Nike has been out of the golf hard-goods game for eight-plus years, but that hasn’t stopped some of the biggest names in the sport from keeping the Swoosh relevant at the highest level of professional golf.

Brooks Koepka and Tony Finau continue to carry a Nike Vapor Fly Pro 3-iron that’s developed a cult following amongst gearheads. The hollow-bodied club isn’t all that different from many of today’s players-distance model, which is probably why there’s some staying power. Vapor Fly Pro is familiar and still packs a punch from over 230 yards.

A few years back, I asked Finau how he was handling the possibility of the face caving in on his 3-iron. The hollow cavity puts additional stress on the face, increasing the likelihood of caving at some point.

“The one I’m using is actually one of my two backups,” Finau told me. “My original lasted me about six years. So with my math, if this one lasts me six years, and my other backup lasts me another six years, I’ll be about 50 years old by the time I’m done using both. It’s a great club. It’s one I’ve had in the bag since 2015, and I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon. I hit it great.”

There’s a man with a realistic plan.

Koepka, on the other hand, doesn’t subscribe to the Scout motto: Always be prepared. During a recent content shoot with Koepka in Florida, Golf Digest Play editor Luke Kerr-Dineen caught a glimpse of the well-worn 3-iron, which led to a fascinating conversation. (Fascinating if you’re a gearhead.)

Koepka has been playing a Vapor Fly Pro 3-iron since 2016, but like Finau, there was always an assumption he’d replaced the original with a backup along the way. But you know what happens when you assume.

As Koepka revealed, he’s still playing the original that’s somehow managed to survive a myriad of blows at high speeds. Asked if he had a backup plan when the club face failed, Koepka offered a blunt response: “Don’t know and I honestly don’t care.” Fair enough!

If there’s one thing that separates Koepka’s 3-iron from nearly every club on tour, it’s the wear marks on the Fujikura Pro 95 Tour Spec shaft. Two thumbprint-sized divots have formed after nearly a decade of the shaft rubbing against the bag, something I’m not sure I’ve ever seen while covering the pro game.

The two wear marks are visible when Koepka addresses the club, but they aren’t enough of an eyesore to warrant replacing the shaft. If you’re keeping track at home, Koepka won’t test new heads and refuses to replace the shaft. The club has played a role in all five of Koepka’s major wins, so it’s easy to see why he doesn’t want to mess with a good thing.

“Once I get equipment that I like and I stick with it — I’m not a tinker,” Koepka told me a few years ago. “I don’t change. I keep it just how it is.”

Even if Koepka doesn’t have a backup plan, Ben Giunta, a former Nike Tour rep who owns and operates The Tour Van at LIV Golf events held in the United States, confirmed he has a backup head and shafts waiting for Koepka when the 3-iron finally bites the dust.

There’s a backup plan in place, even if Koepka doesn’t realise it quite yet.

The post Brooks Koepka’s 3-iron has undergone a shocking transformation appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

The following day, Scheffler was identified as Google’s most-searched golfer for 2024, breaking a two-decade run for Woods as golf’s king of the interwebs. All of the Tiger-Scottie talk eventually led to comparisons between Woods’ incredible 2000 season and Scheffler’s banner 2024 campaign.

Tiger won nine times, including three major championships. Scheffler won nine times, including a major and an Olympic gold medal. It’s natural to compare seasons and wonder if one is better than the other.

When asked during a Jack Nicklaus Aware presentation at a PGA Tour Superstore in Plano, Texas, how his season stacked up to Tiger’s 2000, Scheffler quickly squashed the comparisons.

“I think they’re a bit silly,” he said. “I think we’re always looking to compare somebody to Tiger Woods. I saw it a lot growing up. … There’s really only one Tiger, that’s just kind of it.”

Most golf fans would agree three consecutive major wins—which would eventually become four straight at the 2001 Masters—trumps a green jacket and gold medal. But if you need another reason to view Woods’ season as the best of all-time, just remember the 15-time major winner switched golf balls midway through the season at the Deutsche Bank-SAP Open in Hamburg, Germany.

And it wasn’t just any ball change. Unhappy with his performance at the 2000 Byron Nelson Classic (where he finished T-4), Woods opted to replace his Titleist Professional, which featured a liquid-filled core and wound construction, with Nike’s Tour Accuracy—a three-piece, solid construction prototype.

On the scale of drastic equipment changes, this one ranked right near the top. Not only was Woods changing balls mere weeks before the U.S. Open, but it was into a ball that boasted a markedly different construction than the Professional.

Woods was seeing roughly 2-3 mph of additional ball speed with the Tour Accuracy, which required him to adjust his carry yardages through the bag. It would have been natural to expect an adjustment period to the new ball, but Woods didn’t blink.

One week after playing the ball in Germany, Woods returned Stateside and won the Memorial by five shots. Then came a 15-shot win at the U.S. Open, followed by four wins in the next six starts.

Woods changed balls, arguably the one piece of gear pros are most hesitant to alter, and didn’t blink. To be clear, not every ball change is so seamless. Two years ago on the Chasing Majors podcast, Woods’ former caddie, Steve Williams, recalled Greg Norman’s switch to a high-spin Spalding ball, during the 1980s, that had the polar opposite effect on the Shark.

“When Tiger went to that Nike ball, it absolutely suited him,” Williams said. “But way back in the 1980s, Greg Norman played Spalding and went to the Tour Distance ball—he was obviously paid a lot of money to play Spalding and this new golf ball—and that ball was so detrimental to his career. It was the worst thing he ever did. That ball would’ve cost him two shots a round.”

For Woods, the drastic ball change allowed him to gain one to two shots per round, according to his looper, as he put together a stretch of golf that will most likely never be replicated.

