Not happy with having the most popular golf ball those clever chaps at Titleist continue to push the boundaries of ball technology. The Titleist Golf Ball Research & Development team were thrown into a room and told they could not come out until they came up with a new golf ball. The result, the Experimental EXP•01 Golf Ball.
Victor Perez became the first French winner of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship after one of the most exciting finishes in the history of the event, winning by one shot from England’s Matthew Southgate at St Andrews. Whilst, at the same time, Rory McIlroy, finishing tied for 26th place complains to the BBC that the European Tour is too easy.
It’s probably fair to say that amongst top golfers, elite or amateur, that the Titleist Pro V1 or Pro V1x ball is the market leader. Titleist also offer a range of more budget friendly options for the lesser mortal and are now replacing the DT TruSoft, their budget distance ball, with the TruFeel which, they claim, is engineered to deliver longer distance and excellent control.
It was a brutal day at Gleneagles with high winds, rain and low temperatures testing the mettle of both teams. Team USA came out narrowly on top taking the afternoon fourballs by 2½ matches to 1½ after the morning foursomes had been shared. So, it is all tied at 8-8 ahead of the twelve singles today and the Americans, given their past record in singles, must be viewed as the favourites.
The players in the afternoon fourballs are on the back nine. The target time for the matches is four and half hours and they are on five hours and forty-five-minute pace. It seems that the men’s game is not the only one plagued by slow play problems.
This Sunday evening the winner of the FedEx Cup Tour Championship will pick up a cheque for a cool $15 million dollars. The same evening at the CP Women's Open Aurora, Ontario, Canada the winner will take home a cheque for a paltry $337,500. However, earlier in the day in far flung Czechoslovakia those competing in the final round of the Tipsport Czech Ladies Open will take home the combined sum of roughly $135,000!
Reports indicate our erstwhile Prime Minister, The Right Honourable Boris Johnson MP, has been learning to develop his golf game as part of a strategy to help him secure a trade deal with the US and presumably other nations headed by golf addicted leaders.
Ok we are not going to let this one drop. Slow play is killing our game and the lead must come from the professional ranks. In the second round of the Northern Trust, Bryson DeChambeau took it to another level.
As we start the end of season scramble, which is the Fedex Cup playoff, starting first at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City, the problem of slow play rears its ugly head once again. Both Rory and Brooks were asked in yesterday’s interviews about the problem and neither of them held back their criticism and the need for the governing bodies to take action.
Paula Creamer was going along nicely in the sun at the Evian Resort in Evian-Les-Bains when the weather took a turn for the worst. Wearing a rather provocative top with ‘Kiss My Putt’ emblazoned across her chest, the American sank a monster putt from the edge of the 12th hole to move the overnight leader to nine under par and one off the lead.
They needed it to be tough out there if they were going to challenge Shane Lowry but in the end, it was too tough and the conditions actually played in to the hands of the big man. For a man who grew up playing links golf up and down Ireland he was always going to be one of best equipped if the really high winds came.
The GolfPunk team love the game of golf and are big supporters of the idea of improving the etiquette on the course and in general. However, this week the big news running around social media was about the US amateur golfer that carded an impressively poor 194 for 18 holes and things got worse when the Florida State Golf Association confirmed it was actually a 131 over par 202!
