Equipment
Lee Westwood uses prototype Ping putter in Nedbank win; Jordan Spieth back to old driver in Mexico
Lee Westwood returned to the winner’s circle for the first time in four years using a new putter with a funky name while Jordan Spieth returned to a trusty club after benching it for a week. Danny Lee nearly won after making wholesale changes to his bag and Luke List added some TaylorMade irons to go with the woods he had been playing. Those were just a few of the equipment nuggets of note from last week.
Stuart Franklin
Lee Westwood has never been known as a superior putter, but at last week’s Nedbank Golf Challenge, Westwood—whose tenure as a Ping staffer dates back more than two decades—turned to the company’s new Sigma 2 Fetch mallet putter and turned in a solid performance on the greens to win by three over Sergio Garcia. The Fetch features a large hole in the rear of the club that looks as if it could pick up the golf ball. Westwood, however, picked up the ball out of the hole himself quite often as averaged 1.639 putts per green in regulation, ranked first in the field, en route to his first win since 2014.
Cliff Hawkins
Danny Lee couldn’t quite pull out a win at the Mayakoba Golf Classic, but he proved the overhaul he made to his set could perform in competition. Lee finished runner-up to Matt Kuchar but enjoyed a solid week using Titleist’s new version of its Pro V1x golf ball as well as a new Scotty Cameron by Titleist Futura X5 mallet putter. Lee also had a 9-degree Ping G400 driver along with a set of Mizuno JPX 919 Tour irons.
Rob Carr
After using TaylorMade’s woods during the 2017-18 season, Luke List has added the company’s irons to his bag for 2018-19. At the Mayakoba Golf Classic List employed one of the company’s new P760 irons for his 4-iron as well as the P750 model—a forged blade with a thin topline, shallow cavity and minimal offset—for the bulk of his set..
Rob Carr
After experimenting last week with Titleist’s new TS2 driver at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, Jordan Spieth said afterward he found the club to be too low spinning and would likely return to his old driver. Spieth did just that in Mexico by returning to his trusted Titleist 915D2 at El Camaleon Golf Club. Spieth, however, hit only 12 of 28 fairways during the first two rounds en route to missing the cut.