Latest news with #StrokesGained:OfftheTee
USA Today
3 days ago
- Sport
- USA Today
'Precocious and ferocious:' Aldrich Potgieter redefines the term long driver on PGA Tour
Aldrich Potgieter is redefining the term long driver on the PGA Tour. The 20-year-old rookie South African is on the verge of setting a new single-season record with an average driving distance of 327.6 yards, more than four yards better than Rory McIlroy, who is the next longest. When told during his press conference ahead of this week's FedEx St. Jude Championship that he had slipped to No. 2 in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, he said, 'if we can get back to No. 1, I think that would be nice.' Potgieter's game still is very raw but he powered his way to a playoff victory at the Rocket Classic in Detroit last month and became the only rookie winner on Tour to qualify for the FedEx Cup Playoffs. He enters the week at No. 43 in the season-long standings and inside the top 50, the magic number who advance to next week's BMW Championship. At 20 years, 9 months, 16 days, he became the seventh-youngest PGA Tour winner since the start of 1983 – just 10 days older than Tiger Woods when he earned his debut victory – and the youngest player from South Africa to win on the PGA Tour. To borrow a line from singer-songwriter Kim Carnes, he's precocious and ferocious. At age 17, he won the 2022 British Amateur Championship, becoming the second youngest winner in the history of the championship. He lapped the field at the 2023 Junior Invitational at Sage Valley, a prestigious junior tournament that attracts an international field, by 10 strokes and turned professional in 2023, wasting little time in becoming the youngest winner in Korn Ferry Tour history by winning the 2024 Bahamas Great Abaco Classic at age 19. Earlier this season, in February, he showed great promise at the Mexico Open before losing in a playoff. He proceeded to miss the cut at seven of his next eight starts before a trip back to South Africa allowed him to recharge his batteries and reset. Potgieter has a stocky build and grew up playing rugby and wrestling, which may be a big reason for his natural ability to cruise at a ball speed of 192 to 194 with his driver. [The Tour average is 174 and Potgieter ranks first at 190.49.] 'The speed this kid has,' said his swing coach Justin Parsons. 'When he's doing that, he doesn't even look like he's going that hard at it. He does it with ease.' Speaking on the 'Son of a Butch' podcast with Claude Harmon III, Parsons compared Potgieter to Dustin Johnson, the former world No. 1 and two-time major winner. 'It's a similar type of pattern to the way that they kind of see the game and the way that they play the game,' Parsons said. 'If guys like that drive it really straight under pressure and we do our job helping to educate and train them with the finer details of distance spin control, and they can do the rest of the stuff because they're really good golfers, then they become kind of hard to live with.' Harmon III, son of famed instructor Butch Harmon, noted that while speed is a blessing there is a rate of diminishing return – the faster a golfer swings the club, the farther a player hits it but also the propensity for a ball to stray fuather offline. Distance gapping issues in his irons is one of the challenges that Potgieter must face along with controlling his flight of the ball to become a more complete player. Can Potgieter learn to harness his superpower? Parsons pointed out that distance control is a skill that can be developed. Johnson, for instance, enjoyed his peak years once he learned to dial in his wedges and fully take advantage of his length off the tee. 'He's a race car driver and you're trying to get them to control the car and get the car around the track without crashing it,' Harmon said, but at the same time he advised Potgieter to stay aggressive. 'Don't take the hand brake off, be Max Verstappen.' Potgieter conceded that he knew there would be a learning curve graduating to the PGA Tour but he has exceeded his own high expectations. 'You're playing with Scottie Scheffler and Ludvig Aberg, who's also fresh on the Tour and came out booming straight away, and Scottie has been out here and we can see how good he's playing as well. It's tough to compare your game to those guys, and I thought just giving it a year, you kind of get that feel a little bit,' he said. 'It's nice to see good results come from the first year on the Tour. You always come in not knowing exactly how things will play out, so it's nice to see some good results through the year.' It's easy to forget that Potgieter is just 20 and doing things that only the likes of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy and a select few have ever done at such a young age. He's still learning the finer points of the game and his big weakness may be one that all prodigies face. 'They don't know what they don't know,' Harmon III said. Parsons's stable of pros includes major winners Louis Oosthuizen and Brian Harman and he's coached Harris English to top 10 in the world but in Potgieter, he recognizes he has a special talent that. 'You just tell yourself, 'Don't mess this up,'' Parsons said, 'because he's got a long runway in front of him.'
USA Today
20-05-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Are YOU playing an illegal driver, new Titleist irons, Scottie Scheffler's hot putter
Are YOU playing an illegal driver, new Titleist irons, Scottie Scheffler's hot putter Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy's drivers were deemed non-conforming. Could you be playing an illegal driver? Plus new Titleist irons hit the tour. Among the storylines that people will remember when they look back at the 2025 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow -- along with Scottie Scheffler's win, Jon Rahm's collapse, and mud balls -- is the curfuffle surrounding driver testing that forced both Scheffler and Rory McIlroy to remove their gamers and go with new driver heads 48 hours before the season's second major. Both pros use a TaylorMade Qi10 driver that has an adjustable hosel, which makes removing one head and attaching another a process that can be completed in less than a minute. Both pros have access to back-up drivers, and with the USGA conducting the tests on drives on Tuesday, TaylorMade and other equipment makers still had their tour vans on site at Quail Hollow, with each 18-wheeler packed with gear. So, you might think, what's the big deal about popping a new 8-degree head on for Scottoie and a new 9-degree head on for Rory? The reality varies by player, but two things are at work in situations like this: Tiny differences - A PGA Tour van like TaylorMade's double-decker truck has drawers filled with driver heads, iron heads, shafts, grips and every piece of gear you can imagine, and everything is measured precisely and labeled. A driver head marked 9 degrees could have a sticker on it saying "8.9" or "9.15" to indicate the tour-van-measured loft. Recreational golfers can't feel those microscopic differences and the clubs would perform identically in the hands of nearly every golfer, but pros like Scheffler and McIlroy are among the most elite golfers in the world. They can feel tiny differences, and when you are playing for millions of dollars, those differences can matter. Brands works very, very hard to create back-up drivers and equipment that are identical to a clubs pros use, but there can be tony differences between one driver and another. Which leads to ... Trust - Two weeks ago, Scheffler won the CJ Cup Byron Nelson with a score of 31 under. He hit 40 or 56 fairways (T-4 for the week) and averaged 304 yards per tee shot. Last season, using the same driver he had in the bag that week (and that was deemed non-conforming at the PGA Championship) he finished second in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee. Scottie had developed a lot of trust in that club, just as Rory, who finished fourth last year in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee and is leading the PGA Tour in that category this season, trusted the Qi10 he had in the bag. The backup drivers both players used might have matched the gamers Scheffler and McIlroy had to stop using, but trust is earned and any doubt can lead to a dip in performance. Scheffler won his third major championship using a backup driver, while McIlroy did not perform up to his lofty standards with the new driver. Was it Rory, the club, a combination of both? He wasn't talking, so we'll never really know.
