Kuchar rallies to win Sony Open by four strokes

ATLANTA — Brooks Koepka got up-and-down for birdie from behind the 18th green to complete a bogey-free Sunday morning at the TOUR Championship and set up a dramatic finish for $15 million in the FedExCup. Koepka had two bogeys in five holes of the third round when it was suspended Saturday because lightning struck a 60-foot pine at East Lake and injured six people who had been standing near the tree. They were treated and released from hospitals that night. Koepka had a 2-under 68 and was at 15 under par. Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele were one shot behind. McIlroy had a 68 and Schauffele made his first hole-in-one for a 67. Justin Thomas, who had a one-shot lead when play resumed, and Paul Casey were four back.

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DUBLIN, Ohio – Rory McIlroy has a great rapport with tournament host Jack Nicklaus, whom he sees all the time at the Bear’s Club in South Florida. They have lunch, and talk golf and life. RELATED: Leaderboard | The Counsel of Jack Nicklaus As for the bond between world No. 8 McIlroy and Muirfield Village, host of this week’s Memorial Tournament presented by Workday, well… “Muirfield and I have had a bit of a complicated relationship,” McIlroy said this week, before opening with scores of 70-69 to reach 5 under par, two behind leader Denny McCarthy (69) as the afternoon wave teed off Friday. “It seemed to fit me quite well earlier in my career and then the last few years, I’ve sort of maybe struggled with the strategy of how to play it.” In 10 starts here, McIlroy has four top-10 finishes, but he also has two missed cuts, plus two other starts in which he made the cut but finished way, way back. He’s never won, or even had a close call. Still, he keeps coming back because it’s the Memorial. Also, he’s not terribly far off – here or anyplace else. McIlroy has finished second (Masters), fifth (Wells Fargo Championship) and eighth (PGA Championship) in his last three starts. And he’s embarking on a busy four-week stretch that will include not just the Memorial but a (2019) title defense, of sorts, at next week’s RBC Canadian Open and the U.S. Open at The Country Club in Boston the week after that. Then he’s off to the Travelers Championship. “I feel like my game is in good shape,” he said. “So I’m excited for this run and excited to give myself a few more chances to hopefully win golf tournaments.” For McIlroy, 14th in the FedExCup and seeking his first win since THE CJ CUP @ SUMMIT last fall, Muirfield presents a special challenge, but not an insurmountable one. He can’t swing the driver with impunity, which means finding other ways to shine. “I feel like a lot of the fairways here pinch in around 310,” he said, “so it allows the sort of average hitters to hit driver. For an example, last year I played with Viktor Hovland the first two days, and the first hole, he can hit driver sort of right to where the bottleneck starts. I can’t hit driver because I’ll hit it too far but then I hit 3-wood, you know, 15 or 20 yards short of his driver. So I’m hitting 6-iron or 7-iron in and he’s hitting an 8-iron or a 9-iron in. “It just seems like the length advantage has sort of been nullified here over the last few years,” he continued. “It’s just finding a different way to play the golf course. A lot more 3-woods. I actually went to one of my old 3-woods this week that’s a lower lofted. It’s sort of like a 2-wood in a way which I think will be good to utilize this week.” That strategy seems to be paying off. Case in point, McIlroy hit a 269-yard fairway finder at the par-5 fifth hole Friday, then nuked a 271-yard 3-wood to within roughly six feet of the pin. He made the putt for eagle to reach 6 under par, only to hit his tee shot in the bunker and bogey the par-3 eighth, his second-to-last hole of the day, to leave a slightly bitter taste. “Yeah, another solid day’s play,” McIlroy said. “Couple of silly bogeys. Bogeyed the 11th par-5 and the 14th for the second day in a row. But I guess it sort of happens around here. It’s getting tricky and you’re going to make bogeys regardless of where they come. “Overall, two solid rounds of golf,” he continued, “right in contention going into the weekend, depending what guys do this afternoon. Yeah, happy with how everything is sort of going.”

