that feeling and make sure he knows exactly how things have change. It would act like a guide. It’s a good time to get a baseline.” A brilliant idea, but how do you actually make something like that? The Odyssey team began brainstorming solutions to McNealy’s request, but McNealy had a better answer. His uncle, Bob Randolph, runs a dental office in the San Diego area, and dentists often use molding material to create impressions for teeth. The patient simply bites down on a putty-like material, and it hardens over time to create a mold. Why not use that same material to mold hands on a putter grip? Well, that’s exactly what they did. “It’s actually funny,” McNealy explained at Torrey Pines. “I was wanting a way to grip my putter consistently like a grip trainer, so I was talking to him about that stuff they use for impressions. We wrapped some of that around my putter grip on Monday.” The Odyssey research and development team currently has the mold of McNealy’s hands, and they’re working on a way to scan it and turn it into a putter grip. “I don’t know how long it’s going to take, because we’ve never done anything like that,” Toulon said. “To actually scan it is pretty easy, and then, we’re actually talking about potentially 3D printing the grip. It’s kind of uncharted territory. We’re just learning as we go, but I think it’s something that we can do.” Assuming Odyssey pulls this off and creates the perfect training-aid grip for McNealy, this begs the question going forward: Could anyone mold their hands and have it turned into a putter grip? If so, could average golfers get their hands on the molded grips of top PGA TOUR players to see what it’s like to hold the putter like them? The applications for this type of training aid could be endless. And it’s all thanks to a concept McNealy created while deep in thought on a Saturday night. “Yeah, it’s my first foray into dental molding,” Toulon said. “But McNealy thinks of all that kind of stuff. He likes to tinker. He’s obviously a very bright guy. It’s a Saturday night and he’s thinking of stuff like that. Those are the fun things when you can help bring a brilliant idea like that to life. “It could be something we can use for all the TOUR players. How does Jon Rahm hold the putter? Here’s his grip.” Albeit illegal to use in competition, or during a round of golf, molded grips could potentially be a game-changer for McNealy, and for so many average golfers looking to improve.

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Justin Thomas got back into the winner’s circle at THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES, giving him his second victory on Jeju Island in three years. Here’s a look at his equipment: Related: Leaderboard | Justin Thomas equipment Q&A Driver: Titleist TS3 (9.5 degrees) Shaft: Mitsubishi Diamana ZF 60TX 3 Wood: Titleist TS3 (15 degrees) Shaft: Mitsubishi Tensei CK Blue 80TX 5 Wood: Titleist 915Fd (18 degrees) Shaft: Fujikura Motore Speeder VC 9.2 Tour Spec X-flex Irons: Titleist T100 (4 iron), Titleist 620 MB (5-9 iron) Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 Wedges: Titleist Vokey SM7 (46, 52 and 56 degrees), Titleist Vokey SM6 (60 degrees) Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400 Putter: Scotty Cameron X5 Tour Grip: SuperStroke Pistol GT Tour Golf Ball: Titleist Pro V1x Grips: Golf Pride Tour Velvet Cord

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RIDGELAND, S.C. – Chesson Hadley had missed 10 of his last 12 cuts coming into this week. He was 192nd in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green, 151st in the FedExCup, 320th in the world. Only his putting, in which he ranked 14th on TOUR, seemed to be going right. The best thing he’d done was take some time away from the game to preserve his sanity. And yet it will be Hadley, and not his third-round playing partner, world No. 1 Dustin Johnson, who will go into Sunday with the best chance to win the Palmetto Championship at Congaree. Hadley, the snapping, lanky 33-year-old from Georgia Tech, was 3 under on the day and 14 under total when the horn sounded for a weather delay after his tee shot at the 18th hole. “No, I did not see this coming,” he said earlier this week. Harris English, 4 under on the day, was his closest pursuer, four shots back. Johnson was 1 over on the day and 8 under total, tied with South African Garrick Higgo (68). The third round was called for the day at 8 p.m. ET with four players on the course. It will resume at 7:30 a.m. Sunday, with fourth round tee times from 8:05 a.m. – 1:50 p.m. ET off the first tee. English, who bogeyed the 17th hole, had yet to putt out on 18 when the horn blew. The winner of the Sentry Tournament of Champions in January, he had cooled off some partly due to a back injury he suffered at THE PLAYERS Championship in March. “I never really had any back injuries before I had to pull out of THE PLAYERS, and I haven’t been 100 percent since then,” he said earlier this week. “It’s a long year. I know, 31 years old, I’m bound to have a couple injuries. But it’s been close. … I feel like it’s been trending.” Higgo, a 22-year-old lefty from Johannesburg who could make the 2022 International Presidents Cup Team, won two of his last three starts on the European Tour, but has been mostly overlooked this week. Instead, most of the attention has been on native son Johnson. Earlier this week, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster presented him with the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina’s highest civilian honor. Alas, the golf hasn’t come easy lately for the 24-time PGA TOUR winner. After missing the cut in two of his last four starts, including the PGA Championship at nearby Kiawah Island, and failing to register a top-10 finish since February, he got away from the game to do some fishing and clear his head. He was struggling on the greens, he said, and while things were looking up for a while at Congaree, he was back in negative numbers in Strokes Gained: Putting on Saturday. Still, a six-shot deficit is hardly insurmountable, and Johnson surely would love to win in his home state of South Carolina for the first time in his career. Tyrrell Hatton (67) and veteran Bo Van Pelt (66) are at 7 under, seven back. Hadley, though, controls his destiny. If he doesn’t do anything crazy on 18 (he’s in the fairway) and shoots under par Sunday, the 2014 Puerto Rico Open champion, 2013-14 PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year, and four-time Korn Ferry Tour winner will be awfully hard to catch.

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