THE 2022 US OPEN IS IN BOSTON.

By now, we’re sure you’ve retweeted all the jokes and read all scuttlebut swirling around the sleepy village of Brookline, but there’s one thing you might have missed … and it’s perhaps the Boston thing yet.

Rory McIlroy’s Lobstah Nikes. Warren Little

Those are the soles of Rory McIlroy’s Nike kicks, as spotted during his opening practice round at The Country Club on Monday. The right shoe features the word “lobstah,” the “r” appropriately absent, while the left features an illustration of New England’s trademark crustacean. A lobster doesn’t strike fear into the hearts of opponents quite like, say, a tiger, but when in Rome we guess.

McIlroy, fresh off a win at the Canadian Open on Sunday, will be looking to ride these bad boys to a fifth major victory this week. If he does manage to pull it off, expect celebratory lobster rolls for everyone.

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The post US Open 2022: Rory McIlroy’s lobster spikes might be the most Boston thing in golf history appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Tony Finau’s Nike outfit is the talk of the town (Tulsa in this case).

Seemingly every major tournament, Finau goes viral for his get-up, with golf’s fashion cops tasering each other in the face over whether Finau’s fits are fresh or fugly. See Sweatergate for reference:

I actually like the sweater Tony Finau is wearing but feel like Nike set him up with that hat ??‍ pic.twitter.com/VAmxv6Iz5u

— Jake Woolf (@jakewoolf) April 9, 2022

That proud tradition continued at Southern Hills on Saturday when Tony Finau showed up to the range on a cold, misty morning dressed like the New York Botanical Garden.

?Tony Finau takes the Nike flowering design to new heights ? pic.twitter.com/fJvIxuzZZ1

— NUCLR GOLF (@NUCLRGOLF) May 19, 2022

It’s like Tony Finau lost a bet with the Nike person in charge of scripting. #PGAChamp pic.twitter.com/19B8PjJtAH

— The Hackers Paradise (@THPGolf) May 21, 2022

The reaction of the Oklahoma gallery said it all.

Tony FInau. Richard Heathcote

Seconds after these images surfaced, the take whiplash began in earnest.

Tony Finau will wear literally anything Nike throws at him pic.twitter.com/FSIus5JvPs

— Christopher Powers (@CPowers14) May 21, 2022

Tony Finau’s agent showing him his scripting before every major pic.twitter.com/VmGbVkn8di

— Will Bardwell (@willbardwell) May 21, 2022

Nike does Tony Finau so well. Love his major fits

— aspiring retiree (@lightlydhb) May 21, 2022

Ok, hear me out, Tony Finau's pullover today is pretty great

— Drew Cove ? (@covedrew) May 21, 2022

What the hell is Tony Finau wearing? I don’t hate it.

— Shaquille Oatmeal (@oatmealshaqTDB) May 21, 2022

Tony Finau should be arrested for wearing that pullover.

— HEINICKE! HEINICKE! (@JayCagle24) May 21, 2022

It’s not fair to malign the selfless keyboard warriors risking life and livelihood to bravely share their takes with the internet without sharing our own, however. So where do we fall on the love-it-or-loathe-it spectrum? Somewhere between indifferent and pretty good. All-over floral prints are very 2016, but still, it’s better than another beige sweater.

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By E. Michael Johnson
Editor’s Note: Twenty years ago, Tiger Woods put a Nike Tour Accuracy golf ball in play at the Deutsche-Bank-SAP Open in Germany, igniting a chain of events that caused a paradigm shift in the golf-ball industry in a little more than five months time. The below article is re-printed from the May 31, 2010 issue of Golf World that commemorated one of the seminal moments in the game in regards to equipment.

• • •

It was May 2000 when Hal Sutton heard that Tiger Woods had changed from a wound Titleist Professional 90 golf ball to Nike’s solid-core, urethane-covered Tour Accuracy sphere. Said Sutton, “That can be a very dramatic change in a person’s life.”

