Brooks Koepka is back with what he knows best – well, kind of.
And no, it’s not the Tom Selleck-style mustache he’s sporting this week at the Wyndham Championship.
Instead, he’s back to a putter insert that he’s had a lot of success with. One that he won a few major championships with.
This week at Sedgefield Country Club, the final stop of the PGA Tour’s regular season, Koepka is looking to make a final hurdle into the playoffs with the help of a custom Scotty Cameron Phantom 3, featuring his beloved Teryllium insert.
The custom flatstick uses a copper-based metal alloy that provides what Scotty Cameron describes as a”soft, precise feel.” The insert itself came from another putter that Koepka had traveled to North Carolina with.
The change in putter comes surprisingly after Koepka admitted, “Finally, I felt good with the putter,” after switching to a Scotty Cameron Fastback 1.5 mallet earlier this summer.
It came after he had started the year using his Newport 2 before changing at the WM Phoenix Open to a TaylorMade Spider Tour X L-neck putter. That stayed in the bag until this year’s PGA Championship, when he tried a prototype Spider Tour V with an extended plumber’s neck. It was at the same tournament where Koepka was spotted testing a custom Scotty Cameron Phantom 9.5R with the same Teryllium insert.
Koepka sits 86th in the FedExCup, with the top 70 qualifying for the first playoffs event in Memphis. The five-time major champion ranks 28th in Strokes Gained: Total, but a streaky putter and injury have held him back from comfortably holding a spot inside the playoffs bubble.
Callaway finally launches Apex MB Tour irons
The long-awaited Callaway prototype muscle-back irons, spotted in the bags of Sam Burns, Min Woo Lee, Nicolai Højgaard, Si Woo Kim and other big-name stars on the PGA Tour, are prototype no more. Callaway announced Tuesday the introduction of the new Apex MB Tour Raw irons in extremely limited quantities.
The origins of the Apex MB Tour Raw irons date back over a year, when Callaway conducted an audit of what made other irons so successful on Tour, such as its X Forged cavity backs, and took into account what blade players on Tour liked. One of those was Lee, who tested the first sets at the start of last year.
“When it comes to performance though, it’s all in the sole,” Callaway’s Tour Content Manager Johnny Thompson told GolfWRX.
“… He (Min Woo) kind of blessed that sole design and made us move forward with mass producing them with those design characteristics.”
Despite the muscle-back description, the wider sole is what separates the MBs from a traditional blade.
“The width of the sole and that tri-sole make just for a very unique feel through the ground, and it just feels fast,” Thompson said. “You get into the ground and it exits with speed, and it’s such a good feeling for high-speed players if they don’t feel like the club kind of slows down when it enters the turf and then have to rebound out of the ground. They really cut through and exit really, really fast. So just a really pure feel at impact.”
Three factors on the tri-sole that help performance are the beveled leading edge that goes from up the hosel down the front of the toe to create relief in areas where players need it most, the wider sole for stability, and a trailing edge to help the clubhead glide cleanly through the turf
“You could be shallower, you could be steep and still get the benefits of these irons. And so that tri-sole helped broaden the spectrum of player that we could go after and give them the launch and spin that they want.” – Johnny Thompson
Callaway also used a 360-mill cut around the head to make the topline appear thinner, which helps not only aesthetics but also performance.
For more, check out the launch report here.
Day revamped setup has a theme
Speaking of Callaway blades. Jason Day becomes the latest non-staffer to add the Apex MBs to his setup.
It comes with an overhaul of nearly every club in his bag.
Day’s testing out the MB irons along with the proto X-Forged 5-iron. (The heads that are only available across the Pacific). They were actually in his bag at the 3M Open, but unfortunately Day had to withdraw due to injury.
Day currently ranks 151st out of 159 players on the PGA Tour’s SG: Approach the green statistic.
Along with the new irons, Day is sporting a set of Opus SP wedges in 50, 56, and 60 degrees, all of which GolfWRX believes will be Callaway’s S grind. (He had both an X and C grind to test in the lob wedge.) Day’s also testing a Callaway Quantum TI 3-wood and Triple Diamond 5-wood.
But it doesn’t stop there, and the most surprising of all the changes is that Day also has an Odyssey White Hot OG #5 to test in a custom black-out finish.
Day told GolfWRX that he had played the White Hot #5 putter as a junior and, he believes, even in a few professional starts. If you do a deep dive into the Australian’s junior career, he won the Boys 15–17 division at the 2004 Callaway World Junior Championship, so he must have good memories of the D-shaped mallet.
Check out the gallery here.
Matsuyama’s custom RTZ 2
Almost 50 years after Roger Cleveland debuted the 588 Tour Action Wedge, it’s only fitting that after returning to the company just last year, the legendary clubmaker is finally involved with its wedge making again, and it’s evident with the latest lineup of Cleveland RTZ 2. The wedges were ready for players to test at the Wyndham Championship, with five grinds available, including and most notably the reintroduction of the celebrated 588 Grind.
Check out more on the RTZ 2 release here.
What was just as exciting as the wedge launch itself was the custom grinds spotted for a certain Japanese golf star.
Hideki Matsuyama was testing out a 48- and 52-degree option, both of which had spent much time on the belt sander. The 48-degree sported a much flatter sole compared to the regular grinds on offer, and it’s something that we’ve seen in the past with Matsuyama’s pitching wedges. Along with the updated sole, there were also custom-ground, sharper and straighter leading edges on both wedges.
To top it all off, Matsuyama’s custom wedges feature a handstamped loft designation along with a couple of strips of lead tape. So obviously, they made it into this week’s Lead Tape Report.
Odds and ends
Alex Fitzpatrick switched from an Odyssey TRTL Double Bend to the Crank (plumber’s neck) hosel. Marco Penge, who had used the smaller PXG 0317 cavity iron heads last week in Detroit, switched to the larger model with his custom leading-edge grind. Aaron Rai is back using the TaylorMade HydroBlast TP DuPage, the model of putter with which he won at the Wyndham.
Ben Griffin switched to Callaway’s Quantum Max driver. He had been playing the Ping G430 Max 10K, but was spotted testing five different drivers on Monday and Tuesday in Greensboro, North Carolina.
