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NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
BROUGHT TO YOU BY GOLF PRIDE, THE #1 GRIP ON TOUR
You can add Tony Finau to the list of players hoping to test the limits of what he can accomplish off the tee.
The 30-year-old from Utah recently posted a video on social media of him blasting a driver 383 yards by creating 206 mph of ball speed. In the caption to that post, Finau credited Bryson DeChambeau’s well-documented increase in power for giving him the incentive to try it.
“Yeah, it no doubt inspired me,” Finau told Golf Channel. “I don’t think what (Bryson’s) doing is rocket science, but it’s executing at that speed. Being able to see him swing that fast and hit it that straight got me thinking, for sure.”
While DeChambeau has been using a 5.5-degree driver to lower his spin, Finau has made it clear that he prefers being able to see the face of the club at address. Typically a driver with 6 degrees or less will not have enough loft to make that possible.
Because of that, Finau has taken a different route. He can hit his 8-degree Ping G410 driver comfortably at 196 mph of ball speed with around 3,400 RPM, but he saw improved results when hitting a 7.25-degree driver that had 5 grams of “hot melt” – a gummy substance similar to what is found on the back of an envelope – positioned near the face to lower trajectory. That dropped the spin rate down to around 2,700 RPM and his launch angle to around 9.5 degrees.
Finau has shown massive gains with his driver immediately. In Round 1 of the 3M Open, he gained a gaudy 1.86 strokes on the field off the tee. This came one week after Finau ranked second in driving distance at the Memorial Tournament, averaging 319 yards.
While it is true Finau has always been powerful off the tee, it’s still a significant upgrade. He started the 3M Open ranking 40th in strokes gained off the tee and 26th in driving distance for the season, which are solid numbers but nothing like what he has done since taking a more aggressive approach.
Finau’s overall success the past two weeks is more fodder for those who say driving accuracy on the PGA Tour is far less important than distance. He only hit 25 of 56 fairways at the Memorial on his way to being in the final group, and ranks No. 182 in the category this season.
In iron news, Rory McIlroy has gone all in on TaylorMade P7MB blades, the first time since 2016 that he’s employed a full set of the same model. The last example of him doing so was when he played Nike VR Pro Blades.
On the Korn Ferry Tour, Davis Riley has gone the opposite way by using four different Titleist iron models (T-MB, AP2, CB and MB) in his bag.
At the 3M Open, FootJoy took 62 percent of the shoe count, compared to 16 percent by the closest competitor.
Sean Fairholm