Stewart Cink Using Postseason Events to Test New Gear
One of the perks of winning the 2009 British Open for Stewart Cink has been a first-ever trip to Bermuda and a chance to compete in the Grand Slam of Golf. While he's assured of leaving the island with a better appreciation for the Dark and Stormy, he'll need to play well to beat Lucas Glover, Angel Cabrera and Y.E. Yang and win the $600,000 first prize.
On the windswept Port Royal Golf Course in Southampton, Cink is planning to put Nike's new Victory Red driver into play for the very first time. But that's only the beginning of the changes he's facing. Just like the skies that he Twittered about on Monday afternoon, there are ominous clouds on the horizon for Cink and other PGA Tour players: pending rule changes that limit the volume and sharpness of grooves.
"I want to be ready to go and not have any big surprises with the grooves," he said Monday afternoon from Bermuda. "So I'm going to play a little extra this year just to be familiar with that."
Winning at Turnberry qualified Cink for the WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai, and he's also going to play the Wendy's Three Tour Challenge in Las Vegas and the Chevron World Challenge (Tiger Woods's event) in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
While the former Georgia Tech All-American isn't crazy about the idea of changing both his irons and his golf ball at the same time, there is no way around it. The grooves in his Nike Forged CCi irons, as well as his wedges, will become non-conforming starting on Jan. 1, 2010.
"The one thing that I learned last week at The Oven [Nike's test facility] is that the golf ball I'm using now [Nike's ONE Tour D] is probably a little too hard to be a realistic option for next year with the new grooves," he said.
A softer ball could cut into driving distance for Cink and other Tour pros, but it should also produce more control around the greens, which will be critical when playing the lower-spin grooves. Within Nike's current ball line, the One Tour ball might be Cink's best choice in 2010.
"I'm okay with the changes," Cink said, "but I don’t know that going this aggressively was necessary because it’s a radical change with the wedges. If you are on the edge of the rough, or if conditions are damp like they are here in Bermuda right now, there are going to be some shots hit that are quite ugly and not too attractive to fans. And that scares me a little."
Grooves that are less sharp can't dig into the ball's cover as easily, so the ball comes off the face with less spin. Grooves with less volume than the current square grooves will channel less water and debris off the face at impact, possibly leading to fliers out of light rough and maybe even the middle of the fairway on dewy mornings.
"That's where I think you cross over into a little bit of absurdity," he said.
In Bermuda, Cink is going to closely watch Glover in the fairways; the U.S. Open champion won at Bethpage using a set of Nike Forged CCi irons that are nearly identical to Cink's. Glover will be playing this week with a new set of Nike's Victory Red Forged Half Cavity irons made with grooves that conform to next year's rules.
The 2010 season starts in 10 weeks. That's not a lot of time to practice not looking absurd.
(Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
Posted by: Phil | Oct 23, 2009 10:29:01 AM
Anyone who thinks these pros are playing easy courses has never played a PGA course. Can't you guys just get over that they are very good at what they do. Playing golf is their job, they're not whining, they're saying that they'll have to make adjustments. Imagine if someone came into your office and said you had to start using a typewriter and mailing all communication instead of using email. You'd probably whine a little too (probably a lot more then these guys have done). So quit your jealous belly aching and save up for 2024, which is actually the only time that you'll have to buy new clubs.
Posted by: tony | Oct 22, 2009 11:50:56 PM
This groove change is going to go down as the worst decision ever made by a professional sport. Instead of growing the rough a bit they want us all to pay for new clubs!! The USGA should make equipment manufacturers take back all the non conforming clubs and provide conforming ones for no charge.
Posted by: JHub | Oct 22, 2009 12:42:25 PM
I have to agree with T hacker's post. Making new equipment for golf has been going on since golf started. this really is nothing new to anyone. Improvments is what has grown the game of golf to where it is today. I feel that when PGA players are shooting -25 or more(less) on a course for millions of dollar purses is rediculous. Why are they not having them play on more difficult courses all the time? This to me is a bigger issue that equipment. Golf is one of the most difficult sports out there(whether some people want to hear that or not) and yet some of the courses the PGA players are playing have fairways wider than the lenght of football fields and greens bigger than most peoples back yards. The courses they should be playing need to be way more difficult, scores should be somewhere around E all the time. Us fans would like to see that these guys are really human also.
Posted by: T hacker | Oct 22, 2009 7:55:41 AM
We high handicappers (and I rarely break 100) look up to these guys and wonder how they make it look so easy. There is no denying the skill level and the dedication, BUT they play on perfect fairways and greens, consistent bunker sand, even the rough is manicured to their exact specs, they have clubs specially made for their height and swing, they have someone shlepping their clubs in all weather conditions, etc etc etc. Try the conditions the muni players face? Even the lower end CC's are ragged most of the time, no one fixing ball marks, spike marks, rakes a trap. I'm not saying I'm even breaking 90 with all the PGAdvantages but I'm just saying, golf isn't supposed to be easy.
Posted by: M Taylor | Oct 21, 2009 7:22:47 PM
Seems that Glover has done well with the new equipment with the conforming groves, so Stewart don't have that much to worry about now. He could get similar clubs to Lucas since they seemed to have been using identical clubs previously.
Posted by: Jason | Oct 21, 2009 3:50:11 PM
Poor Stewart, waiting till the last minute to adjust to the new grooves. Better players have been preparing for this for most of this past season. However, grooves aren't the only changes the PGA should make; things like furrowing the bunkers and having more out-of-bounds areas (off the hospitality tent, Phil? Really?) are just two areas that would make golf more interesting to watch and more relevant to the average golfer.
Posted by: chris | Oct 20, 2009 11:08:40 PM
And again a professional Golf player comes across as whiney: "..flyers out of the rough...". I actually had been wondering where the flyers had gone. Trick is not to hit the ball into the rough. Think you can handle that Stewart?
Posted by: James | Oct 20, 2009 1:16:37 PM
I wish I had their "absurd" shots.