As it turned out, Woods managed just fine with the new ball. It was the golf-ball industry that underwent the dramatic change after Woods first teed up the Swoosh-logoed ball in competition 20 years ago yesterday—May 18, 2000, to be precise—at the Deutsche-Bank-SAP Open in Germany.

In early 2000, the golf world was abuzz with talk of the ball going too far. The focus, however, wasn’t so much on the ball, but on new drivers with excessive spring-like effect, including those that exceeded USGA rules. Nearly lost in the outcry was a win by Paul Azinger at the Sony Open in Hawaii using the Nike Tour Accuracy.

The lack of excitement over the Nike ball was understandable. Despite Callaway generating some interest over its multilayer, urethane-covered Rule 35 ball a few weeks earlier, market-leader Titleist continued to produce wound golf balls for the game’s best players.

Paul Severn

What the industry didn’t know was that Woods had been testing the solid-core ball since January 1999—nearly 18 months before he put it in play. According to Rock Ishii, Nike’s director of product development for golf balls, Woods saw his driver spin drop 600 to 700 rpms but asked the company to tweak some aspects of the ball. In 2000, before the Masters, he hinted to the company that he was going to put it in play “soon” but did not say when.

“Honestly, I was surprised he put it in play during the season,” said Ishii. “Tiger usually makes his changes during the off-season. In early May 2000 we had another session with him that went well, but Tiger said he still needed some time to adjust to the ball. I went back to Japan and by the time I got off the plane I had a message saying he was going to use the ball in Germany. I went to Germany and Tiger finished third, mainly due to a 7-iron on the 70th hole that flew the green and went in the water. I thought he might stop using the ball after that, needing more time to adjust to the distance gains.”

Instead, Woods used—and won—with the ball at Memorial. Still, Ishii wasn’t sure the ball would be used at the U.S. Open. “Tiger asked me to make him a couple hundred of the balls so he could take them home and practice with them so he could get ready for the U.S. Open,” said Ishii. “That’s when we knew he would play it. We also knew after he won so convincingly with it that it would probably signal a paradigm shift in the market and on tour.”

Matthew Stockman
Woods at the 100th US Open

That it did. Woods not only won Memorial and the U.S. Open (a mind-blowing 15-shot victory) but went on a run in the U.S. that saw him win six of eight events after the switch, including the British and Canadian Opens. Woods’ success had other players curious—which resulted in companies paying notice.

One such situation was Titleist and Davis Love III. Love tested the Nike ball prior to the 2000 British Open at St. Andrews and was mulling a lucrative deal from Nike. Titleist lured him back into the fold with a 10-year, full-line contract.

“As far as we’re concerned, we’re at war and Love was our Midway,” said Acushnet chairman and CEO Wally Uihlein at the time. “Anybody who thinks we’re lying and dying. I’ve got news for them. We’re beefing up, we’re not backing off. We take very seriously any threat to our franchise and any attempt to derail our position in the marketplace.”

Actually, Woods’ switch to the Tour Accuracy might’ve actually strengthened the Titleist ball franchise. Although already in the planning stage, Woods’ success with the Nike ball, and the subsequent desire of players to see what all the fuss was about, forced Titleist to get in the multilayer urethane game sooner than it had anticipated.

“I’d like to see what you have in R&D coming out,” said Phil Mickelson (a Titleist staff player) to Uihlein at the 2000 U.S. Open. What Titleist had was a “Laboratory Test Ball,” which would become the Pro V1. Uihlein acknowledged at the time that his talk with Mickelson was a key in the decision so start production of the ball.

“It would be foolish and naïve to think that 30 days after a discussion I had with Phil Mickelson that voila, something falls out of the white-coated laboratory that represents a magic elixir.”

The Pro V1 prototype was first shown to a large number of players at the 2000 SEI Pennsylvania Classic, generating so much talk that Golf World likened it to, “a carload of teenage girls on its way to an ’N Sync concert.”

