Wells Fargo: Who Can Chase Down Lefty?

Augusta in April might be every golfer’s dream, but will Belleville in August be a sweltering PGA Championship nightmare? Bob Harig looks at every major course in next year’s lineup.

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Playing with a four-shot lead but with the weight of history and haunting missed chances, Rickie Fowler overcomes a bad break and a tough ruling with a pair of clutch birdies to finally win the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Fowler broke a nearly two-year win drought, qualified for the Sentry Tournament of Champions, and vanquished his demons at TPC Scottsdale. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. Mental toughness told the story. Golf is always about resilience, but Fowler’s triple-bogey at the 11th hole was one-of-a-kind. How did he survive it? It wasn’t easy. After a bogey at the 12th, and with Branden Grace climbing fast up the leaderboard, Fowler had gone from a five-shot lead to one behind. “It would have been really easy at that point to say, ‘This just isn’t my day,’â€� said Fowler’s friend Aaron Baddeley, who for the third time in the last four years hung around the scoring area (he lives five minutes away) hoping to congratulate Fowler on the victory. This time, it worked out. For the winner, it was all about keeping the past in the past. As they stood on the 14th tee, Fowler’s caddie, Joe Skovron, said, “Hey, you would have taken this at the beginning of the week, tied five holes to play. Let’s go win a golf tournament.â€� Fowler did. “You kind of just have to put the first 67 holes behind you and go play five holes,â€� he said. 2. TPC Scottsdale was brutal. Players woke up to rain and cooler temperatures Sunday, restoring the bite to a TPC Scottsdale track that Fowler had tamed to the tune of 64-65-64 (20-under) in the first three rounds. The grass was wet, and the ball was flying every which way, Fowler finding the native area at the third hole, where he made a 30 1/2-foot par putt to steady himself. That was hardly his only brush with danger. He got out of position two holes later, smacking his ball around more native area before finally rolling in a 4 1/2-foot putt for double-bogey. Then came the chaos at the 11th, where drained a long putt for a triple-bogey 7. Justin Thomas shot 72 to finish third. Matt Kuchar, who was trying to extend a perfect streak of 19 straight rounds of par or better this season, and win for the third time in three starts, shot 75 to finish T4. They made up the last threesome and shot a combined 8-over. “I’ve never been in a group that had worse momentum,â€� Thomas said. 3. Grace got a lot out of the week. Coming off a missed cut, South Africa’s Branden Grace was making his first start at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and wasn’t sure what to expect. He shot a final-round 69 for a runner-up finish, his only regret being the tee shot he hooked in the water at the driveable par-4 17th hole, leading to a bogey. “It was great,â€� Grace said of his overall experience. “I really enjoyed it. Obviously being in the final group (Saturday) with Rickie and them was awesome. This place was nuts. It’s everything and more than what I expected and what a fun week it was. I can’t take anything for granted and I had to dig deep today and I did that, it’s just unfortunately one bad shot.â€� In search of his second TOUR win (2016 RBC Heritage), Grace recorded his first runner-up finish in 104 TOUR starts and moved to 31st in the FedExCup. 4. Thomas fought hard without his A-game. Despite slogging through a flat weekend, and an especially difficult course in wet, cool conditions Sunday, Thomas hung around for a 1-over 72 and a third-place finish. It was his best result in five WMPO starts. The only downside was that the 1-over 72 marked his first over-par final-round score since the 2018 Travelers Championship. “I didn’t think I had on a great chance to start the day, or knew I needed to do something special,â€� Thomas said. “And the weather got pretty tough out there and I can’t believe if I would have shot 2-under, I would have been in a playoff. And, yeah, I mean for myself I just didn’t–I couldn’t make the putts.â€� He was 28th for the week in Strokes Gained: Putting. 5. Kuchar battled despite a rare, left miss. Attempting to win for the third time in three starts, Kuchar could have given Fowler something to think about but for a couple of surprising hooks that hurt him at the 15th and 17th holes. “I knew I didn’t have my A game,â€� said Kuchar, 40, who still finished T4 with Chez Reavie (68) and Bubba Watson (71). “Conditions were hard. I was kind of trying to steer it around and then hit a couple good shots. Made the birdie on 13. And then 15 you’ve got four exciting holes to play and I was right there. Any time I struggle with missing left, I struggle. “I missed one left there, missed one left on 17,â€� he added. “Those are typically just not misses I have. And when I’m doing that it, I know it’s going to be a tough day for me and unfortunately it came out at a bad time.â€� His final-round 75 was his first over-par score this season, in his 20th round. FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Fowler led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting (+2.385) and is the first since 1983 to win despite a double bogey and a triple bogey or worse in the final round. He has posted an over-par score in each of his seven 54-hole leads/co-leads, winning twice. It was his fifth victory in 220 TOUR starts, and his first win at the WMPO in 11 starts. 2. It wasn’t just the players in the final group who struggled. The wet, long course really was harder in the rain and cooler weather. TPC Scottsdale, which already had the tees back, felt longer in the elements and played to a 71.575 stroke average in the fourth round, highest of the week by almost a full shot. The second round (70.634) was the second hardest day. 3. Branden Grace, who was seven shots back at the start of the day, was attempting to author the second-biggest WMPO comeback. Kyle Stanley came from eight behind to win in 2012. Grace was also trying to become the 10th player to win the event in his first appearance, and the first since Brooks Koepka in 2015. Grace tied for third in distance of putts made (367’ 7’’).  4. Chez Reavie, who lost in a playoff to Gary Woodland last year, didn’t make a bogey and shot 64-68 on the weekend to finish T4. Something has clicked. Before last year, Reavie had six missed cuts at TPC Scottsdale, with a career best finish of T41 in 2011. 5. Former Arizona State star Jon Rahm (T10) has finished no worse than T16 in four WMPO starts and has four straight top-10s on TOUR this season. In his TOUR debut, Oklahoma State sophomore Matthew Wolff shot 72 to finish T50. Bubba Watson’s T4, in his 300th TOUR start, was his first top-10 since the 2018 Dell Technologies Championship. WYNDHAM REWARDS The Wyndham Rewards Top 10 is in its first season and adds another layer of excitement to the FedExCup Regular Season. The top 10 players at the end of the FedExCup Regular Season will earn bonus payouts from the Wyndham Rewards Top 10. There were no changes in the top six players after the Waste Management Phoenix Open, with Xander Schauffele hanging onto the top spot with a T10 finish. In battling through adversity, WMPO champion Rickie Fowler was the week’s biggest mover, going from 65th to 7th.

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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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