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NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
BROUGHT TO YOU BY GOLF PRIDE, THE #1 GRIP ON TOUR
When it comes to equipment talk, clubs and balls are the dominant categories. However, sometimes the miscellaneous column provides far more value than expected.
In Rickie Fowler’s case, it’s a pair of prescription sunglasses that may be an unlikely cure to his lengthy slump. The 32-year-old showed up at the PGA Championship with new eyewear on the way to his first top-10 finish since January 2020, and then he wore the sunglasses again in gloomy weather at the Memorial where he continued to impress, finishing T11.
The impact of the glasses is twofold. For one, Fowler’s improved long-distance sight is now allowing him to watch his ball land or to pick out small targets beyond the fairway.
“I always struggled with seeing more than say, 150 yards, and little things far away,” Fowler said at Muirfield Village last week. "It's not enough to where I really wanted to try going to Lasik (surgery) or anything like that. I've always been able to see up-close fine, I don't have any problem with that. The only time I start to struggle with some depth perception is in low-light situations, so early morning or as the sun's going down. And so I just wanted to try another option before going to Lasik down the road.”
Fowler has long experimented with glasses, but the movement during his swing would shift them and make him uncomfortable. However, a recent swing change where he keeps his body quieter in the transition to the downswing convinced him to try the sunglasses.
“I always felt that with the nose piece, with how much I move sometimes in the swing it would get in the way and I would lose sight of the ball, so I didn't like glasses, forever,” Fowler said. “But now things have been cleaned up and I swing a little bit more within myself. That gave me the opportunity to try standard sunglasses without prescription and I saw that I wasn’t squinting as much. I wasn’t stressing my eyes as much, especially with it being bright out too, especially in Florida.
“So I said, ‘Shoot, why don’t we try prescription.’ Now I can actually see the ball land.”
In more traditional equipment news, Xander Schauffele stunned most gear followers by putting an armlock putter in play despite having argued vehemently that it should be outlawed.
Schauffele is one of the best putters on the PGA Tour, coming into last week ranking No. 9 in strokes gained putting this season. Still, his experimentation with the armlock left him convinced he could get better.
"It's a distinct advantage,” Schauffele said. “I am for banning the armlock putters, but if everyone else is going to use it and I feel like they have a bigger advantage, I may as well do the same.
“If I was No. 1 in putting with a short stick, it wouldn’t have even been a thought. But I just feel like at times I can make more putts and, obviously I am in the top 10 – like I looked when I was switching. I’m in a position where I have nothing to lose and if I can get better at something, then I can.”
Titleist swept every major equipment category at the Memorial, the second week in a row that the brand has been the top choice of players in golf balls, drivers, fairways, hybrids, utility irons, irons, wedges and putters.
This past week marked the 21st time since the start of the 2019 calendar year that Titleist topped every major equipment category. No other brand has ever swept every major equipment category in PGA Tour history.
Sean Fairholm