Leading Edge

Coming off consecutive wins on the PGA Tour the last two weeks, Tiger Woods is a prohibitive favorite to win his fifth PGA Championship this weekend. And, as if you need more reason to like Tiger at Hazeltine this week, consider this: seven of the last 13 major winners dating back to the 2006 Open Championship have sported the swoosh logo (Stewart Cink, Lucas Glover, Trevor Immelman and Woods, who accounts for four.)

Nike Golf released their athlete scripting for this week’s PGA Championship on Monday, and for those who are interested in this sort of thing, Woods will be wearing his traditional red and black come Sunday, a Nike Dri-FIT Open Stripe Polo (Carmine color) with black pants. He’ll open the tournament on Thursday in a light thistle colored Dri-FIT Drop Needle Polo and black pants.

With the PGA being dubbed ‘Glory’s Last Shot,’ this is Tiger’s last chance to win a major in 2009. Woods is 0 for 3 thus far, having missed the cut last month at the Open Championship at Turnberry; it was only the second time in his professional career he missed the cut in a major. The last year Woods went without a major was 2004.

To check out what all of the Nike players are wearing this week click here.

Tiger Woods claimed his 69th PGA Tour victory this past week at the Buick Open playing True Temper’s Dynamic Gold X100 steel shafts in his irons. Nine of the top 10 finishers at the Buick played True Temper shafts, as did Fred Funk, who shot a tournament-record 20-under par to win the U.S. Senior Open.

Funk, one of the most accurate drivers in PGA Tour history, hit 84 percent of his fairways at the U.S. Senior Open with his TaylorMade Burner 09 driver (9.5 degrees). Funk also played TaylorMade Rescue hybrids (16 and 19 degrees), Tour Preferred irons (4-PW) and rac TP wedges (54 and 58 degrees).

Some other notable what’s in the bag information from this weekend: Tiger’s win at the Buick Open was the fifth by a Nike Golf player on the PGA Tour since June 21, a streak which includes two major titles (Lucas Glover at the U.S. Open; Stewart Cink at the Open Championship); Catriona Mathew played the new 2009 ProV1x ball for the first time in competition in capturing the Ricoh Women’s British Open for her first major championship; and Greg Chalmers played a new set of yet-to-be released Titleist CB irons in tying for second (at 17 under) behind Woods in the Buick Open.

The golf world looks forward to new releases by Ping, largely because the company has made a 50-year habit of taking its time with new products. Both Karsten Solheim, the company’s late founder, and his son John, who heads it now, have been resolute in refusing to bring out new product until they’re certain its markedly better than what they already had.

So club aficionados will raise an eyebrow or two when checking out the new G15 and i15 lines, due in stores in mid-August. The G15 theme is high-tech game improvement and forgiveness, while the i15 family strives to merge a measure of forgiveness with the control and workability skilled players crave.

But club choice so far hasn’t necessarily gone in lockstep with player skill levels. Ping tour pro Mark Calcavecchia put the G15 driver into his bag at the RBC Canadian Open and made nine straight birdies at one point, a PGA Tour record.

The G15 family of irons employs a high-launch design and maximum forgiveness to bring more consistency to your iron play. There’s a new Custom Tuning Port in the back cavity to help resist twisting and move more weight to the perimeter. Also, weight from the thinned-out face has been put into the toe to regularize mis-hits.

The driver in the G15 family has a very thin crown, which leaves some grams to be put into external sole weights, dropping the center of gravity and sliding it back. Ping designed a proprietary shaft for this club that allows five more grams to be shifted into the head for greater forgiveness there.

The i15 irons, the control/shotmaker option, come in a progressive set that offers more forgiveness in the long clubs. The stainless steel heads get a little smaller as the clubs get shorter, and a tungsten toe insert maintains some forgiveness on mis-hits. That Custom Tuning Port is there, as well as a stabilizing bar, to engineer beneficial sound and feel qualities that are so often important to skilled players.

Like the G15, the i15 driver is also 460 cc. It features a pear-shaped head with a deep face and a bulge crown to enhance workability.

Lee Trevino has signed a new endorsement deal with Bridgestone Golf. He’ll play the company’s B330-RX golf ball, which has enjoyed great success at retail since it appeared late last year. The six-time major winner will star in an ad with fellow Bridgestone team member Fred Couples.

Trevino, who has won 29 times each on the PGA Tour and the Champions Tour, discovered the ball by accident during a round with friends. The ball, which is designed to deliver tour-like performance for amateur swing speeds, happened to be just right for Trevino’s game – so it’s in the bag. He’ll play it in all appearances this year.

Before the Open Championship, Tom Watson removed his Adams Puglielli 52-degree wedge from his bag in favor of an extra hybrid – an Adams Idea Pro (20 degrees). It was one of two hybrids in Watson’s bag (the other an 18 degree) and 28 Adams hybrids in play at Turnberry, the most in the field. Among the other players to employ Adams hybrids in Scotland were John Daly (Idea Pro, 14 and 18 degrees), Vijay Singh, Chad Campbell and low amateur Matteo Manassero of Italy. Singh has been known to play as many as three Idea a3 hybrids at times, most recently at last month's U.S. Open.

The true MVP of clubs in Watson’s near-historic march to the Claret Jug at age 59 was his Adams Speedline driver (9.5 degrees). Watson averaged 295 yards per drive for the week, nearly six yards longer than the combined average of the rest of the field. Also in Watson’s bag at Turnberry: Adams Insight hybrid-fairway wood (14.5 degrees), Adams Idea Pro irons (3-PW), Adams Tom Watson wedge (56 degrees), Odyssey White Hot XG No. 7 putter, and Titleist Pro V1 golf ball.

Stewart Cink, who defeated Watson in a four-hole playoff to win the Open Championship, played a Nike SQ Sumo2 Tour driver. That happens to be the same driver that Lucas Glover used to win the U.S. Open at Bethpage Black. Until the U.S. Open, square-headed drivers were 0 for the majors; now, they’ve won back-to-back major championships. This bit of news could bode well for Carl Pettersson at the PGA Championship next month, as he is the only other Nike staff player to use the Sumo2.

Click here to check out Stewart Cink's full bag.

Green is all the rage these days, even where things are already green. So it’s no surprise that Sebonack Golf Club, a Jack Nicklaus-Tom Doak course in Southampton, N.Y., plans to power its golf cars with solar energy. Sebonack claims to be the first in the nation to fuel its entire fleet this way.

Roof-mounted solar panels made by Danish firm SolarDrive suck in the light on both sunny and cloudy days and convert it into electricity for the club’s existing fleet of 40 Club Car models. That means the club will need to charge the cars less often, reducing its grid electricity consumption by 50 to 75 percent and doubling battery life. That will result in cost savings for the club, and 6.5 fewer tons of carbon emissions for the environment in general.

The U.S. Golf Association spread more than $1.35 million in its traditional April distribution, the organization announced earlier this week. Eighty-six U.S. golf programs benefited, and one-fifth of those work to make golf available to players with disabilities.

Examples would include: the GAIN (Golf: Accessible and Inclusive Networks) initiative of the Ohio Junior Golf Association, the Not Far From Par program for autistic children in the Bergenfield (N.J.) Public School District, a golf-based rehabilitation effort for young men with substance abuse and mental health problems run by The Therapeutic Center at Fox Chase in Philadelphia, and a program for physically or visually impaired golfers organized by the Great Lakes Adaptive Sports Association in Lake Forest, Ill., near Chicago.

The USGA Grants Initiative has given more than $65 million to worthy golf causes since 1997.