Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth are on the course and look to close in on a new leader in the second round at Firestone.
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AVONDALE, La. – It was a year ago in the first round of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans that Trey Mullinax and Scott Stallings first discussed a partnership. They each had different partners at the time. Stallings was with Australian Aaron Baddeley. Mullinax, a late addition to the field, played with Jonathan Randolph. But that didn’t stop Mullinax and Stallings from looking ahead to 2019. “We just kind of decided last year, hey, if we’re in next year, we’re just going to play together,� Mullinax said. “Been about a year in the making.� It probably felt like the completion of Thursday’s round was also a year in the making. A 7-1/2 hour weather delay in the middle of the day meant that Mullinax and Stallings started early and finished late. But it was worth it, as they finished 18 holes just before darkness with a 11-under 61 in the Four-balls format to take the clubhouse lead. Martin Laird/Nick Taylor are the closest finishers at 10 under, with Brian Gay/Rory Sabbatini are also at 10 under with four holes left. “Kind of an odd day,� Stallings said. “Obviously we played a lot more this morning than we thought we were going to, but to play 18 holes … and we not birdie the same hole and come out at 11 under – if you told us that at the beginning of the day, we’d have definitely taken it.� The lengthy delay left them with a “lot of nothing� to do while waiting for the lightning to clear and the course condition to improve. They sat in the car, went to the fitness trailer, grabbed a bite off-course and watched TV. But the biggest impact was having to reschedule their movie plans to watch “Avengers: Endgame.� “Extremely happy we can go see that movie tonight,� Stallings said. “We were supposed to go at 7:30 to 3-D but now we changed it to 10:00 and we got IMAX,� added Mullinax. “We got a little upgrade,� Stallings said. If you’re getting the impression these guys are close, you’d be spot-on. They’ve played lots of practice rounds together, and their friendship obviously extends beyond the course. Mullinax just had his first child, and Stallings – who had two children – has been giving him tips on fatherhood. Stallings’s penchant for fitness even has Mullinax working out more. “I’m trying to get a little bit bigger like him,� Mullinax said. “I can’t do as many push-ups and bench as much as he can, but he’s a pretty strong boy.� The two have been serious about their preparation for the Zurich Classic. Last week at the RBC Heritage, they held an alternate-shot nine-hole practice to get use to playing with the other’s golf ball. This week, they’re renting a house together. Their respective families are not in town. It’s strictly a boys’ golf week at TPC Louisiana. “We had this house booked a while ago,� Mullinax said. “And both our wives and families are like, yeah, we’re not going. We’re out,� Stallings added.
In what seemed like inevitable news, Wilson announced on Thursday that it has officially signed Gary Woodland to a multi-year equipment deal. Woodland started playing Wilson Staff forged prototype blade irons at the 2018 Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas, and he continued playing them for the remainder of the year. Then, when he showed up at the 2019 Sentry Tournament of Champions event wearing a Wilson Staff hat, the writing was on the wall. Woodland is now officially a Wilson staffer. To learn more about the deal, exactly what it entails, how it all came about, and Gary’s current setup, I caught up with Wilson Golf president Tim Clarke. Below is my full Q&A with Clarke on Thursday afternoon. Click here for all of the latest equipment switches and developments. Some big news today … Yea, some cool stuff going on at Wilson Golf. Very exciting for us, for sure. I’m just elated to have a brand ambassador like Gary. I’m ecstatic. It’s great. How did it all start? How did Gary end up playing Wilson prototype irons in the first place? Long story short, Gary was a guy that … when I started at Wilson awhile back, he was one of the guys I really liked. So I met him a few times and had a few conversations, and he ended up doing a deal with an apparel brand that just didn’t match up well with Wilson. And so we kind of just put that (aside) and saw him while I was out on TOUR, and I saw that he was no loner in his agreement. We reached out, made some contacts, and he was open to trialing some equipment. He was obviously trialing with multiple companies at the time and we were just one of the few. The proto blade… one thing that Wilson does probably, I would say, in my tenure and probably 100 years before my tenure, the brand knows how to make world-class blades; in the past and probably always will. We make great irons across the entire line, but this prototype blade was the one we sent out to him, and basically, that was the start of it. Then he made the decision, kind of unexpectedly, to take them to the Hero Challenge, Tiger’s event in the Bahamas, which was when things got noticed. Then from there he played them again in the (QBE) Shootout, and here we are today. That’s kind of it in a nutshell. Click here for more on Woodland’s prototype irons. Can you talk about what is actually different about the prototype irons and if you made those specifically for him? No they were not made for Gary. They’re actually, to be very honest about it, they’re very influenced by what Brendan Steele