Inside John Daly’s wild golf bag and recent gear changes

The ball was sitting in a pot bunker. Hunter Stewart was standing outside of it. It was a textbook example of the awkward lies that can occur on the links courses of Great Britain & Ireland. Stewart hadn't hit the ball there, but it was his job to extricate it. Maverick McNealy struck the tee shot that wound up in this trap. It was on the first hole of their first match of the Walker Cup, a competition that pits the United States' best amateurs against their peers from GB&I. "Brutal" is how McNealy described the lie Stewart faced. "I put him in some really bad spots that first day in alternate shot," McNealy recalled recently. "His first shot of the entire Walker Cup, he was standing on his head." Six years later, Stewart is still trying to help McNealy get the ball in the hole in as few strokes as possible, but in a much different capacity. McNealy is in his second year on the PGA TOUR while Stewart, who has an economics degree from Vanderbilt, is in his second season working as a strategy consultant for TOUR players. Stewart's statistical analysis speaks the language of McNealy, a Northern California native who brings a Silicon Valley ethos to his career. "He's always coming up with ideas and ways to get better," Stewart said. "He innovates himself." McNealy finished 68th in the FedExCup last year. He made the cut in 17 of 23 starts, including six top-25s. A fifth-place finish at last year's AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was his best of the season. The 25-year-old has four top-25s this season and is 87th in the FedExCup. McNealy has seen some of his peers enter the winner's circle before him, but he derives satisfaction from the improvement he's seen since turning pro. The son of former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, Maverick expressed interest in entering the business world after college. Knowing he could still get better - even after a stellar career at Stanford, where was the NCAA player of the year, won 11 times and was and a two-time Walker Cupper - was a deciding factor in turning pro. "I've been asked when do I think I wouldn't want to play golf anymore and the answer is, ‘When I don't think I can get any better, when there's no stone unturned,'" McNealy said recently. "I love the fact that there's always room to improve." Scott McNealy used to roam the hallways of Sun and ask, "If you were CEO for a day, what would you do?" Maverick does the same with his employees, conducting annual interviews where each member of his team reviews their performance and his. "I ask, ‘How did the year go? What did you do well? Where did you struggle? Is there anything you need to do your job better? And, if you were me, what do you think you would do differently on and off the golf course?" McNealy said. "My dad said one of the most important things you can do is listen and give your employees a chance to talk openly and freely." Stewart said McNealy runs his team "like a business, and he's the CEO. He's a businessman who happens to be a PGA TOUR player. "Everyone has a role, and he's made it very easy for everyone on his team to do their job to the fullest. That's great leadership on his part." McNealy's swing instructor is Butch Harmon, who helped him sort out his swing when he was struggling with his ball-striking on the Korn Ferry Tour. McNealy has had the same caddie, Travis McAllister, since turning pro. They spent two years together on the KFT before reaching the PGA TOUR. "He's very detail-oriented and probably more of a perfectionist than I am," McNealy said. Susie Meyers is McNealy's mental coach. While McNealy was recruited out of college by the largest agencies, he decided to sign with Peter Webb, who runs a one-man operation. His trainer Is Scott Norton and physical therapist Jimmy Greathouse helped him recover from a shoulder injury he suffered last year. Karen Hallstein, who was Scott McNealy's secretary, helps Maverick with his travel. And Maverick's grandfather, Paul Ingemanson, is his financial adviser. "He'll let me know if there's a $5 fee on one of my credit cards that shouldn't be there," McNealy said. "I'm still driving my mom's 2011 Ford Explorer and I have A-list preferred status on Southwest. I think a lot of my spending habits come from my grandpa." Stewart is one of the newest additions to the team. He's not the first person to parse the ShotLink data to help players save shots, but he's the only one with a top-10 finish on TOUR. Stewart finished 10th in the 2015 Mayakoba Golf Classic, just his third TOUR start as a pro. Earlier that year, he finished third in the NCAA Championship, behind only future TOUR winners Bryson DeChambeau