Dustin Johnson posted a 6-under 64 in the third round of the Tour Championship, surging ahead to build a five-stroke lead headed into Monday’s final round.
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A spectator at the Ryder Cup received urgent medical attention after being hit above the eye by a stray drive. PGA Championship winner Brooks Koepka mis-hit his first shot on the sixth hole at Le Golf National as he and partner Tony Finau took on Justin Rose and Jon Rahm in the first match of the intercontinental golf tussle.
Arnold Palmer once opined that golf is both “deceptively simple and endlessly complicated.” In Thursday’s opening round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, Jon Rahm approached a 10-inch par putt at the par-3 seventh hole at Bay Hill Club & Lodge. After taking the putter back, Rahm decelerated on the follow-through, the ball moving just one inch. It marked the shortest missed putt of his PGA TOUR career. The world No. 1 tapped in for bogey, en route to an opening-round, even-par 72, seven strokes back of early leader Rory McIlroy. Rather than shying away from the situation, Rahm did his best to explain the short miss in his post-round meeting with the media. “I wish I could give you all the excuses in the world,” said Rahm as dusk descended upon central Florida. “It just didn’t feel good in my hands, and I tried to stop, and I didn’t. I just simply didn’t stop. I don’t know. It was very odd.” The bogey dropped Rahm to 2-over for the day. He made the turn at the same score before rallying with three birdies on the back nine, against a bogey at the par-4 18th. “It’s not like it affected my play the rest of the day, because I played really good,” Rahm reflected post-round. “But sitting at 1-under, I feel like, would feel a lot better than even par. “I’ve seen many things. I’ve seen the putter get a little stuck on a blade of grass on the way back and do something funny, hit the ground before because you’re not paying attention. I’ve seen so many things from a foot. I’ve seen some of the best putters in the world miss it because you don’t really take a proper stance. “It sucks to give away a shot like that, to be honest.”
Vijay Singh will go down as one of the hardest working golfers of all time. In addition to his work ethic, the Fijian is also known on the PGA TOUR for his attention to detail when it comes to his golf clubs—especially his irons. This week at The Honda Classic, his unique taste for specific iron specs is on full display with his Mizuno MP-20 blades, that have a secondary number stamped above the club’s assigned number. To get more information about the reason for the double-stamped soles on Vijay’s irons, we talked to Jeff Cook, head of Mizuno’s PGA TOUR operations, for the behind-the-scenes information. “Vijay had previously used our MP4 irons, and the one thing he wanted to see with the MP20s was more bounce. So what we have done is, for example, taken a 9-iron which is standard at 42 degrees of loft and bend it to 45 to make it his pitching wedge. By doing this we have added three degrees of bounce and created slightly less offset in the heads.” “This relationship works up the entire set with the 8-iron playing like the 9-iron, 7 like the 8 and so on up the set. By doing this we gain bounce (versus the standard specs) and our technician Kyle stamps the clubs with the new numbers and paints them to make sure there’s not a mistake made in club selection.” Now, bounce is something you normally only hear about when discussing wedges, but like any club that has to travel through the ground, bounce and sole design play a big factor in how irons will perform for any specific player. Vijay Singh, for example, has a steep swing and takes larger divots than most. Without enough bounce, his irons wouldn’t get through the ground as efficiently, which would result in poor ball flight and inconsistent contact. “Bounce” is a term most golfers have heard, but in terms of what it “is,” bounce is the relationship between the leading (front edge) of the clubs sole and the trailing (back) edge and is assigned a value based on the angle relative to a plane perpendicular to the shaft. A picture is worth 1,000 words here. From a club building perspective, the relationship of loft to bounce is one to one when bending; for every degree of loft added you add a degree of bounce, and for every degree taken off you will also lose a degree of bounce. Bending clubs for loft and to add or decrease bounce is no different than changing the loft on an adjustable driver or fairway wood and is 100 percent conforming to the Rules of Golf. Bending clubs is common practice for players looking to finetune club specs from driving irons to putters, it’s just that we don’t see it taken to such an extreme too often. So, now you understand what happens when Jeff Cook says they take Singh’s “9-iron, which is standard at 42 degrees of loft, and bend it to 45 to make it his pitching wedge.” … and why Vijay Singh may be the only player in The Honda Classic field with two numbers stamped on the soles of his irons.