likes. Brendan obviously was very active in the involvement – he’s a three time TOUR winner, he’ been playing our blade and he’s had very good success. He had come on board when we launched the 100-year anniversary blade basically. He played that until now. So when we were getting ready to do something new, we wanted to kind of get his feedback on what was going to change, what he liked and what he didn’t. So you have to give Brendan credit for the blade, and our innovation and R&D team. But a lot of input on the blade from Brendan directly. So obviously Gary was an equipment free agent, and there’s a lot of guys not signing staff deals. Was it unexpected for him to actually make a deal with you guys? I always look at things in a couple different vacuums. First of all, and we’ve always done this at Wilson, whether it was Kevin Streelman coming on and winning twice, or Ricky Barnes setting the 54-hole record at a U.S. Open, or Padraig Harrington winning three majors with us. So I always start with the premise, man, you better like the stuff. So when we sent him the blades there was no… there was nothing about signing him, it was really his investigative search to see what he liked the best. Obviously, Gary not only being a world-class golfer, but a huge athlete, an accomplished basketball player, he’s one of those unique individuals. He plays all sorts of sports. And as we got into discussions after trial, and we were down with him in Naples chit-chatting and trying to see what he wanted to do, I think him being from Kansas, being a Midwest guy and us being a Midwest brand there’s a certain DNA that comes with that. And I think the more we talked the more comfortable he got with the idea of actually doing something more formal. That’s how we got here, but the first part of the equation was really like “Hey Gary, we know you’re a free agent, we have new blades, would love to have you try them out and see what you think.â€� And we knew he was testing some other equipment from some other competitors, and we thought we’d get in the mix and see where we stood with the new product. Like I said, when he brought them to the Bahamas, clearly we found out we were in pretty good standing, and that was good to hear. But we knew we were in good shape. Brendan Steele has been working with them, so we didn’t really have a whole lot of worries. We have a couple of our European Tour players who are playing the protos. And obviously we have Harold Varner (III), who we love we think he’s just a wonderful guy and just enjoy him, he was interested in trying something different. So we put a head in his bag to give a run with. And, again, it’s part of the evolution of Wilson. We have product that let’s us get to the elite players in the world. With Wilson not being just a golf company, obviously you make basketballs and products for other sports, it seems like Gary Woodland is too good to be true, huh? Oh yeah, you could say that. I think that’s kind of what I was saying about the DNA of a player. I think Gary Woodland is a perfect brand athlete for Wilson Sporting Goods. Obviously he’ll be a marquee golf ambassador, make no mistake. I think Gary, whether you talk about all of our baseball staff, Roger Federer, our quarterback club, I mean the people that come in our building are, you know, it’s pretty much a who’s who and what’s what. We had Roger Federer in earlier this year they had an event in Chicago, and obviously Padraig comes through, the Williams sisters have been through. Yea, it’s just with Gary the stars aligned perfectly, he was available, he loved the irons and so here we are with him as the lead golf ambassador. So moving forward a little bit, what exactly does the deal entail? Is it a 10-club deal? Yea, the deal has some moving (parts), it has some tiers in it. I’ll say this, basically, our baseline deals are usually nine clubs, but I can tell you there’s not a player who’s signed with us that isn’t playing 10,11 or 12. It’s just the nature of the relationship. I don’t really get caught up in the deal. I mean my point is yes, when we first sign somebody we have to have a minimum jump off point, but make no mistake, the goal with Gary is to get him into as many products as possible. And sometimes that means we need a little time. It’s a multi-year deal so we’ll have time, but sometimes you need a little time to just tweak something to their liking. So yea, basically there are stair steps for him for more product. Obviously driver is one of those things. So we’re going to work very closely over the next 3-to-4 months, and have our tour team and development team out there to find out exactly what it is that he feels he could use that may be better than what he has and we’ll attack it individually like we do all our TOUR staff. I know he just switched into a Ping G400 driver, what’s that process going to be like trying to get a Cortex in his hands? And has he been working with it yet? Driver, especially for all TOUR players, is a pretty temperamental product, right? So, Gary played two days at the pro-am with the Cortex. There was a little bit of a flight issue – and when I say flight issue it was really more the fact he was able to turn it, and he does not like it to come anywhere near left at all. So that required us to do some slight modifications in the setup, mainly in the adjustable sleeve, to be able to get him a product that sits slightly open. To you and I, it looks like it’s wide open, but to him it looks slightly open (laughs). So with that being said, he does have a Cortex with him in Hawaii. Talking to Ron Graham (TOUR rep for Wilson Staff), I think he’s going to work very diligently to put it in. He has incentive to play it, and clearly when we made the decision to move forward with Gary, it was a mutual decision that we were going to work in the best interest of each other. And I think, you know, we know the driver performs. We’ve seen it. We’ve tested it with all of our other TOUR players. We know it’s a world-class product that can be played any week on TOUR by anybody. We do have some European Tour players that are already playing it – Paul Waring is playing it — so it already has tour credibility. But obviously Gary is a different level. My guess is before too long you’ll see it get a start. I doubt it will be in Hawaii being that he’s had kind of a little bit of time off and nobody likes to change everything at once. My guess is when they get to the West Coast, I wouldn’t be surprised if you see him on the Darrell list with it. More immediately, do you know what Wilson clubs he’ll have in the bag, say, this week? Yea, he’ll be playing the prototype irons. He’s playing the pitching wedge, so he’ll be at 9 or 10 depending on what he decides with the secondary wedge. We have a wide-sole sand wedge. I don’t know, I’m waiting for Ron to give me the actual call today. But he’ll be at 9 or 10, which is kind of what we said in the early goings here. There’s X amount of starts with X amount of clubs that’ll dictate what the deal is. So he’s got a little window to kind of work his way into stuff. Then he’ll be playing that utility 2-iron that a lot of our guys still play. So he’ll be at 9 minimum, possibly 10 right out of the gate. And then, clearly, we have every intention to get him into a Cortex driver and get that in play and that will take him to 11. And then we’ll work with his metalwood additions and see how we get to the next level. That’ll be the long-term goal.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – It wasn’t a paid sabbatical, a semester at sea, or a gap year, but for Rickie Fowler, who shot an opening, 1-under 70 in the first round of the Wells Fargo Championship on Thursday, the last four weeks certainly made for an unusually long break. Since finishing T17 at the Valero Texas Open on April 4, he vacationed in Nashville, Tennessee, with Smylie Kaufman, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and their significant others. He watched the Masters on TV with Tiger Woods at Tiger’s place. (The first time Fowler hadn’t qualified since 2010.) And he got a special exemption into the PGA Championship at Kiawah, May 20-23. The one thing Fowler didn’t do was look at swing video. Although his refined action has been a work in progress for the last year or so, he said he’s no longer in the video phase. Now he’s just got to score. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Inside Max Homa’s mind “I know it’s close,” he said after a mostly solid round that ended with bogeys on 17 and 18. “I think some of it was spending a lot of time working on the swing, which needed to be done, but probably spent a little bit too long of a time focusing and worrying about certain things, and the last few months has just been going out and playing just a bit more golf instead of golf swing.” Quail Hollow was the site of Fowler’s first of five PGA TOUR victories, way back in 2012, so the good vibes are on his side. And he’ll take all the help he can get. It’s not that he’s been playing so bad; it’s just that he hasn’t gotten the ball in the hole. He’s 175th in Strokes Gained: Putting (-.360), and came into this week 141st in the FedExCup and 116th in the Official World Golf Ranking. That inefficient golf continued in sunny if slightly breezy conditions Thursday. Fowler hit 12 of 14 fairways in the first round at Quail Hollow, but took 30 putts and was only two for five in scrambling. “Unfortunate to give a couple away on the last two coming in,” he said. But, he added, he was proud to have reached 3 under before that. Fowler didn’t totally disconnect from the TOUR during his break; he went to Woods’ house to watch the first round of the Masters. It was a scene that might have seemed unthinkable a few years ago, two guys who have figured so prominently in the tournament reduced to couch potatoes. Fowler – the runner-up in 2018, T9 in ’19 – had failed to qualify. Woods, the 2019 champ, is recovering from a February car crash. Neither was happy about not playing. “Hung out and spent some time with Charlie, and Sam was there for a little bit before she had to go to soccer practice,” Fowler said. “I think (Woods’) main focus and concern is getting back to being a dad, go play golf with Charlie, push him around, and be able to run around with Sam. But his golf clubs are right there in the living room and he can stare at them all he wants.” As for the exemption into the PGA at Kiawah, he added: “I didn’t play very well the last time I was there (74-80, MC), but I feel like it’s a good golf course for me and can play a little bit more linksy and play in the wind, which is something I like to do. Obviously thanks to the PGA to get me a spot there.” Woods’ next comeback has yet to be written. Spieth, of course, busted his recent slump with his victory at the Valero Texas Open. Fowler can only hope he follows suit this season, maybe even this week. With an under-par round in the books at the Wells Fargo, he’s doing a lot more with his clubs than stare at them. If he can avoid mistakes – his approach on 18 found the water – and keep posting red numbers, then the next milestone may be not needing special exemptions at all.