A few weeks later the ball debuted in Las Vegas with 47 players putting the Pro V1 in play (the previous week only one Titleist player, Corey Pavin, had used a non-wound ball), including winner Billy Andrade, and the stampede to solid-core balls was on. By March of the following year nearly percent of the tour was using solid-core balls, a number that became 100 percent by the end of 2002. Vijay Singh’s win at the 2000 Masters was the last of the men’s majors won with a wound ball. The paradigm shift found its way to the consumer market as well, where golfers could now purchase tour-level balls that flew farther but didn’t cut and the Pro V1 became perhaps the best-selling ball in history.

A very dramatic change, indeed.

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By E. Michael Johnson
Tiger Woods’ five Masters victories have spanned more than two decades and coincided with what many consider to be the Golden Age of golf equipment technology. Certainly Woods’ use of the multilayer, solid-core Nike Tour Accuracy TW ball was a paradigm shift for equipment used by tour players and the distances they hit them.

Woods’ Masters career has also seen players go from drivers in the 260 cubic-centimetre range to 460 ccs, and in Woods’ case, the move from steel to graphite shafts in metalwoods. A few things have stayed constant over time for Woods, however. He continues to use a Scotty Cameron putter, and he only carries two wedges in his bag along with his pitching wedge when most players use three and a pitching wedge.

Even at 43 years of age, Tiger still hits those muscle-back blade irons better than any human on earth. Here’s a look at the equipment that Woods has won his five Masters titles with.

Tiger Woods’ equipment through his five Masters titles:

Tiger Woods tees off on the 15th hole during the 1997 Masters. (Augusta National)

1997:
Ball: Titleist Professional 90
Driver: King Cobra (True Temper Dynamic Gold X 100), 9 degrees
3-wood: Titleist PT15, 15 degrees
Irons (2-4): Mizuno MP-29; (5-PW): Mizuno MP-14
Wedges: Cleveland 588 RTG (56, 60 degrees)
Putter: Scotty Cameron by Titleist Newport TE I3

The clubs Tiger used at the 1997 Masters Tournament (Augusta National)

[divider] [/divider]

Dom Furore/Golf Digest, Golf World

2001:
Ball: Nike Tour Accuracy TW
Driver: Titleist 975D (True Temper Dynamic Gold X 100), 7.5 degrees
3-wood: Titleist 970, 15 degrees
Irons (2-PW): Titleist 681 Forged
Wedges: Titleist Vokey (58, 60 degrees)
Putter: Scotty Cameron by Titleist Newport 2 Tiger

Tiger Woods and Stevie Williams during the 2001 Masters. (Augusta National)

[divider] [/divider]

2002:
Ball: Nike Tour Accuracy TW
Driver: Nike Forged Ti (True Temper Dynamic Gold X 100), 9.5 degrees
3-wood: Titleist 970, 15 degrees
Irons (2-PW): Titleist 681 Forged
Wedges: Titleist Vokey Design (58, 60 degrees)
Putter: Scotty Cameron by Titleist Newport 2 Tiger

[divider] [/divider]

Tiger Woods watches his tee shot on the 15th tee during the final round of the 2005 Masters. (Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images)

2005:
Ball: Nike One Platinum TW
Driver: Nike Ignite 460cc (Mitsubishi Diamana Blue Board 83), 8.5 degrees
3-wood: Nike T60 Ignite, 15 degrees
Irons (2-PW): Nike Forged Blades
Wedges: Nike Pro Combo (56 degrees), Nike TW Blade (60 degrees)
Putter: Scotty Cameron by Titleist Newport 2 Tiger

[divider] [/divider]

2019:
Ball: Bridgestone Tour B XS
Driver: TaylorMade M5 (Mitsubishi Diamana D+ 60TX), 9 degrees
3-wood: TaylorMade M5, 15 degrees
5-wood: TaylorMade M3, 19 degrees
Irons (3-PW): TaylorMade P7TW
Wedges: TaylorMade Milled Grind (56, 60 degrees)
Putter: Scotty Cameron by Titleist Newport 2 Tiger prototype

The post Masters 2019: The winning clubs Tiger Woods has used for all five of his Masters titles appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

