Equipment Insider: Ability to adjust key in Cook's win

text size

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.

Adjustment: it's the price of entry in top-level sports. Good hitters do it when a good pitcher's slider, formerly lackluster, starts nipping the corner of the plate. Quarterbacks do it when defenses wise up to the decoy tight end.

Check out more of Adam Barr's equipment coverage at adambarrgolf.com.

And golfers do it just about every shot, blending factors that change daily or by the minute: weather, contact quality, turf conditions or whether par will be good enough.

Thanks to constant adjustments that enabled him to hang tough with Michael Allen all day Sunday, par on the final hole was good enough for John Cook to defend his title at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco.

One key reset for Cook was attitude-based. He had little trouble with the rough all week, hitting just south of 80 percent of his fairways, T6 in the field. But it was his second shot on the par-4 18th that peeled off into rain-soaked rough, presenting Cook with testy wedge shot, slightly uphill and close enough to the green to require more finesse than force.

Cook didn't exactly nuke the wedge -- on a dry day, it would have been closer than the 14 feet he left himself for par. But a confident stroke with his Nike Method putter iced it for Cook, and all Allen could do was smile and shake hands.

In My Bag: John Cook

Driver: Nike VR STR8-FIT Tour 8.5 degrees Hybrid: Nike VR Hybrid 18 degrees Irons: Nike VR Pro Blades (4-pw VR Pro Blades; 3 VR Pro Combo pocket cavity) Wedges: Nike VR 53 degree; VR V-rev 58 degree Putter: Nike Method Ball: One Tour

Courtesy photo

The channel in the sole of the VR STR8-FIT driver helps preserve yardage, Nike says.

The Method got a fair amount of attention in the summer when Tiger Woods put it in the bag temporarily, resting his usual Scotty Cameron in an attempt to overcome putting woes. The face of the Method, when first made, contains strategically placed openings into which a secret-formula rubbery material called polymetal is placed.

The polymetal "grooves" are shaved down flush with the milled steel face, but they still grip and lift the ball at impact. This gets the forward roll going sooner and all but shuts down unwanted skid, Nike says. The steel face provides audible feedback, which is important to many players for distance control.

Nike's approach is just one expression of a recent trend in putter design that focuses on how much of the face actually contacts the ball. Grooves, special materials, or combinations put less putter face onto the ball at impact, the idea being to increase accuracy by shortening skid and lengthening roll. It's an accepted fact nowadays that skid is erratic, but a solid roll stays on course.

It was a big weekend for Nike all around the Pacific Rim, with Francesco Molinari winning the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions in Shanghai. Like Cook, Molinari used the Nike VR STR8-FIT Tour driver. Like most top-level drivers, the STR8-FIT is adjustable (there's that theme again). But with so many drivers offering that advantage now, manufacturers have been looking for technologies that set them apart. Yes, you guessed it: they're having to adjust to adjustability.

Nike's intriguing solution with this driver is the compression channel in the sole, a little behind the face. At impact, Nike says, the channel narrows momentarily, then rebounds quickly enough to return energy to the ball. This encourages uniform ball speeds over more of the face, Nike says -- that is, misses don't suffer as much yardage loss.

IT'S ALL RELATIVE, BUT IT'S STILL GOLF: Officially, Barney Adams is retired from the management of the equipment company he founded, Adams Golf. But you can't stop a mind like that, which is something we can all be happy about. When he's not annoying bass with a fly rod, Adams is always thinking about golf and how to make it better. That's what won him the 2010 Ernie Sabayrac Award from the PGA of America for lifetime contributions to the game.

"There has been much written about the state of the golf industry," Adams says. "Not enough new players, the game taking too long, not enough fun, too expensive, it's a long list.

"What if I said there is an easy fix that can come from within the game, well within the rules and upon analysis, it's obvious. We amateurs need to play the same course as do the PGA Tour players."

But in Adams' view, doing that requires us to think more about where the shots (particularly drives) land, not raw yardage. Always one to deal strictly in verifiable facts, Adams reminds us of what we all know but frequently deny: most of us drive the ball in the 200-to-215 range. Some longer, to be sure, but most of us credit ourselves with more yardage than we actually achieve.

Therefore, why do we insist on playing 6,600-yard courses, or even on going back to the 7,000 tees? The effect, considering our tee balls, is to put ourselves at 8,000 yards, because we can't hit it 280-300, as TOUR players can. Second shots get too long; errors arise, minutes of un-fun ball-searching pile on.

The real yardage at which we would get the TOUR experience, Adams says, is about 6,100 to 6,400. Some par 5s become available in two. And to those who think they'll be flipping every second shot, Adams has a ready reply.

"Occasionally you'd hit wedges, but remember the analysis: this equalizes your game to that of the TOUR players.They don't hit wedges or 9-irons everywhere, and neither will you."

Something to think about, if only for speed of play. Maybe we have to....I dunno. Adjust?