and C.T. Pan. Stewart's pro career stalled out on the Mackenzie Tour-PGA TOUR Canada and in 2019 he decided to change careers. "I'm just trying to help them do the right thing on each shot," Stewart said. "It might not work on every shot because that's golf but the goal is to increase the probability of success." Stewart doesn't just help his players pick the right play on the course. He helps them set their schedule with events that fit their skillset, determine specific shots to focus on in practice rounds and set practice routines based on the state of their game and what an upcoming course may require. His goal is to help his clients save one stroke per tournament. That may not sound like much but it can have a huge impact on a player's season. McNealy uses the 12th hole at Detroit Golf Club, site of the Rocket Mortgage Classic, as tangible evidence of Stewart's impact. Stewart uses ShotLink to look at putts that players seem to consistently misread. In the practice rounds at Detroit GC, Stewart instructed McNealy to hit putts from a specific spot to the Sunday hole location. "When he tells me that, I know it's because guys never make that putt," McNealy said. He badly misread his first attempt but made an 18-footer on the same line when it mattered on Sunday. He finished T8, one of three top-10s last season. Stewart, a former SEC Conference Player of the Year and Kentucky native, also helps McNealy with his short game, especially with shots from the Bermudagrass common in the South. McNealy has learned to focus on shoring up his strengths instead of trying to fix every weakness. Stewart used Strokes Gained to devise a "winning formula" for McNealy, who was ninth in Strokes Gained: Putting last season. If he putts well, then he can garner a good finish by not losing strokes in Strokes Gained: Approach and avoiding penalty strokes with his driver. "I'm not in the business of asking guys to become something that they're not," Stewart said. "I think a lot of times people get bogged down in trying to become the best player in the world. The Tiger effect has skewed everyone's view of success in golf. I'm not saying we should limit what we try to do, but just because the Tigers and the Rorys of the world are winning all the time - they're great measuring sticks, but you shouldn't let that barometer of their success rob you of the joy of becoming the best player they can be." It's a journey that McNealy has enjoyed as he pursues his first PGA TOUR win.

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Golf is a game of inches. And grams, apparently. Adding 3.5-gram weights to his irons has paid dividends for Anirban Lahiri at THE PLAYERS, where he’s the overnight leader heading into the Monday finish at TPC Sawgrass. Lahiri sits at 9 under par, one shot ahead of Tom Hoge and Harold Varner III. Lahiri is 5 under par for his first 11 holes of the suspended third round after shooting 67-73 in the opening two rounds. “I think the biggest difference was we made a change to the irons this week,” Lahiri said after his first round. “I changed the weight. The irons have been my weak link, and they came out much better. I feel like my confidence is getting better, which is really positive. “It’s really something that’s minor. I’ve added maybe 3 1/2 grams of weight to all of my irons. … These last couple of weeks, especially, we’ve been playing really tough golf courses, and you hit it 4 or 5 yards offline and you can make 6 instead of 3. And I had a lot of that happen to me. It’s frustrating when you know you’re not making bad swings and you’re not getting the results you want, so it’s equally satisfying when it comes together like this.” Lahiri is using a Srixon ZX Utility 4-iron and Srixon Z945 irons for his 5-iron through pitching wedge this week. The Z945s were first released in Asia in 2014 and became available in North America the following year. Hideki Matsuyama was among the players to use the clubs when they first came out. Lahiri used lead tape to add weight to his clubheads. The added weight gave Lahiri increased face awareness and gave him a more consistent swingweight from his woods to his irons. “He found the windows of old and spin rates of old, and it was off to the races,” said Rusty Estes, who worked with Lahiri on his clubs. Lahiri arrived at THE PLAYERS after three missed cuts and a T74 in his last four starts. He was 24 over par in those 10 rounds. He also ranked 212th (out of 217 players) in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green this season, losing nearly a stroke per round. He’s fourth this week, having gained 5.95 strokes in 47 holes. He’s also hit 36 of 47 greens this week, including 10 of 11 in the third round.