So it should come as no surprise that the swoosh had a commemorative ad ready to roll after the final putt dropped, capitalizing on this historic moment. The video, which Nike tweeted out with the caption “Never stop chasing your crazy dream #justdoit,” will hit you in every feel imaginable. Enjoy, and have the tissues ready:

https://twitter.com/Nike/status/1117497381832933376

Yep, can’t make a commercial any better than that. It’s been a long time since that win at Torrey Pines in 2008, and this video not only captures the journey from then until now nicely, but it also captures his entire journey from when he was a child to now as well. And they did it all in 52 seconds, ending it perfectly with a young Woods stating “I’m gonna beat Jack Nicklaus.” Two years ago, that was not only unlikely, but it was virtually impossible. His career was all but over, and just being able to walk again without feeling pain would have been a victory. Now, he’s a 15-time major champion, putting him just three away from Jack Nicklaus’ all-time record of 18. With Bethpage Black and Pebble Beach hosting the next two majors, two venues Woods has won majors at before, he’s got a chance to get that much closer to the record in 2019.

The post Masters 2019: This Nike ad commemorating Tiger’s win will hit you in every feel imaginable appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

The list is Forbes’ annual ranking of America’s wealthiest celebrities.

Tiger Woods ranked in a tie with author James Patterson for ninth at $800 million, which positions himself in the years ahead to have a go at adding “billionaire” to descriptions of him.

Lest he get too cocky, Michael Jordan is worth more than twice as much, at $1.7 billion, fourth on the list.

Just ahead of Tiger is Diddy at $825 million, while Kylie Jenner, the wunderkind who is the sole owner of Kylie Cosmetics, is No. 5 at $900 million.

George Lucas is a runaway No. 1 at $5.4 billion.

Last year, Woods was ranked eighth at $750 million. Woods’ improbable comeback from injuries, capped by a victory in the Tour Championship, already has paid dividends to his bottom line in 2018 and is likely to continue doing so into the future. Last month, it was announced that Woods has signed a multi-year deal with Discovery Inc. to provide content on its streaming video platform, GOLFTV.

He also has endorsement contracts with Nike, TaylorMade, Bridgestone, Hero MotorCorp, Monster Energy and Kowa, the latter a Japanese pharmaceutical company.

The post Tiger Woods’ net worth is $800 million, $50 million more than a year ago, according to Forbes appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Alex Myers
Tiger Woods’ list of injuries, particularly with his back and knees, has been well-documented throughout the years, but there’s a new physical ailment plaguing the 14-time major champ as he nears his 43rd birthday next month. Following his opening 73 at the Hero World Challenge, Woods acknowledge his ankles have been bothering him.

“I’ve struggled with my ankles over the last few months. Still the same issues,” Woods told reporters in the Bahamas, before adding, “They’ve just been sore for months, just wear and tear.”

And on Friday, Golf Channel’s Todd Lewis reported Woods has made a significant switch with his golf shoes to help with the issue.

.@TigerWoods said Thursday he’s bothered by sore ankles. He’s worn metal spikes in his career and because of the torque he uses in his swing the metal spikes have over time contributed to those sore ankles. So, now he’s using soft spikes and has been since @playofffinale.

— Todd Lewis (@ToddLewisGC) 30 November 2018

Many tour pros have changed to soft spikes in recent years, but Woods had remained old school with his metal spikes. Even his snazzy kicks for “The Match” last week had the soft variety:

Big Cat’s kicks are spectacular. pic.twitter.com/ae0oLgrBFK

— Jonathan Wall (@jonathanrwall) 23 November 2018

Although, Woods lost to Phil Mickelson that day at Shadow Creek, obviously, the switch before the Tour Championship in September didn’t hurt him much. That week, Woods won his first PGA Tour title in more than five years.

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By Joel Beall
Tiger Woods’ ball-striking continues to be exceptional in his return to the tour, his second-shot performance propelling his weekly bids for contention. In that same breath, his putting, or lack thereof, is almost single-handedly keeping those efforts from turning into Ws.

