Equipment Insider: Westwood wins with bag full of PING clubs

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Each week in the Equipment Insider, Adam Barr -- PGATOUR.COM's equipment columnist -- will provide breaking news, notes and analysis focused on PGA TOUR players. Adam will also appear in video segments for PGATOUR.COM.

Lee Westwood engineered his Memphis win with a lot of patience and a full bag of PING clubs. And there are times when they have to pick each other up, as it were, after a bit of operator error.

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Naturally, Westwood was looking for birdie on the par-5 16th, pretty much the easiest hole on the course and the last clear chance for birdie coming in. And although it was the bogey on No. 17 in regulation that ultimately made the playoff with Robert Garrigus and Robert Karlsson necessary, it must have been hard for Westwood to walk away from 16 with par.

"I hit a poor drive," Westwood said in the post-round press download. "I've not been completely comfortable with the swing this week, the drive, especially. Just didn't make a big enough shoulder turn and hit it to the right."

And that's what got him to 5-wood for his second shot into No. 16. The club was a PING Rapture V2, which the company describes as "super game improvement," words you don't often hear associated with the bag of a winner on the PGA TOUR. But it's in there, largely because such winners are often more results-oriented than label-conscious.

PING Redwood Anser

The Rapture has a stainless steel body with a heavy tungsten sole plate, shoving the weight down and back with predictable results: a high flight with medium spin. The face isn't overly deep, so the entire construction can plow through rough efficiently. And if the face angle does skew a little to the un-square, the perimeter weighting can provide some forgiveness and keep the ball in the relevant part of the golf course. After all, par may be disappointing at times, but not as much as bogey.

Westwood's irons are a little closer to his better-player roots. The PING i10s have a shorter, more blade-like head than those found in most recreational player bags. But a cavity back design moves weight to the rims and provides room for a custom tuning port, which PING says creates consistent feel and performance across the face. The flight is lower and penetrating, in line with what many TOUR players prefer.

Moving even further toward the classic look -- but incorporating a bit of the modern -- is Westwood's putter, a PING Redwood Anser. The Anser shape is a golf equipment byword by now. But unlike some older putter models, this one isn't cast. It's milled from a solid block of stainless steel. Check a lot of pro bags these days and you'll see many milled putters; the solidity of the feel is a major attraction. The Redwood name, by the way, comes from Redwood City, Calif., where Ping patriarch Karsten Solheim made his first putters in the late 1950s.

BOTTOMS UP: For Garrigus, the most important piece of equipment may have had nothing to do with titanium or urethane. Maybe plastic instead, as in containers.

Garrigus got hold of some bad clam chowder in Phoenix in the days before the tournament, and paid the gastric price. The violent bout of food poisoning stripped him of a lot of fluids and about six pounds off his playing weight of 200.

So it was heavy on the water and sports drinks for Garrigus at one of the hottest tournaments of the year. Temperatures each day easily crossed 90.

When he was able to bend over in a more profitable way again, Garrigus was pleased about his putting, which he says has been improving since the HP Byron Nelson in Dallas three weeks ago. Part of the reason is his extraordinarily short putter.

While standard putter lengths fall into the 33-34-35-inch range, Garrigus's is 29 1/2, and that's after a recent lengthening. His caddie lobbied for a full 30 inches, but Garrigus said there's something about keeping it in the 20s that makes him comfortable. It certainly gets his eyes over the ball. And it keeps him focused on a solid stroke.

"Because I have such a short putter, when I get over it, everything is out and extended," Garrigus said after Saturday's round. "Sometimes my left elbow gets out of the way and everything breaks down. So I've been tucking my left elbow in to my side so my shoulders rock more. And I'll tell you what, I've been making so many good strokes and I haven't really worried about where it's going. That's really what you're supposed to do, the top players in the world do it."

The head of the truncated flatstick is a face-balanced Scotty Cameron model.