Viktor Hovland takes two-shot lead at Arnold Palmer Invitational

Tom Hoge captured his first PGA TOUR victory Sunday at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, standing strong down the stretch against the likes of former FedExCup champions Patrick Cantlay and Jordan Spieth. It was a long-awaited win for the TCU product and North Dakota native, coming in his 203rd career start. Recent changes to both his swing and equipment have clearly paid off for Hoge, who moved to No. 2 in the FedExCup. His win came just two weeks after a runner-up in The American Express. A putter switch quickly paid dividends, as last week’s victory was punctuated by a 20-foot birdie putt on the 71st hole. Hoge put the one-of-a-kind club in his bag at Pebble Beach, and the backstory of how it got there is quite incredible. Hoge was looking for a new putter a couple weeks ago at The American Express. He wanted one that could help him align more squarely to the target. According to Odyssey tour rep Joe Toulon, Hoge had a tendency to occasionally aim too far left. Hoge’s caddie, Henry Diana Jr., approached Toulon with a request to build a custom Odyssey 2-Ball for his player. “Henry thought a 2-Ball with a long line on it might be something easier for him to line up,” Toulon told GolfWRX. “He didn’t tell Tom about that conversation. I said, ‘You know what, I’ll have one made up and ready to go in case that time comes.’” The problem with the order, though, is that it had to be custom made. Hoge only plays putters with a plumber’s neck, but Odyssey doesn’t make a White Hot OG 2-Ball putter with that hosel. So, Toulon had to put an order into Odyssey headquarters for a custom version with a plumber’s neck. The order took about a week, and it got delivered during the practice days before last week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Upon arrival, Toulon noticed the plumber’s neck was significantly heavier than the stock hosel options on the 2-Ball, so he removed the back weight on the sole. At that point, the putter was ready for Hoge’s approval, and he tested it against his other options prior to the event. Obviously, Hoge ended up making the decision to switch into the new custom putter. And the rest is history. But there’s another fold to the story. Diana Jr., Hoge’s caddie, originally suggested the 2-Ball putter because he has a bit of history with that model himself. Back in the mid-90s, Diana Jr. was a professional golfer who, like Hoge, also struggled with aiming too far left. He was using a 1986 Dave Pelz 3-Ball putter at the time. That club was a predecessor to Odyssey’s original 2-Ball putter, which was released in 2001. Diana Jr.’s father was a tool and die maker who built golf clubs on the side. When Diana Jr. was searching for a fix to his alignment issue, his father decided to make him a 2-Ball version. The 2-Ball worked wonders for the younger Diana. Then, years later, Odyssey brought a 2-Ball putter to retail and it became a huge success. “My dad was a tinkerer and he was always forward-thinking in a lot of ways and he had great ideas,” Diana Jr. told GolfWRX. “Pelz was obviously the pioneer of it, and then [my father] tweaked it, then Odyssey obviously came out with it. But it really worked…It’s just unbelievable how full circle it went.” It was a great call by Diana Sr. to craft a prototype version of the 2-Ball back in the mid-’90s, and it was a great call by Diana Jr. to suggest the custom build for Hoge. It wasn’t just the shortest club in the bag that helped Hoge win for the first time. Changes to the longest club also paid off. “When I started helping him – the reason I started helping him – was because he didn’t drive it well enough,” Hoge’s swing instructor, Scott Hamilton, told GolfWRX. “He was at like 51% or 52% driving accuracy. He was so in front of (the golf ball). The thing that makes his iron swing so good wasn’t very beneficial for his driver. He liked to push his pelvis forward on his backswing, so he’d get so in front of it, and that just didn’t work with the driver. “We worked really hard on getting him to load and stay behind it. … He’s greatly improved his driving.” Hoge was using a Titleist TSi2 driver in early 2021 to help take advantage of its more forgiving properties compared to the lower-spinning TSi3 version. According to Van Wezenbeeck, the high MOI (moment of inertia) driver helped offset Hoge’s inconsistency (more on Titleist’s TSi drivers here). The improvements that Hamilton and Hoge made started to set in, however, and he was gaining speed. As his spin rates started to climb while using the TSi2, Van Wezenbeeck and Hoge started to explore the lower-spinning TSi3 head and more stable shafts. Hoge is hitting the ball both longer and straighter, a combination that any golfer would take. “We were kind of fighting spin with the TSi2, and the mishit wasn’t as good,” Hamilton said. “When he jumped to the TSi3, the spin and launch profile started matching up and it started really moving out there. … Last year, he was probably at like 113 or 114 (mph of swing speed), and two years ago he was like 112. … He hit one the other day like 122 or 121. So he’s ramped speed way up. His on-course speed is like 115-117 now; not always, but when he wants it, it’s in there. So that always helps.” It does indeed.

