NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
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While Luke Clanton will spend most of the next few months tying up the loose ends of his collegiate career at Florida State before he’s eligible to take up the full-time PGA Tour card he earned via PGA Tour University Accelerated, he is building a strong base for his professional career.
Clanton announced a couple of weeks ago a new apparel endorsement deal with Nike, joining a tour staff sporting the Swoosh that includes Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Tony Finau, Tommy Fleetwood and Tom Kim. Pretty heady company for a college kid who in 2024 became the first amateur since Jack Nicklaus in 1961 to record three or more top-10s on the PGA Tour in a season.
Inside Clanton’s Nike staff bag is an assortment of equipment from Titleist (TSR2 driver, Scotty Cameron T9 putter) and TaylorMade (BRNR mini driver, UDI driving iron, P760 long irons, P7MB short irons and MG4 wedges).
“I can’t tell you what my loft/lie is or my degree or whatever it could be,” Clanton said before securing his tour card with a T18 finish in the Cognizant Classic at PGA National. “I leave it up to the people I trust and the people I know. I think I kind of have a great team around me that helps me out with the process. I try not to overcomplicate things with golf because it’s already complicated enough.”
While TaylorMade no longer makes the P760 4-, 5- and 6-irons that Clanton uses, his caddie Joe LaCava IV tracked down a fresh set of replacement P760s as backup.
“We just actually found a backup set for the first time,” Clanton said of his 7-year-old irons. “It’s pretty cool to know that I don’t have to stress out about traveling with them and hopefully they don’t break.”
When Jordan Spieth opts to put a hybrid in the bag, he’s switched from his Titleist TSi2 to a new GT2 model.
“For me, it’s all about distance gaps,” Spieth said at the Cognizant Classic. “For a hybrid, it’s about the look, first and foremost, and then can I hit a draw that spins enough, and from there the club is pretty easy for me. It passes the look test, hits the yardage window, and then I can turn it and have it stay in the air, are the combinations.”
The hybrid offers Spieth a higher-flying option to the driving iron he deploys when course and setup dictate a more penetrating ball flight.
“I play a driving iron a few events a year, and then I almost always played a hybrid … just a little bit more consistent in accuracy for me,” he said.
Spieth also tried out the new 2025 Titleist Pro V1x at PGA National to see how it compares to the 2021 version he’s been using.
Scott Michaux