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KAPALUA, Hawaii - Ever wonder what it's like to have a putt to win the FedExCup, THE PLAYERS Championship, or a major? Or wanted to know how the body reacts to a putt to make a cut? Soon, you will be able to see such data from PGA TOUR players. This week, WHOOP was named the Official Fitness Wearable of the PGA TOUR. This new partnership includes the WHOOP Live for Charity initiative, which will highlight player biometric data during defining moments throughout the season. Players featured in WHOOP Live for Charity videos and social content will receive a $10,000 contribution to the charity of their choice on behalf of WHOOP and the TOUR. Fans can follow these moments at #WHOOPLIVE beginning in 2021. "I really like looking (at my WHOOP data) after tournaments to see what my heart rate was like," said Justin Thomas. "I can get a specific look and be like, ‘Why did it go from 110 to 140? What was going on?" Last year's Sentry Tournament of Champions, which Thomas won in a three-way playoff over Xander Schauffele and Patrick Reed, provides an example of what is possible under the WHOOP Live for Charity Initiative. According to WHOOP data, Thomas' average heart rate during the final round at Kapalua was 114 beats per minute. It spiked at 154 bpm, likely during the tournament's stressful conclusion. The WHOOP Live for Charity content will sync highlights with fluctuations in a player's heart rate. This photo of Thomas' big birdie putt in his playoff with Collin Morikawa at the Workday Charity Open provides another example of how WHOOP data can illustrate how players' biometric data changes during a tournament's closing holes. Heart rate is hardly the only metric WHOOP uses to help people personalize their workouts, recovery and sleep patterns. Many fitness wearables track heart rate, steps or calories. WHOOP tracks metrics like heart rate variability (HRV) and respiratory rate. HRV measures the variance between heart beats to show if the body is ready to perform at optimal levels. "I started wearing WHOOP because I just wanted to know more about my body and myself and how I recover. I just wanted to optimize what I do," said reigning PLAYERS champion Rory McIlroy. "In this day and age in golf, with the technology that's out there, everyone is closer together. The difference between the No. 1-ranked player in the world and the No. 100 is actually pretty small. I want to do everything I possibly can to get an advantage. For me, WHOOP is one of those things that can give me an advantage." WHOOP lets players know if their body needs more rest or is ready for a strenuous workout. It can also let them know if they're getting the right type of sleep, and how factors like diet can impact the quality of their rest. And in recent times, it has even warned players that they may have been infected with COVID-19. "So much of what's powerful about technology is it can connect everyone on this planet," WHOOP CEO Will Ahmed told PGATOUR.COM. "And you have up-and-coming golfers and aspirational athletes who can look at their WHOOP data in comparison to the best golfers in the world and that makes the experience even better. "We formalized this partnership for two reasons. First is to improve player health and performance and provide as much data as we can to the players to help them understand their bodies. And the second is to produce WHOOP Live which will bring physiological data to fans. I think this is really innovative and first of its kind - the fact you will see heart rate and other data on top of replays and television broadcasts. It's really exciting and it's a formula that could be the future for sports broadly. When you see some of the highlights with that data on top you as a fan feel something, you feel closer connection to the player and what they just experienced." Last summer, upon the TOUR's Return to Golf, over 1,000 WHOOP Straps were distributed for players, caddies and other essential personnel at PGA TOUR, Korn Ferry Tour and PGA TOUR Champions events, with accompanying membership for health monitoring. "I don't take it off, ever," Thomas said. "More so at the beginning, learning what's better for me and what helps me sleep and what helps me recover better. Now I've worn it long enough that I know. It's just part of my life, I don't even notice I have it on, but I still look at it every day. "It's more diet and eating close to bed, what you're eating, how that helps you sleep. It's a lot of little things and experimenting. I'm willing to make sacrifices in my life if it makes me feel better, play better, perform better." Thomas stresses that every person will have a different learning experience. For example, using melatonin to sleep can make him feel groggy but may be helpful to others. Thomas has also noticed his recovery is better when he drinks more water. "What works for Rory doesn't work for me, what works for me doesn't work for him, doesn't work for you, doesn't work for everybody," Thomas said. "I wanted to figure out what was good for me, and if I'm going into the weekend of The Masters and I'm playing really well and I have a three-shot lead, I need to know what I need to do this afternoon, tonight, before bed to where I feel like I'm going to sleep my best. If you can control what you can control, at least it gives you a better probability for what you want to achieve." The WHOOP isn't just for the TOUR's younger set. Stewart Cink, who recently won the Safeway Open at age 47-years old, has used one. "I think most everybody out on TOUR is using WHOOP. There’s a couple of things that I might just pay closer attention to, like the recovery is important nowadays. I’m still trying to figure out exactly the best way for me to recover," Cink says. "I mean it’s so much more than just getting the eight hours of sleep, it’s a little different and it’s pretty accurate. It’s a neat tool and I enjoy learning a little bit about myself and the way my body sort of physiologically goes through the day and recovers and exerts itself."

