Nathan Dryer, 18, donates Make-A-Wish to First Tee-Northern Michigan

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The magnitude of Tiger Woods’ win at the TOUR Championship cannot be understated. Last April, it was unclear the 14-time major winner would ever return to the course following L5-S1 spinal fusion back surgery that clouded the future of his golf career — one that had been marred by numerous back procedures over the previous three years.  Just 17 months later, Woods, who called himself “A Walking Miracle earlier this year,” returned to the TOUR winner’s circle for the 80th time in his career.  It was a win that not only validated all of the tireless work and preparation Woods put in behind the scenes to get his body in shape to compete again but the grind he underwent to find the perfect equipment setup — an important piece of the puzzle that took nearly a full season to figure out.  For a player who’s used to making equipment changes at a glacial pace, this season forced Woods to get comfortable with the idea of undergoing wholesale changes when he arrived at Medalist Golf Club, his home course in Hobe Sound, Florida, last December for his first official testing session with TaylorMade since signing a 13-club equipment deal at the beginning of 2017.  Woods worked through a myriad of clubs on that particular day, including different driver builds, a prototype 6-iron tailor-made to his specifications and a new utility iron. For someone who never embraced adjustable drivers — Woods always opted for a glued, non-adjustable hosel — the session felt like a crash course in acclimating to new equipment, technology and getting on the same page with TaylorMade reps.  “One of the things I think I’ve really done over the years is that I’ve been pretty ardent about playing a product that is better than what I’m using, and all of the companies I’ve been with, they all know that,” Woods told PGATOUR.COM during an exclusive interview after the testing session. “I will give it my best efforts to try and put it in, but it’s going to take a little time sometimes.”  When Woods resurfaced two months later at the Farmers Insurance Open, TaylorMade’s M3 driver was the newest addition to the bag. Woods continued using the driver during the season while making incremental changes to the two adjustable weights in the sole, before settling on a low spin and launch orientation with the weights centrally located in the center track.  What started with minor changes to the driver weights quickly progressed to new TW Phase1 prototype irons at the Wells Fargo Championship and two Milled Grind wedges at the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide. Woods even tinkered with the shaft in his TaylorMade Tour Preferred UDI — along with briefly using a GAPR LO driving iron during The Open Championship — going from True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 steel to Mitsubishi Tensei White graphite and then back to steel, albeit in a higher-launching Dynamic Gold AMT package.  The irons and wedges, for as tough as Woods is on new equipment during the testing process, weren’t all that difficult to figure out.  Aside from a CG adjustment that needed to be made on the irons following the initial testing session at Medalist, former Nike master craftsman Mike Taylor — who now runs Artisan Golf but still grinds Woods’ irons and wedges on the side — was able to get the iron and wedge shaping to match up with his previous Nike set.  Even a shift away from Nike’s ball line to Bridgestone’s Tour B XS didn’t seem to phase Woods. And the ball always seems to be a tricky part for most players.  There’s no doubt Woods made strides on the course this season with new equipment and a different golf ball, but it seems fitting for a player who considers himself old-school when it comes to testing and equipment, that the two most important pieces of the puzzle were a putter that’s been by his side since 1999, and a driver shaft he used previously during the 2013-14 season.  Outside of his struggles off the tee, Woods failed to find his stroke with the putter midway through the season, prompting to bench his Scotty Cameron Newport 2 GSS blade for TaylorMade’s TP Black Coper Ardmore 3 at Quicken Loans National. The mallet represented just the second time in Woods’ career that he’d used something other than an Anser-style blade.  It felt like a move made out of desperation at the time, as Woods attempted to inject some life into his flat stick. But once the honeymoon period wore off, the mallet was benched in Boston during the Dell Technologies Championship for a TaylorMade TP Black Copper Ardmore 3 putter that looked eerily similar to Woods’ Newport 2.  One week later, Woods shelved the putter at the BMW Championship for the Newport 2 and things suddenly started to click again.  “I know the release point and I know how it swings and my body morphed into a position where it understands where it needs to be to release the putter,” Woods said.  “I’ve hit hundreds of millions of putts. I’ve had it since ’99. I’ve hit putts with it. I just — my body just remembers it. When I go away from it — and, you know, when I was using the Nike putter I always bring it out and hit putts with it. Sometimes it works but it just feels very familiar to me.” The brief time away seemed to be exactly what Woods and his putter needed, as he finished the season ranked second in Strokes Gained: Putting at East Lake en route to taking home the TOUR Championship for the third time in his career. The driver shaft proved to be the final piece of the puzzle for Woods, who rotated between numerous models during the season before settling on a familiar profile in Mitsubishi’s Diamana D+ White Board. The move came on the heels of a significant change for Woods, who opted for a counterbalance Tensei CK Pro Orange part over a non-counterbalance part to gain more club head speed. What Woods found out, in the end, was that accuracy, in his case, mattered more than distance. With Diamana, Woods found the center of the fairway and still managed to average over 300 yards during the final event of the season while ranking no worse than T27 in driving accuracy during the FedExCup Playoffs. “It’s a feeling that I know and I used to use it for a number of years,” Woods said of the shaft. “I know the graphics have changed a little bit but it’s basically the same shaft. Went back to something that I knew and had success with, and it’s turned out pretty good.” From an equipment perspective, Woods’ season will be remembered for all of the changes he made over the course of 10 months — some many never expected to see from Woods (mallet putters and graphite driving irons). New technology no doubt helped Woods make strides on the course, but in the end, it was two reliable products from his past that helped push the 42-year-old over the top and produce a storybook finish for the ages.

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