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In honor of “the party that is the Waste Management,� according to a Nike representative, Nike Golf staffers are wearing some extravagant shoes at the 2019 Waste Management Phoenix Open this week. Nike is referring to the collection of three different shoes as the “Lawn Party Pack,� and the shoes will be individually available on Thursday. During the Wednesday Pro-Am, Nike staffers will be wearing a red-and-white “OG� Air Max 1 golf shoe. On Saturday, players will be wearing the “Green Day� grass shoes, with artificial turf on the uppers. On Sunday, players will be wearing the black/white/gold/money-colored “Payday� shoes. Also, the “Payday� and “Green Day� shoes will be available as part of a pack, and they will come in a Waste Management-truck replica box. This pack will be “very limited� at retail on Nike.com on Thursday, according to a Nike rep. Below is a bit more information, as per a Nike rep, and photos of the Waste Management Phoenix Open special Nike shoes The “OG� Air Max 1 golf shoes “The OG – so this is based around the Air Max 1 … we did a golf shoe inspired by our running model. It’s coming out right now… what we wanted to do is use the momentum and what’s going on at Waste Management.� The “Green Day� grass shoes “Green Day. Saturday is Green Day. What if we had a grass shoe, grass camo. Just for fun. That’s where that started, and just something crazy that you wouldn’t expect to see on the course.� The “Paydays� “Sunday is payday for golfers, so we took shredded money and melted it into the outsole. This is not real money … our original had real money and then we went back and forth with legal, eh probably not a good idea. So we have an image of shredded money, shredded, and then we put that on there.� The “Limited� Pack “This is another thing we’re doing for some of our promo athletes, and we’ve got a handful of these coming out to retail through Nike.com as well. So what we did was we created this box … we’ve got our compost (box), which is our grass shoe. We’ve got our recycling (box), which is the shredded money. Just all in one, in one nice packaging.

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Yes. You are seeing double. The keen observer will notice something interesting at the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP this week – each hole has two greens. Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club is much like many Japanese golf courses in this way, a design method left over from the days before technology allowed hybrid grasses to be able to withstand a wide array of weather conditions. Because summers could tend to be hot and humid and winters short and cold in Japan, it was once very challenging to maintain great greens year round. So courses would prepare two greens, one for summer and one for winter. You would typically see summer greens with Bermuda or zyosia grass and winter greens with bentgrass. But during the last decade, the development of hybrid grasses has meant superintendents can now use a uniform turf – which is the case at Accordia now with bentgrass. Some courses have since moved to a single green system while others continue to maintain two. In a first for the PGA TOUR, this tournament will actually utilize both greens on the long par-4 fourth. From the tee players face a lake down the left side. The left “Aâ€� green adds an additional 20 yards to the hole and has out-of-bounds long. The right “Bâ€� green is heavily guarded by water and two bunkers. The greens will never be simultaneously in play but will be used in alternating rounds. “I’ve never seen that. It still freaks me out because I see the hole one way and the green might be somewhere else,â€� young star Collin Morikawa said. “It’s going to be interesting how guys play, but I think it will be really fun. It’s something different, something you don’t see every day, especially in the United States. I don’t know a place that has two greens unless you’re playing soccer golf.â€� Local favorite Hideki Matsuyama spoke of the importance of finding the fairway. He saw it up close in the MGM Resorts The Challenge: Japan Skins earlier this week, and how tough it plays after finding the water from the tee. On that afternoon he had a choice of green to go for but couldn’t get there until his fourth shot. He won’t get the luxury of choice during the tournament. “If you don’t hit the fairway it is a very long hole,â€� Matsuyama said. “It will be a challenge for the players and one that will have a bearing on the result for sure.â€� In the skins game, only Rory McIlroy reached a green in regulation with Jason Day coming up short despite being in the fairway. Tiger Woods found the grass between the two greens on his approach. McIlroy and Woods walked away with pars but Day would have dropped a shot had it been stroke play. Matsuyama would have been seeing double in more ways than one.

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Tiger Woods’ return to the U.S. team after a six-year absence will make the Ryder Cup showdown even better, according to European captain Thomas Bjorn.

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