Reed builds 3-shot lead at Hero World Challenge

Everyone associated with the game – players, media, fans – has his or her own memory of what went down that week in 1997 and what it meant to them. It remains one of those rare events where you can still remember where you were and what you were doing when it happened. Tiger Woods winning the Masters at age 21, and in record fashion. “In that win that week, he checked all the boxes,â€� Charles Howell III said. “He’s young, he hit it far, he hit it straight, he had a phenomenal short game. He did it all, and he did it on the biggest, hardest stage in the world. I think in time we’ll look back on that week as sort of a turning point for the professional game.â€� Ernie Els, who in later years would become a frequent major championship bridesmaid to Woods, said he remembered seeing Woods on the range after that roller-coaster opening-round 70 that began with the 40 on the front nine and ended with a 30 on the back, “and I could see the excitement and the joyâ€� in Woods’ face. “He knew he’d won the first hurdle,â€� Els said. “I think he knew then that it was over.â€� Nick Faldo, the defending champion who was paired with Woods in that opening round, knew it was over, too. “The way I analyzed it, he went out in 40, came back in 30 and we didn’t see him for dust for another 14 years,â€� Faldo said. “That was the start of Tiger and the start of his dominance. It was a special day. You go out in 40 and then you win by 12. That’s something pretty unique.â€� Faldo shot 75 that day and followed it with an 81 and missed the cut. Paul Azinger, an 11-time PGA TOUR winner with one major championship and now a TV analyst for NBC and FOX, was paired with Woods in the second round. He began the day one shot ahead of Woods and ended it six shots behind after Woods’ 66 to his 73. “I’d never seen Tiger actually make a full swing and hit a shot — driving range, golf course, nothing —maybe on TV,â€� Azinger recalled. “I said to my caddie on the second hole — there was a little bit of a wait — and I said, ‘You know, I’ve never seen this kid hit a shot. I’m going to watch this.’ I’d heard about how far he hits it. That ball left four feet underneath the top of the trees, which is miles high, never curved an inch, about five feet right of the trees. “It was the most beautiful, picturesque drive I had ever seen in my entire life. I just looked at my caddie and whispered to him, ‘Holy s—.’ That was all I could say. He hit 6- or 7-iron in there to the right of the green, was all ticked off, chunked his chip, took the club and slammed it in the bag, and it went straight to the bottom. It sounded like a drum. I can remember this buzz of the crowd. It was the most unique buzz. He then chipped in for birdie. He shot the easiest 66 that I’d ever seen. “I hit 3-wood, 8-iron to 13 and he hit 3-wood, pitching wedge. I hit driver, 8-iron into 15, he hit driver, pitching wedge. We were two clubs apart, which blew my mind that I was two clubs shorter than anybody on TOUR. I was like, ‘Really? Two clubs? Are you kidding me?’ One club is one thing, two clubs? You can’t defend against being two clubs shorter than somebody. You’re not going to beat that guy. “It intimidated me a little bit. That’s why I tried not to hit balls near Tiger on the practice range, because I wanted to feed my confidence.â€� Azinger said after that second round he’d played with Woods, he thought, “I don’t know how anybody’s going to beat that.â€� “I didn’t jump the gun and predict he would win,â€� Azinger said. “But in my head, I was thinking, ‘Jack [Nicklaus] was right saying that he’s going to win the Masters 10 times.’ I believe him. The bigger the event, the higher he’ll raise the bar. He’s Michael Jordan in long pants.â€� On Friday night, Colin Montgomerie, who was three shots behind Woods at the time, waxed poetic about the fact that the young Woods had never been in the position of taking a major championship lead into the weekend, and how everything changes on the weekend of a major. “The pressure is mounting,â€� Montgomerie said in what clearly was a public warning to Woods. “And I have a lot more experience in major championships.â€� Woods, in his book “The 1997 Masters: My Story,â€� revealed that Montgomerie’s words “definitely motivated me.â€� He shot 65 that Saturday to Montgomerie’s 74, and after the round, Montgomerie spoke as if he’d seen a ghost. “All I have to say is one brief comment today,â€� he told reporters. “There is no chance … we’re all human beings here … (and) there is no chance humanly possible that Tiger is going to lose this tournament. No way.â€� Montgomerie, surely rattled by the thumping he took from Woods on Saturday, shot 81 on Sunday. For Woods it was merely a coronation; playing with Italy’s Costantino Rocca, he shot 69 to win by a record 12 shots. Like millions around the world, Gary Woodland, then a teenager in Kansas, watched it all play out on TV and decided then and there he wanted to become a professional golfer. “That week changed everything for me,â€� Woodland said. It did for a lot of others, too.

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Hideki Matsuyama became the first male golfer from Japan to win a major championship by holding off the field to win the Masters.

