NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
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It’s not often that the gear story of the week comes from a player tossing a club into the trees, but Rory McIlroy discarding his 3-wood just off the ninth tee during last Monday’s final round of the Northern Trust created quite a chain reaction.
McIlroy was fed up with his 16.5-degree TaylorMade SIM2 Max – or, more accurately, fed up with the player swinging the club – and so he decided to leave it behind. Although he said he threw it toward the New Jersey Turnpike, reaching that would be physically impossible. He most likely meant the trees bordering Chapel Avenue, a small two-lane road near the tee box for No. 9 at Liberty National.
“If someone wants to go get a 3-wood, there’s one in there somewhere,†McIlroy said before the BMW Championship.
That led to a wild goose chase to try to find the club. Members of the Liberty National staff spent several hours looking for it, according to a report from Golf.com’s Alan Bastable. A group of people gathered hoping to snag the club for themselves, and security had to be called to ensure they didn’t trespass by climbing over a fence around the property. Liberty National said there would be a drone flight to search for the club.
Meanwhile, McIlroy flew home to Florida on Monday to get in some family time. While he was there, he rummaged through some old clubs and grabbed a fairway wood he used last year, tested out a few shafts on another driver head and went to an old putter, his TaylorMade Spider mallet.
Soon after landing in Baltimore on Tuesday, McIlroy could be found at the range grinding to dial in all of his numbers.
“I’m not a hoarder,†he said. “I keep a bunch of shafts that I've tried over the years and a bunch of stuff. I have a couple of sets of irons that I’ve won majors with and that sort of stuff. But yeah, I’ve got a few things in there, and every so often something catches your eye, like, ‘Oh, I remember that,’ or ‘I’d like to try that again.’â€
The adjustments worked early in the tournament. McIlroy hit 13 of 14 fairways in the first round of the BMW Championship, tying for the lead at 8-under-par 64.
Anna Nordqvist was a ballstriking machine on the way to winning the AIG Women’s Open, her third major championship victory. The Swede hit 79 percent of her greens in regulation at Carnoustie, only missing four greens during the last two rounds.
One of the reasons for being so locked in with her irons? Nordqvist switched to Titleist T100s last month at the LPGA’s Volunteers of America Classic. Testing had shown a slightly higher launch and improved feel as the club went through the turf, two key reasons for staying with the new clubs at the Women’s Open.
Sean Fairholm