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RIDGELAND, S.C. – Cameron Young now has a trophy to hold as a reward for his impressive debut campaign on the PGA TOUR. Young, a five-time runner-up last season, received the Arnold Palmer Award on Wednesday as the 2022 PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year. Both Young and Palmer were Wake Forest alums, and another former Demon Deacon, Webb Simpson, delivered the trophy to Young, as did Sungjae Im, the 2019 Palmer Award winner. Simpson and Im playfully stepped through a side entrance in the media center and interrupted the start to Young’s pre-tournament press conference at THE CJ CUP in South Carolina to deliver the news. With his parents watching from the back of the room, Young sat in his chair and grinned, never before so thrilled to be interrupted. Young follows his former Wake Forest roommate, Will Zalatoris, in winning the award. It is the first time players from the same school have won the top rookie award back-to-back. “Well, it’s very special,” said Young, who had a pair of third-place performances (including the PGA Championship) to go with his five runner-up showings, which included a solo second at the Open Championship. Young finished 18th in the final FedExCup standings. “I know the namesake Arnold Palmer obviously was a giant in the game of golf and we have him to thank for a lot of what we do today, what the PGA TOUR is,” he said. “To be related to that in some small way is very cool. I know we had a very strong rookie class and I know it’s voted by my peers, so it’s a huge honor to be thought of in that way, just to kind of finish the year that way.” Young said his season’s proudest moment was finishing second at the 150th Open Championship at storied St. Andrews. He drove the green and eagled the 72nd hole to shoot 65 on Sunday – including a blistering back nine of 31 – but still got clipped by another Cameron, Australia’s Cameron Smith. “They love golf over there,” Young said. “And to walk into kind of the town center to play the 18th hole at St. Andrews is different than anything you find anywhere else. So just knowing the history there, and to play well that week, was very cool.” It was a trip to Scotland and St. Andrews a decade earlier that had sparked Young’s love for the game. At that point, young Cameron, 13, was more into hockey and baseball than golf. But he and his parents – his father, David Young, who recently retired after a 21-year run as head professional at Sleepy Hollow Country Club in New York, and mother, Barb Jones, an avid golfer – visited North Berwick, Gullane, Crail and St. Andrews. It rained for four days. David has pictures of Cam, cold and wet, wearing his father’s rain jacket, which went to his knees. “I’m thinking, after this trip, this kid is never going to want to play golf again,” David said last spring at the PGA Championship. “But it did just the opposite. It got him excited about it. … He decided that golf was going to be his main sport, and he started working hard at it.” Young finished second in Strokes Gained: Off-The-Tee in the 2022 season, third in driving distance (319.3 yards) and was sixth in birdie average. In addition to finishing solo second at the Open, Young tied for second at the Sanderson Farms Championship, Genesis Invitational, Wells Fargo Championship and Rocket Mortgage Classic. He finished the season on the winning U.S. Team at the Presidents Cup at Quail Hollow. There is a lot for him to build upon moving forward. David Young, his son’s only teacher, said Wednesday there were two keys to his son’s successful season. For one, he improved his driving, adding more accuracy to his prodigious length; and secondly, he tightened up his short game, spending more time on chipping and putting. David traces that to the 2021 RSM Classic, where it was windy and it was tough to hit greens. Young watched his fellow competitors chipping to tap-in range while he would leave himself 5- and 6-footers for par. “It kind of made an impression on us that we need to put a little more time into that,” David said. “It paid some dividends.” Scottie Scheffler, now World No. 1, was the TOUR’s Rookie of the Year in 2020 without winning a tournament, and now he’s a four-time winner and major champion. He thinks big things are ahead for Young. “I’m sure you’ll see him have a breakout year and win a couple of times, be on the top of some leaderboards again,” Scheffler said Wednesday. “He hits it hard, he’s very confident. “With the way he drives the ball, there is no course on TOUR that he can’t compete on. He hits it as far as anybody and hits it as solid as anybody. He’s one of those guys when you see him with a hot putter one week, he’s going to be right there at the top of the leaderboard.” Young’s first PGA TOUR victory doesn’t feel far away. On Wednesday, he still got to lift a trophy, a well-deserved reward for an impressive season.