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PEBBLE BEACH, Calif — Former Dallas Cowboys quarterback and current NFL commentator Tony Romo, fresh out of the broadcasting booth at Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta, is set to play in the 2019 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am this week. In a field full of celebrity golfers, he’s arguably the most competition-tested. Romo made his PGA TOUR debut in 2018 at the Corales Resort and Club Championship in the Dominican Republic, although he missed the cut following a second-round 82. Being a high-level player without an equipment contract, the clubs Romo chooses to use are particularly noteworthy. Below, I take you through the clubs and shafts in his bag this week, along with insight from two different equipment TOUR reps. Driver, fairway wood and hybrid After calling the Super Bowl game on Sunday, Romo was out on the Pebble Beach range on Monday afternoon, braving the rainy and windy 40-degree weather for a practice session. He hit buckets and buckets of wedges and irons, and he eventually broke into a driver testing session. He showed up to the range with a TaylorMade M3 driver and a Fujikura Atmos Blue shaft, but he tested a TaylorMade M5 with a Fujikura Ventus 7X shaft in it, under the supervision of Fujikura TOUR rep Patrick McCoy. I caught up with McCoy for his insight on how the testing session went: “The driver that we made him was standard, 45.75 inches end of grip, (swing weight) D3, which was his gamer specs with the Atmos Blue,â€� McCoy told me. “We had him try a Ventus 7X in a 10.5 (degrees) M5… as we went thru the fitting we slowly opened up the face a little bit and then moved the weights a little bit forward, which lowered his launch and then also eliminated some spin. His misses were either low on the face or high on the face, but at the same time he was kind of working on his golf swing… I have not worked with him on a launch monitor in a while, but he’s gotta be over 170 ball speed… we know Ventus was a little bit weaker in the handle for him, and you could see that in transition, he’s got a very fast move from top to bottom.â€� As McCoy explains, Romo is currently making changes to his golf swing with teacher Chris O’Connell. “His body has a tendency to outrace his hands at times, which changes his low point of impact, or the bottom of his arc,â€� McCoy said. “He wants to feel like he’s more level and he’s still driving. That’s his miss, the handle gets up, shaft droops, and the face gets open. So (his miss is) high on the face where there’s more loft, or low on the face … he knows how to fix it and that’s awesome that he can make the changes. He likes to see it fall a little bit right. His misses are probably a little on the spinny side, but at his speed, that’s OK because it keeps him in the fairway. Or when he’s off, he’s just a little off … Once he got where he liked the face angle, he said the shafts — both Atmos and Ventus — felt good. They felt stable… it looked like he tended to bend the Ventus a little bit more from the top, yet it didn’t sacrifice anything at the bottom with his impact location and his face direction.â€�  It will be interesting to see which driver – the TaylorMade M3 with a Fujikura Atmos Blue shaft, or the TaylorMade M5 with a Fujikura Ventus shaft — Romo ends up using come competition time on Thursday. It should be noted that the Ventus comes stock in a Dallas Cowboys’ colorway. To fill out the top end of his bag, Romo is using a Callaway Rogue 3+ fairway wood with a Mitsubishi Diamana W-series 70X shaft, and a Titleist 818H2 hybrid with a Mitsubishi Tensei CK Pro White 90HY shaft. Mizuno irons, per usual Jeff Cook, a Mizuno TOUR rep, told me that he and Romo go way back to when Romo was just a second-string quarterback for the Cowboys, and he had a “hodge podge set of clubs.â€� Romo and Cook met through Cook’s college roommate, who was a General Manager of Trophy Club, a country club in Dallas, at the time. “We actually had a cookout at my buddy’s backyard (in Dallas) and Tony came over,â€� Cook told me. “I didn’t even know who he was, because he was the second string quarterback. He came over, we had a cookout, and we ended up throwing the football in the backyard, talking golf. And then we ended up playing golf while I was down there. He was good. I mean, he’s always been basically a scratch golfer, and obviously a gifted athlete. And that’s how it all started. He didn’t really have any clubs, he had kind of a hodge podge set of clubs. And I took care of him on Mizuno clubs. He’s been in our clubs ever since he came to Dallas.â€� Flash forward to 2019, and Romo is using a combo set of Mizuno MMC MP-18 irons (4-6 iron) and MP-18 blades (7-PW), each equipped with Nippon N.S. Pro Modus3 Tour 120 shafts. Jordan Spieth’s wedge You may recognize Romo’s Titleist Vokey SM7 wedge; it’s a hand-me-down from Jordan Spieth. “He’s best friends with Jordan,â€� Cook said. “He plays a lot with Jordan at the same club, they play all the time at home. When Jordan gets done with his and gets new ones, he gives them to him, or whoever else he gives them to.â€� In addition to the 60-degree, University of Texas-stamped “JSâ€� wedge, Romo also has a 50-degree SM6 F-Grind and a 56-degree V-grind Vokey prototype. The 60-degree wedge has a Project X 6.0 shaft, while the 50- and 56-degree wedges have a True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400 shaft in them. Tiger Woods’ putter Romo is also the recipient of another hand-me-down golf club from a champion golfer. Inside Romo’s bag is one of Tiger Woods’ old Method 001 putters, stamped with Tiger Woods on the hosel, Woods’ classic dot alignment aid on the topline, and a blacked-out Ping putter grip. It’s the same style putter that Woods used to win THE PLAYERS Championship in 2013.

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