Power Rankings: the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Sepp Straka and his twin brother Sam virtually came out of the womb competing against each other. Ask him, and Sam will be quick to point out that he’s the elder of the two – by all of two minutes. “He’s proud of that, too,â€� Sepp said, chuckling. And so, it was on Saturday, after Sepp tied his career low on the PGA TOUR with a 63 that included nine birdies and propelled him into a tie for fifth entering the final round of the Barbasol Championship, that his fraternal twin had to put him in his place. Sepp had barely finished signing his scorecard and the requisite interviews when Sam called to tell him that he’d nipped him by a shot – shooting a 10-under 62 at Kinderlou Forest back home in Valdosta, Georgia that day. “He told me, you played great today, but I beat you by one,â€� Sepp said with a laugh. “… I was like, you’re going to ruin a good day like that for me.â€� Sepp and Sam pushed each other in every sport, growing in Vienna, Austria and later in Valdosta. First, it was soccer, where Sam played striker and Sepp was the goalie. When they were 11, though, after a week-long junior golf camp, their focus changed. “He just kind of decided that we’re going to play more golf from that point on,â€� Sepp recalled. “And then I figured that was the way to go.â€� That the brothers would find their way to golf wasn’t really a big surprise. Their mother Mary had gone to Austria with her then-boyfriend, a golf course designer. The romance didn’t work out, but she stayed and was working in a golf shop when she met Peter Straka, the man she would go on to marry. “Sold him a golf glove in the pro shop and it went from there,â€� Sepp said matter-of-factly. When the boys were 14, they moved with their mom to Valdosta to be closer to Mary’s family. Peter, who is an architect, splits time between Georgia and his native Austria. Sepp, who holds dual citizenship and played on the Austrian national junior golf team, tries to get back at least once a year. While Sepp loves Vienna and misses the food – schnitzel’s his go-to meal – he spent summers when he was a kid in southern Georgia, just outside Moultrie. So, going from Vienna, a cosmopolitan city of 1.8 million, to Valdosta, where the population is just under 60,000, wasn’t as much culture shock as it could have been. Plus, he has no accent – his mother spoke English to the boys and German to her husband. The brothers both played collegiately at Georgia, with Sepp red-shirting one season. They roomed together and when Sam left, he originally went into real estate. But he’s since turned pro and is now preparing for qualifying school for the Korn Ferry Tour, where Sepp cut his competitive teeth. “We talk about golf a good bit,â€� Sepp said. “But he doesn’t need a whole lot of advice from me. He kind of knows what my thoughts are on things. If anything, he gets me, he gives me advice. We talk about about all my rounds, all that. “It’s good now that we can talk about his game, too. So yeah, it’s been nice.â€� Sepp has some work to do of his own. The 26-year-old came to Kentucky ranked 143rd in the FedExCup. Another low round on Sunday in the birdie-fest at the Champion Course at Keene Trace could go a long way toward moving him into the all-important and FedExCup Playoffs-bound top 125 with two weeks remaining in the regular season. “Can’t really think about that,â€� Sepp said. “It’s too much going on to really even figure out where you would be if you did what.  So, the key is really just to keep the pedal down and keep making birdies.â€� Sam would surely tell his little brother the same.

Click here to read the full article…

Scottie Scheffler’s last putter switch paid quick dividends. He won in his first start with a new Scotty Cameron Special Select Timeless Tourtype GSS prototype, then rolled off three more wins in his next five starts, including the Masters, to reach world No. 1. Surely, Scheffler hopes his latest switch leads to such quick success. The reigning PGA TOUR Player of the Year has a new flatstick in the bag at this week’s THE CJ CUP in South Carolina, his first individual tournament since finishing second at the TOUR Championship in August. “I typically don’t like changing equipment at all, but I’ve been using (the new putter) now for probably two, three weeks,” Scheffler said Wednesday. “Late in the year I putted what felt like to me pretty poorly, I was really streaky. I was trying a few different things and that’s not really a way to improve when you’re kind of, felt like I was kind of blindly throwing darts just trying to find something. Sometimes I was lining the ball up, sometimes I wasn’t.” The new putter that Scheffler has in the bag this week is a new Scotty Cameron T-5.5 Proto mallet putter. The mallet is a departure from the style that Scheffler has used in recent years, but it reminds him of the style that he used during a successful junior career that included a victory at the U.S. Junior Amateur. Why the drastic change? “For me it’s just really easy to line up, I feel like I’m more consistent with it,” Scheffler said of the new putter. “I feel like my ceiling’s still the same. I can get hot with the putter and make a ton of putts, but I felt like my floor was a little too low last year, so hopefully this will be one of those deals that will kind of raise the floor.” At last month’s Presidents Cup, Scheffler was seen getting putting tips from U.S. Captain’s Assistant Steve Stricker and working past sunset with his longtime coach, Randy Smith, on Quail Hollow’s putting green. “I definitely was frustrated with how I was rolling it at the Presidents Cup,” Scheffler said. “I wasn’t hitting my lines. I couldn’t get comfortable over the ball.” As Scotty Cameron tour rep Brad Cloke explains it, Scheffler was recently practicing at home with an older Scotty Cameron Futura T5W mallet putter that the company had sent him years ago. Feeling that the T5W putter was helping him start the ball on-line more consistently, Scheffler asked Cloke last week for an updated version of the putter. Scotty Cameron then built Scheffler a new prototype of the Phantom X T-5.5 putter, which has a single black line on the top-line and two white lines on the back flange, just like the T5W putter Scheffler practiced with at home. For further customization, Scheffler’s new putter also has custom “Grinder” and “S.S.” stampings on the outer toe and heel portions, and it comes with deeper face milling marks, helping soften the feel and acoustics to match his previous GSS blade putter. Cloke said the size and stability of the Phantom’s mallet head are likely what helped Scheffler start the ball on his intended line more often. “I think the key takeaway, though, was just getting it lined up better for him, and framing it a little better than the blade,” Cloke told GolfWRX on Tuesday. While the putter switch may seem surprising after winning four times in 2022, Scheffler actually recorded negative Strokes Gained: Putting stats in six of his previous nine events where the stat was measured (the Genesis Scottish Open and The Open Championship did not report Strokes Gained: Putting stats). Scheffler finished the 2022 season ranked fourth in both Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green and Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green but was 58th in Strokes Gained: Putting. A new putter could help Scheffler get on another hot streak like the one we saw in the spring, though. We’ll have to wait until Thursday to see if the putter officially gets the call-up into competition, but if it does, another string of victories could be in store for the world No. 1.

Click here to read the full article…

Spieth 1 back after strong finish at Memorial

Click here to read the full article…