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ORLANDO, Fla. – Arnold Palmer was watching a pro-am round at Bay Hill Club and Lodge a number of years ago when Phil Mickelson launched a short iron to the heavens at the par-4 first hole, only to watch in pure disbelief as the ball bounded high off the green, 8 feet high, as if it had caromed off a trampoline. Not sure Palmer, the late tournament host of his namesake PGA TOUR stop, ever flashed a bigger smile as he sat in his cart along the side of the fairway. Palmer loved to create a test of golf that was firm, and tougher than a $3 steak, where pars meant something, and every birdie carried away was as valuable as a gold brick. When scores soared on Saturday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, he is one that would have enjoyed the show. Somebody will walk away on Sunday with a winner’s check for $2.16 million (gulp!), but it’s going to take an honest week’s work. You win at Bay Hill the old-fashioned way. You earn it. Welcome to that new yearly suspense thriller, titled “Weekend at Arnie’s.” Billy Horschel (1-under 71) and Talor Gooch (72) were the best Saturday survivors, considering they played late in the day, when conditions were toughest, and will enter Sunday sharing the lead at 7-under 209. That’s two shots to par backwards than it was 24 hours earlier. Viktor Hovland, who had a four-shot lead at one point, faded with a 40 on the back nine to slide to 75 and lose his grip on the tournament lead. He is one shot back, with Scottie Scheffler (68) two behind and Gary Woodland (70) three. The day did not go so well for many others. World No. 1 Jon Rahm, playing here for the first time, made one birdie all day. Seasoned Lee Westwood, a runner-up at Bay Hill a year ago, shot 33-43. Cameron Young, a hot stick of late, finished his front nine with a double bogey and back nine with a triple. He shot 76. The greens were glassy, and players had difficulty just getting the putter to settle behind the ball. Scheffler, who teed off two hours ahead of the last group and tied the day’s low round of 68, paused to think about the last time he had such a challenge just getting his putter to sit still as he readied to putt. Let’s see … Oh, it would be two years ago, right here. “Brutal” became a well-worn word muttered inside the scoring area. Billy Horschel, who grew up in Florida not far from Orlando and Bay Hill, often would visit the tournament to watch the stars play as a youth, hoping that he might make it inside those ropes one day. Winning here would be extra special for the Florida Gators alum. It just won’t be easy, that’s all. Saturday’s rough conditions (scoring average: 74.06) was not everyone’s cup of tea, but that doesn’t mean that some men cannot enjoy the challenge. “This is awesome golf,” Horschel gushed as dusk settled in after a long and demanding round. “It’s testing and it wears you down, but this is the golf that I think – I can’t even say we all ‘enjoy’ all the time, but we do enjoy, because it does reward fairly good golf shots on a regular basis. “It rewards people who think their way through a shot, and how it needs to be played to really turn out properly.” How tough was it? Horschel stood on the tee at the 163-yard 14th hole, wind helping, with a pitching wedge in his hand, just praying that he could hit a shot that stayed on the green. Mind you, the 14th green isn’t an island, either. “How many times are you happy to just hit the green with a pitching wedge for a PGA TOUR pro?” Horschel asked. Rory McIlroy had promised that Saturday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational was going to be a wild ride. More prescient words never were spoken. The Northern Irishman has a great feel for this place, was the tournament’s champion in 2018, and seemed very much in control two days earlier when he opened with 65. On Saturday, he was 11 shots worse, and relieved that a round of golf only lasted 18 holes. “Yeah, look, it’s so tough out there,” said McIlroy, who tumbled to 3-under 213, and will start Sunday four shots out of the lead, hoping to chase. “It’s so tricky. It’s just on a knife edge, like you’re literally talking like feet. Two feet here, two feet there from 200 yards can make a huge difference in where the ball ends up.” McIlroy wasn’t whining, just giving an honest assessment. His back nine on Saturday appeared like an EKG graph: A double bogey, three bogeys, three birdies and even a couple of pars. It added up to 76. There were only seven players who shot in the 60s, and most of them turned in those scores earlier in the day, before the hardest winds kicked up and players flipped the switch to survival mode. Nick Watney barely made the cut (74-72), but a 69 on Saturday rocketed him all the way to a tie for 12th. “I guess, the last few years, we sort of know what to expect coming here,” McIlroy said. “It just seems to be this way over the weekend. It’s just hard. It’s hard not to get frustrated.” Max Homa was 2 over for his day – not all bad, truthfully – when he reached the par-3 14th on Saturday afternoon. He floated a nice high cut with a pitching wedge, the ball traveling the direction of the flagstick, and soon it vanished into the hole for an ace. A well-earned bright spot. Take that, Bay Hill! Scheffler was playing alongside Homa, and after his round, was asked if Homa, Mr. Ace himself, had offered to buy him a drink. “I think he owes all of us a drink,” Scheffler said. “Isn’t that how it works?” After Saturday’s round, players at Bay Hill appeared ready to line up behind him. The test had been brutal. Just the way Palmer liked it.

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