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Russell Henley knows better than to quit his day job. Even so, he has enjoyed occasionally getting up on stage and playing his guitar with the likes of Keith Urban, Darius Rucker and the alternative rock band, O.A.R. over the years. “I was nervous,” the three-time PGA TOUR champion admits. “But I was excited to play – I probably had some false confidence.” Henley’s first jam session came courtesy of a bet made with Rucker during the pro-am of what is now known as the RSM Classic in 2014. When the TOUR pro won, he soon found himself on stage after the tournament, playing the Hootie & The Blowfish classic “Wagon Wheel.” “I just said, hey, do you want to play a match today, and he said, sure,” Henley recalls. “And by like the 12th hole, he said, you win. And so, I just asked him if I could play a song with him, and he nicely enough said yes.” Then at The Genesis Invitational in 2015, Henley played three songs with O.A.R. during a free concert on the range at historic Riviera Country Club. And Peter Jacobsen, who once had his own band on TOUR called Jake Trout and the Flounders, set up a date with Urban at the CVS Charity Classic later that year. These days, though, Henley’s spare time is spent with his two kids, 3-year-old Robert and Ruth, who’s 2. Besides, he says the real talent in the family belongs to his wife, Teil Duncan, an accomplished artist whose impressionistic paintings and prints are sold all over the world. “I think it’s amazing that she’s brought her business to where it is,” he says. “To where it’s just something that everybody can appreciate, whether you’re an artist or just somebody like me who doesn’t know much about art and can just say, I like the way that looks on that wall.” Henley, who is self-taught, has played guitar since he was 8 years old. His best friend and brother-in-law – they actually married sisters — always seemed to be in a band, and Henley loved music, too, particularly newer country music and anything from the ‘90s. “There was a time in my life, early to mid-twenties where I traveled with my guitar and played a lot,” Henley recalls, adding that his caddie did the same. Just don’t ask him to sing, though. “I’m terrible at singing,” Henley says. Duncan, who studied art at Auburn, wasn’t in the audience for Henley’s performances with Urban, Rucker or O.A.R. But she does remember her husband playing for her when they started dating after meeting at the wedding of her sister and his best friend. “Probably the first time we hung out, he would pull his guitar out,” she says. “So, he would just sing, like there was not a shy bone in his body. I was kind of laughing to myself because I was like, I can’t believe this. The guy’s just singing in front of me. “He just doesn’t even care, but it really put me at ease because I just knew that he didn’t care. He wasn’t nervous. So, it made me not nervous.” Just as Henley shared his music with her, Duncan made art a part of their relationship, too. She would do a sketch of her husband on the front of his birthday card every year. “And then I was like thinking to myself, I’m going to do this as a tradition every year,” Duncan recalls. “But then you know, kids happen. And so maybe one day we’ll pick that back up again.” Although she says she was “flying by the seat of her pants,” Duncan already had her business up and running when she met Henley. Rather than hanging her paintings in a gallery with limited exposure, she had utilized Facebook and Instagram to build a much broader audience. She paints – usually acrylics, watercolors and some oils – in a backyard studio at their home in Columbus, Georgia. Duncan’s style is distinctive, a delightful and colorful mix of reality and the abstract. “I’ll work on one collection at a time and produce about 15 paintings,” she explains. “And about every other month, I’ll say this beach collection is available July 6th at 11 a.m. They all become available on my website and people buy in from all over the country.” Her past collections include animals, pool scenes, flowing dresses and portraits. She has done coffee table books, stationary, notecards and wrapping paper, as well as collaborations with nationally known retailers like Crate and Barrel, One Kings Lance and Anthropologie. The couple’s two children often make “appearances” in her paintings of beach scenes or settings by the pool. One day, she plans to do their portraits. For now, her favorite painting at their home is the large abstract figure hanging in the “manly” room where Henley’s golf memorabilia are displayed. “This job is just so ridiculously wonderful,” Duncan says. “I feel like I get to go play in my backyard and have this amazing hobby, but I also get to make a living out of it. And it doesn’t demand a ton of time out of me. It’s okay if I take time away. “And then if I do, like during the pandemic, Russ for the first time ever could say, oh, I don’t have to practice. There’s literally nothing coming up. So, he watched the kids a ton. I got to paint a ton and it’s just, it’s always there. I can go back to it when it when I can and I can step away from it whenever. And it’s fine.” Henley enjoys seeing how others react to Duncan’s paintings. He says sometimes he’s too close to it to fully appreciate the artwork she creates. “I know it’s impressive,” Henley says. “And I should probably just look at it the same way she thinks about my job. They’re both very difficult. They’re very cool, interesting jobs, but they both require time and to practice it and figure out how to do it. “People seem to always love it and want to check it out. We have a studio we built for her in our backyard in Columbus and they’ll come over and just want to walk around it and look at it and see how, how does this happen? What’s going on here? “She always has some work she’s been working on, on the wall and it’s just paint everywhere. It’s all over the floor. It’s everywhere. And it’s a cool spot to come check out and people always love seeing it.” Duncan estimates that several dozen TOUR players or their wives have purchased her artwork. So, does she ever get the urge to paint golfers or golf courses? “People ask me that all the time,” she says. “And I never really have only because I’m kind of more drawn to an unmanicured landscape, but I’m not totally closed minded to it. “I really am surprised it hasn’t happened to be honest.” Not to worry. Golf is Henley’s job.

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