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PXG (Parsons Xtreme Golf), founded by billionaire-entrepreneur Bob Parsons, made an immediate mark in the golf industry by offering golf clubs that sold for relatively enormous prices in the domestic golf market. The barrier to entry for becoming a PXG customer, however, is shifting. Parsons has described the company’s products as the “Ferrariâ€� of golf clubs, and its prices have reflected that. PXG’s original 0311 irons sold for $300 per iron, and its 0811 drivers sold for $850. The company’s newest Gen2 0311 irons, released in March 2018, upped the ante even more, selling for $400 apiece. The new Gen2 drivers, however, which released in January 2019, came with a reduced price of $575 each because Parsons said the company was able to reduce manufacturing costs through scaling. Now, PXG is bringing a drastically lower-priced set of irons to retail with its 0211 irons that are priced at $195 per club with steel shafts, and $210 with graphite shafts. PXG recently tested the theory of making more affordable irons available to the public, and it passed. “After we introduced our Gen2 irons and pretty much sold through our Gen1s, we did a test,â€� Parsons told PGATOUR.COM. “What we did was we ordered a new run of our Gen1 irons and didn’t have the R&D that we needed to recover, so we were able to sell those at a lesser price. What we learned was there’s a big demand for that, especially from our brand, and sales of that were very well received.â€� The price difference between the Gen2 0311 irons (at $400 per iron) and the 0211 irons (at $195 per iron) comes from the different constructions, and the cost of making the clubs. PXG’s recently released Gen 0311 irons are triple-forged from 8620 carbon and feature the company’s trademark weight ports around the perimeter. The 0211 irons, on the other hand, are investment cast from 431 stainless steel, and they do not feature PXG’s traditional screw weights. The investment casting process is less expensive than the forging process. The new 0211 irons do, however, feature the company’s new COR2 material – a “proprietary high-speed polymerâ€� – in the space between the HT 1770M faces and the 431 stainless steel bodies. This design allows the faces to be constructed thinner for more ball speed without sacrificing feel, sound and durability. “What we did was we took our Gen2 technology, which we already have the R&D paid for with the Gen2 irons, and we put that in [the 0211 irons] as much as we could,â€� Parsons said. “We used a less expensive manufacturing process, but still, the way we do it, these irons cost us more to make than other companies pay for their forged irons.â€� Parsons also says that because they have the same COR2 technology that was introduced in the Gen2 irons, the new 0211 irons perform better than the forged Gen1 irons that did not have this material. “Our 0211s, when it comes to our Gen1 irons, they outperform them considerably,â€� Parsons said. “They’re longer, they have faster ball speeds, launch higher, got a higher peak height, steeper landing angle and they’re more accurate. So we made these as good as we could.â€� While PXG’s flagship Gen2 0311 family of irons consists of four different head models (0311T, 0311P, 0311 XF and 0311 SGI), the 0211 line has just one head model. The 0211 irons (4-PW, SW, GW, LW) have a progressive makeup where the short irons have less offset and smaller profiles and the long irons have more offset and larger profiles. Also, the Gen2 0311 irons have a slew of shafts available at no upcharge, but the 0211 shaft options are more limited; they come stock with True Tempers Elevate steel shafts, and Mitsubishi’s MMT steel or graphite shafts, with other shafts coming with an additional upcharge. For those who may question the relatively cheaper price tag of the 0211 compared to its previous iron releases, Parsons had this to say: “While these irons are significantly less compared to our 0311s — our forged irons, our flagship products — when you compare them to other investment cast products [they’re] pretty expensive,â€� Parsons said. “$195 for a casted product, that’s pricey. That’s still in that upper price range. But for the performance that you get, the value is totally there.â€� PXG’s new 0211 irons, which come with a chrome finish, will be available everywhere that PXG’s current 0311 Gen2 irons are sold, including its website.

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