NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
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Harris English plays a bag full of mostly modern Ping clubs. But the real stars of his winning setup in the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines were his “old faithful” 14-year-old Ping Scottdale Hohum mallet putter and the Titleist Pro V1 ball he kept draining par saves with in trying final-round conditions.
The Hohum, with its straight arc shaft, has been with English on his entire professional journey since playing college golf at Georgia (where he won a Nationwide Tour event as an amateur) and shared the stage with him in all five of his PGA Tour victories.
“I kind of leaned on my putter,” English said after his win. “I started putting with this (Hohum) my senior year of college in 2011. It was meant to be for my teammate, Keith Mitchell, but he didn’t want it. For me, familiarity with the putter is important which is why I don’t change. I know how it comes off. I know how it feels when I get under pressure. I know I spent many, many hours putting with this thing, doing drills. I have four of them, but I rarely switch it out. If I’m not putting well, I know it’s my fundamentals or alignment and not the putter.”
Ping tour rep Tony Serrano said in 2021, when English won twice, that any dabbling with new flatsticks eventually always leads back to the Hohum: “He’s commented in the past that it’s tough to switch putters since he has so many memories of making clutch putts with the Hohum, which gives him confidence.”
That was certainly the case again at Torrey when English played the final 13 holes in 1-under par, making one clutch up-and-down recovery after another and deftly negotiating two-putts from 46, 55 and 25 feet on the last three holes to win by one. He led the field in scrambling, getting up-and-down for par on 22 of 27 attempts (81.5 percent) and was third in strokes gained putting (6.042).
English attributes part of his comfort recovering around the greens to his Pro V1 ball.
“I feel like I can hit the spinny chip, the one-hop-and-stop grab, and then I can take a pitching wedge and bump and run,” he said of his ball. “I feel like I can hit every shot around the green that is called for out on the PGA Tour, and I like the trajectory of it coming out lower.
“I have total trust in the golf ball that I’m playing. With the Pro V1, I mean, I’ve practiced with it every day. I have Pro V1’s back home at Sea Island that I hit balls with, that I chip and putt with. I have 100 percent confidence in the ball that I know it’s all on me, I have to execute. In those key moments coming down the stretch on the back nine, trying to win a tournament, I have total confidence in my golf ball to where it’s not even on my mind if the golf ball is going to perform. I know if I do my part, if I execute, if I see the shot and can hit the shot, I know the ball is going to perform just how I think it should and be super consistent. And that’s what I think Titleist and the Pro V1 in general is best at is consistency.”
On Monday before his win, English opted to upgrade his grips from Golf Pride’s ribbed Align grips to its not-yet-released Align Max, saying he liked the way the more pronounced alignment spine down the back of the grip feels in his left hand and the pointer finger on his right hand.
Luke Clanton – the No. 1 player in the World Amateur Golf Ranking and a consistent contender every time he tees it up in a PGA Tour event – had another strong showing with a tie for 15th in the Farmers as he inches his way to the brink of securing a tour card via PGA Tour University Accelerated.
Clanton replaced his TaylorMade Spider GT with a Scotty Cameron Phantom 9 tour prototype putter at Torrey Pines and gained more than four strokes (4.129/11th) with it on the greens over the three rounds on the South course while also leading the field in putts per green in regulation (1.68). Clanton first tested the Phantom 9 for 20 minutes on the putting green Monday, took it with him for a practice round and never took it out of his bag the rest of the week.
Clanton, a junior at Florida State, and Auburn sophomore Jackson Koivun both made the cut at Torrey to reach 18 points in PGA Tour University Accelerated – two shy of the 20 needed to secure PGA Tour cards. If either player earns their 20 points, they will have the option to take up tour membership after the college season wraps this spring or defer their membership for one year (or two years in the case of Koivun) until they complete their senior seasons. Vanderbilt senior Gordon Sargent is the only player to earn a card through the Accelerated program and has deferred taking up his membership twice with plans to turn pro after the completion of the 2025 college season.
Scott Michaux