Expert Picks: Valspar Championship

LA QUINTA, Calif. – Jon Rahm, the Desert Classic’s defending champion, overcame the flu and some uncharacteristic weather conditions to shoot 66 at La Quinta Countrty Club on Thursday. Those were two reasons he struggled with distance control on Thursday. The weather in the California desert is often so pristine that people refer to it as “dome golf.â€� Thursday started with a one-hour fog delay. Then players had to deal with rain during their round. “(I’m) still pretty weak, which is possibly why I wasn’t hitting it quite as far,â€� Rahm said. “(I’m) not fully recuperated, my body is not a hundred percent, so I could definitely feel when I hit a driver and I thought I hit it far enough it was definitely a 10 yard gap. Even today a couple of the shorter irons I could feel my body not being able to swing as hard. But I don’t have bad feelings in me, I just need to rest up a little and hopefully I get better every day.â€� Rahm made his only bogey of the day after his approach shot to the second hole came up short and he missed a 5-foot par putt. He made seven birdies over his next 16 holes. He is six shots behind Phil Mickelson, who shot 60 at La Quinta. Rahm missed just three greens despite saying that he struggled with his distance control. “The air density, it’s pretty heavy right now. So sometimes it’s hard to believe, especially when you get closer to the hole, how hard you had to hit the ball,â€� Rahm said. “And when you are hitting one or two clubs more than what we’re used to, it’s hard to be absolutely certain of doing it. But again, that only happened a few holes. For the most part I had a pretty good day, a pretty good ball striking day.â€� He is 69th in the FedExCup standings after starting his season with a T22 at the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions and eighth-place finish at the Sentry Tournament of Champions. He also won the Hero World Challenge in December.

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Collin Morikawa and Viktor Hovland have teamed up this week at the 2022 Zurich Classic in New Orleans. The young superstars combine for only 49 total years of age (Morikawa is 25 years old, and Hovland is 24 years old), but they already have eight PGA TOUR victories between them (Morikawa has five, and Hovland has three). With Morikawa currently ranked No. 2 in the Official World Golf Rankings, and Hovland ranked No. 5, the Morikawa-Hovland duo is sure to be both a fan favorite — and a betting favorite to win the event, too. While neither player has made any major changes to their equipment setups in the last few months, each have recently made one minor tweak: Hovland has changed into a modified Ping G425 LST driver, and Morikawa changed the weight of his TaylorMade TP Collection Juno putter. Ahead of the 2022 Zurich Classic, GolfWRX.com spoke to both players to gain further insight about why they made their respective gear changes. Viktor Hovland Leading up to the Masters, Hovland was using a Ping G425 LST 9-degree driver head, which has a relatively flat lie angle to influence a fade bias. Hovland, however, who already plays a natural cut shot, noticed he was struggling to draw the ball. To help combat the issue, Hovland and Ping Tour rep Kenton Oates experimented with different loft and lie angle settings. The two eventually settled on a setting in his Ping G425 LST 9-degree head that shifted the lie angle upright by 2 degrees. All things being equal, a more upright lie angle will typically help golfers draw the ball, whereas a flat lie angle will influence a fade. According to Hovland, the upright driver setting also matched up better with the lie angles on his Ping i210 irons, helping him achieve more consistency throughout the set. ”We had a hard time drawing the driver, because it was too flat,” Hovland told GolfWRX.com at the 2022 Zurich Classic on Tuesday. “I have pretty low hands at impact, so we figured it’d be easier to make it more upright so I didn’t have to work as hard to draw it. When I do draw it, with that current setting, I tend to draw my irons too much. We just kind of matched it up to the rest of the set.” While many PGA TOUR players would be concerned using an upright driver, since they tend to guard against a left miss, Hovland doesn’t worry as much about missing to the left. “Most of the time when I’m playing well, it’s not going left too much,” Hovland said. Collin Morikawa You may not think five grams is a lot of weight, but for Morikawa, it can make a huge difference in feel on the greens. Typically, Morikawa uses a TaylorMade TP Collection Juno putter with 2.5-gram weights in the heel and toe portions of the sole. When he plays on relatively slower green complexes, however, he says he wants something a bit heavier. Ahead of The 2021 Open Championship, which Morikawa won, he replaced the 2.5-gram weights on his putter with 7.5-gram weights. Ahead of the Zurich Classic, he’s doing something similar by replacing the 2.5-gram weights with 5-gram weights. Although the change only equates to 5 grams of additional overall head weight, it’s significant for Morikawa, who’s going from the lightning fast Augusta National greens to the relatively slower TPC Louisiana surfaces. “I just added a little more weight to the putter,” Morikawa said on Monday at the 2022 Zurich Classic. “For me, it’s what I do on slower greens, like what I did at The Open. Instead of trying to hit it harder, or do something different, it just matches my feel a little better, and helps me work my way from fast greens to slow greens.” For amateur golfers, take this as a lesson to not underestimate the power of just a few grams. Adding or subtracting weight, especially in certain areas, can drastically change both performance and feel. If you’re using a putter that has interchangeable weights, we recommend messing around with different configurations to see what feels best for you, or consult with a professional fitter to get dialed in.

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