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Three months, give or take a day or two. That’s how long this week’s Palmetto Championship at Congaree had taken to go from idea to reality. The open date on the PGA TOUR became available on March 9 when the RBC Canadian Open announced that it would not be played for the second straight year due to COVID-19 restrictions. RELATED: Congaree Global Golf Initiative helps pave way from high school to next level The disclosure set off a burst of activity that essentially began with a meeting in South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster’s office. Among those attending was Ty Votaw, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of the PGA TOUR; Duane Parrish, director of the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism; and Bruce Davidson, co-director of golf at Congaree Golf Club. As excited as he was about the prospect of partnering with the TOUR to get more exposure for travel and tourism in his state, Parrish admits to some trepidation. “One of my questions in the meeting was can we pull off a golf tournament 90 days?” Parrish recalls. “And the answer was, yes. They said they’d done it a couple of times in 2020 when they had the move tournaments because of COVID. “And so, they gave me a lot of faith and confidence they could.” Within weeks, and with the support of the state legislature, South Carolina, which boasts more than 350 golf courses, had committed $6 million in sports marketing funds to the tournament. The Palmetto Championship at Congaree is the third TOUR event to be held in the state in the past three months, joining the RBC Heritage in April and the PGA Championship in May. Congaree owner Dan Friedkin was also on board. He had a unique golf course to showcase – a Tom Fazio design, which just opened in the fall of 2017 and has quickly climbed Golf Digest’s rankings, clocking in at No. 39 among the 2021-22 list of America’s 100 Greatest. And Congaree is second only to the Ocean Course at Kiawah in the best-in-the-state list. More importantly, perhaps, is the story of philanthropy the club has to tell with its Congaree Global Golf Initiative. The club’s roughly 200 members, who are referred to as ambassadors, are committed to identifying and mentoring deserving, underserved teenagers who want to play college golf in a three-year program that takes the rising juniors from high school to university. With the golf course and funding secured, it was time to make the Palmetto Championship at Congaree happen. The event was announced April 2, which was about the time Meghan Costello, who works for the TOUR’s Championship Management division, learned she would be the tournament director for an event that would begin on June 7. Not that the condensed timeline worried her. Earlier this year, Costello served in the same capacity for the World Golf Championships-Workday Championship at the Concession – another one-time event that moved from Mexico City to Bradenton, Florida, due to logistical challenges presented by COVID in February. “Well, I’ll be honest,” she says when asked about her newest assignment. “We had just come off of running the WGC at Concession and we had about 42 days to plan that event. “So, I thought, wow — we have lots of time at about 85 days to get this one done.” Costello made her first site visit to Congaree the week after the Masters. The property, while somewhat remote — located roughly 35-45 minutes or so from Bluffton and Beaufort in South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia, – is expansive and offered many options for positioning things like the TV compound and parking as well as routing spectators. The biggest challenge, Costello says, was finding enough volunteers to work as marshals and with the ShotLink scoring system. The RBC Heritage team helped by sending out email blasts to their volunteers to see if they’d be interested in working at Congaree. Turns out more than 750 volunteers have committed, many of whom live in the Sun City retirement community in Bluffton. Spectators will be allowed – and world No. 1 Dustin Johnson, who grew up in South Carolina, will undoubtedly be among their favorites. Perhaps fittingly for a walking-only course, there are no bleachers, which made set-up easier, but the state and Congaree will have hospitality tents around the 18th green. When the tournament is over, Parrish, who is on the board of the RBC Heritage, expects the economic benefit to the state to be more than $50 million. He says roughly 25% of the SCPRT marketing is centered around golf of some sort – particularly in the Lowcountry and on the Grand Strand of Myrtle Beach. That marketing, though, is normally focused east of the Mississippi River. The Palmetto Championship at Congaree provides national exposure with 32 commercial spots over the four days of the event, 16 each on Golf Channel and CBS. Parrish acknowledges that seeing his state host three TOUR events in three months – along with this week’s BMW Charity Pro-Am presented by SYNNEX Corporation on the Korn Ferry Tour – probably won’t happen again in his lifetime. “Some may see South Carolina, what we have, for the first time,” says Parrish, who noted that rounds played in the state are up more than 20% over the last year. “So that’s a really big benefit for us.” Granted, the general public can’t call Congaree and get a tee time at the course that in 2018 was named Golf Digest’s “Best New Private Club.” But the telecast will offer a glimpse behind the scenes at a course that is fast developing a reputation as one of the country’s best. Davidson, who is from Scotland, compares Congaree to a heathland course like Sunningdale or Walton Heath in the United Kingdom. Think a hybrid of a links and parkland layout, with native grasses and pines and 130 acres of sandy waste areas to navigate. “It’s a Sandy subsoil, but not necessarily as undulating as linksland tends to be because it’s beside the sea,” he says. “It plays firm and fast. It’s fiery and Tom did an outstanding job. Every golf hole is different. Every golf hole is memorable. “And other than a couple of forced carries you can play golf on the ground here, which is unusual in this country.” Friedkin wanted Fazio to build a course that would have an opportunity like this to challenge the world’s best. In fact, a bid was made to host the 2026 Presidents Cup and while Medinah actually got the nod, the groundwork with the TOUR had been laid. The philanthropic mission of the club and its ambassadors meshes well with that of the TOUR, which has raised more than $3 billion for charity. Beyond the CGGI, the club, which is located South Carolina’s poorest county, is a big supporter of the local food bank and worked with the Boys & Girls Clubs to set up the Congaree Career Launch Program where high school students can learn about financial literacy and career development to prepare for the future. Congaree also built a driving range and practice area at Ridgeland-Hardeeville High School where more than 250 students now hone their skills. And the Congaree Foundation has purchased and helped refresh Sergeant Jasper Golf Club, nine-hole facility that is open to the public and where three local high school teams can play for free. With an uber-exclusive course to introduce to the world on television and a remarkable charitable story to tell, the partnership with the TOUR and the state of South Carolina was a win-win for Congaree. Now that Johnson, Brooks Koepka, et al, have arrived, the final piece of the puzzle has been played. “When those first fans come through the gate on Thursday, it’s going to be something special,” Davidson says.

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