Enter the Golf Digest Middle East Amateur Series today for your chance to play with the pros in Abu Dhabi and Dubai

On the year Woods ranks 50th in strokes gained/putting, a figure that doesn’t seem to indicate the flat stick serving as an Achilles’ heel. Unfortunately for Woods, that standing, save for a strong showing at Bellerive, is mostly buoyed by early-season submissions. At the Northern Trust, Woods finished last in the field in strokes gained/putting, and though he saw a little improvement following a switch to a new putter at TPC Boston, 33 putts in his final round sunk any hopes of his first victory since 2013.

So perhaps it’s not a surprise that, in his first practice round at Aronimink for the BMW Championship, Woods returned an old friend to the bag: his Scotty Cameron by Titleist Newport 2.

And here’s to you, Mr. Newport 2. A nation turns its lonely eyes to you. pic.twitter.com/fdPQEf4n5a

— Tiger Tracker (@GCTigerTracker) September 4, 2018

The same putter, you may remember, that was by Woods’ side for 13 of his 14 major championships. Starting in 2004, which is the first year the tour has strokes gained/putting calculated, he ranked first, fifth, 21st, second and second with the Cameron, skipping 2008 and 2010 when he did not play enough to be ranked. Woods changed to a Nike putter at the 2010 Open Championship and went back and forth between Nike and his Cameron for a bit before settling in with a Nike model in 2011.

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By E. Michael Johnson
Brooks Koepka won his second major of the season and third of his career by combining the kind of solid ball striking with good in-close putting to win by two over Tiger Woods at Bellerive C.C.

Koepka was second in driving distance at 324.2 yards with a TaylorMade M3 460 driver with a Mitsubishi Diamana White Board D + 70 shaft. Koepka, used the M4 model earlier in the year, but use the adjustable weights in the M3, moving both to the the rear position to maximize forgiveness and launch.

Koepka also ranked second in strokes gained/tee-to-green, gaining more than 11 strokes on the field for the week. Although the take of his irons is by now well-worn, it bears repeating. When Nike exited the equipment business in August of 2016, it left Koepka seeking some new equipment. Although not under contract with Mizuno, Koepka plays the company’s JPX 900 Tour irons. The background on the clubs is that Mizuno, knowing that Koepka’s Titleist contract was up (and pre-Nike deal), made the JPX 900 Tour with Koepka in mind as Mizuno felt he fit the mold of the JPX player. Then, after Nike left the club business, they reached out to Koepka again to gauge his interest in playing the irons and the clubs went in the bag earlier this year after an offseason of testing.

The specs are standard length, half-degree upright. Koepka also only practices with odd-numbered clubs so those wear out faster than the others, requiring new sets every so often.

But the PGA would not have been won without his putter. Instead of seeking a new one, Koepka went back to an old friend, the Scotty Cameron by Titleist Newport 2 SLT T10 putter he had used to win his first PGA Tour title at the 2015 Waste Management Phoenix Open. Koepka made the move during the 2016 FedEx Cup playoffs and the putter, which boasts a T10 Terylium insert and has BK stamped on the front toe, helped Koepka sink six birdie putts on Sunday, albeit all of them from 10 feet and closer. Still, Koepka boasted a strokes gained putting mark of nearly five strokes for the week and when you win by two, that’s a big difference-maker.

Enough to make Koepka a three-time major champion.

What Brooks Koepka had in the bag at the U.S. Open

Ball: Titleist Pro V1x
Driver: TaylorMade M3 460 (Mitsubishi Diamana White Board D + 70), 9.5 degrees
3-wood: TaylorMade M2 2017, 16.5 degrees
Irons (3): Nike Vapor Fly Pro; (4-PW): Mizuno JPX Tour 900
Wedges: Titleist Vokey SM7 (52, 56); Titleist Vokey SM4 TVD (60 degrees)
Putter: Scotty Cameron by Titleist Newport 2 SLT 10

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