“Every time you have a golf ball reacting to the way you want to hit it, I think that just frees you up and gives you confidence,” Williams said. “You’d have to say it was worth one or two shots per round, for sure.”

Scheffler may have the same number of wins at Woods, but only one can boast winning three majors immediately following a ball change.

On this week’s Golf IQ equipment podcast, we took a closer look at the Scheffler versus Woods debate and highlighted the ball change that’s rarely discussed. There’s also a deep dive into TaylorMade’s all-new Qi35 drivers, Justin Thomas’ driver hack and much more.

Main Image: Getty Images

The post Tiger Woods’ historic 2000 season was keyed by 1 surprising gear change appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

In May, when Tiger Woods launched his new golf apparel line Sun Day Red in partnership with TaylorMade Golf, he told a story explaining the background of the company’s logo. The design includes a leaping tiger with 15 stripes, which Woods said represented the number of major championships he won during his career.

“My goal is to ruin the logo,” Woods said when appearing with Carson Daly on the “Today Show,” joking about how he hoped to win more majors in the future. “I want to keep ruining the logo. If the trademark is this, then my job is to ruin it.”

That logo, still with its 15 stripes, is now at the centre of a trademark dispute.

On Wednesday, officials with Tigeraire, a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, company that manufactures cooling products, filed a motion of opposition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office requesting Sun Day Red’s trademark application be denied. As first reported by CNBC, Tigeraire officials contend the Sun Day Red logo “unlawfully hijacked” the design of its branding. Tigeraire’s logo also contains a leaping tiger.

“The actions of SDR, TaylorMade and Tiger Woods blatantly ignore Tigeraire’s long-standing protected mark, brand and identity, violate federal and state intellectual property law, and disregard the consumer confusion their actions create,” stated Tigeraire in the court filing.

On Thursday, Sunday Red LLC responded by filing a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Tigeraire, seeking, among other things, a declaration that Sun Day Red has not infringed on Tigeraire’s trademark rights and that there is no likelihood of consumer confusion between the two.

In the 24-page brief, Sun Day Red lawyers allege that Tigeraire has challenged the trademark in hopes of extracting “an unwarranted financial windfall from a larger and more successful brand based on threats of legal action and demands for exorbitant sums.”

According to Tigeraire’s website, the company was founded in 2020 with an original objective of creating “a cooler and more comfortable environment inside the helmets of the newly minted NCAA Championship football team, the LSU Tigers.” Its products incorporate small fans to offer cooling conditions inside helmets. Its consumer base eventually expanded to include industrial workers and recreational golfers, with a clip-on fan product added to its offerings.

Neither filing appears to prohibit Sun Day Red from producing or selling products with its logo as the process with the USPTO and the District Court play out.

Woods unveiled the creation of Sun Day Red in February after announcing in January that his 27-year association with Nike had come to an end. Sun Day Red began offering products in May.

Main Image: Kevork Djansezian

The post Tiger Woods’ Sun Day Red logo involved in trademark dispute appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Tiger Woods announced on Monday that he and Nike are parting ways after more than 27 years. Woods thanked the apparel giant’s co-founder, Phil Knight, and hinted at “another chapter” in a message posted to Twitter.

“Over 27 years ago, I was fortunate enough to start a partnership with one of the most iconic brands in the world. The days since have been filled with so many amazing moments and memories, if I started naming them, I could go on forever. Phil Knight’s passion and vision brought this Nike and Nike Golf partnership together and I want to personally thank him, along with the Nike employees and incredible athletes I have had the pleasure of working with along the way. People will ask if there is another chapter. Yes, there will certainly be another chapter. See you in LA!”

pic.twitter.com/at0tSskmRm

— Tiger Woods (@TigerWoods) January 8, 2024

Nike confirmed the end of this era with the following statement:

“For over 27 years, we have had the honor to partner with Tiger Woods, one of the greatest athletes the world has ever seen. Throughout the course of our partnership, we have witnessed along with the rest of the world, how Tiger not only redefined the sport of golf, but broke barriers for all of sport. We watched him set records, challenge conventional thinking and inspire generations of people around the globe. We are grateful to have been a part of it. We wish him the best in the future.”

It had been long rumored that this longtime partnership was ending with a 10-year deal Woods signed in 2013 coming to an end. When asked about his future with Nike at the PNC Championship in December, Woods responded, “I’m still wearing their product. I’m still wearing their product.”

Woods has worn only worn their product since turning pro in 1996. Woods announced that decision at his famous “Hello, World” press conference, which Knight attended, ahead of his pro debut at the Greater Milwaukee Open.

Woods inked a five-year, $40 million contract to wear the swoosh before ever hitting a shot as a pro. And his lucrative contracts with Nike have only grown since and were part of the reason he was Forbes’ highest-earning athlete on the planet for a decade straight from 2002-2011.

Through the years, Woods starred in many Nike commercials, and wore even more versions of his trademark Sunday red shirt. Woods is believed to be planning to make his 2024 PGA Tour debut next month at the Genesis Invitational. What he’ll be wearing in L.A., however, remains to be seen.

Image: Gustavo Caballero

The post Tiger Woods announces he and Nike are parting ways after nearly three decades, hints at ‘another chapter’ appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

THE 2022 US OPEN IS IN BOSTON.

By now, we’re sure you’ve retweeted all the jokes and read all scuttlebut swirling around the sleepy village of Brookline, but there’s one thing you might have missed … and it’s perhaps the Boston thing yet.

Rory McIlroy’s Lobstah Nikes. Warren Little

Those are the soles of Rory McIlroy’s Nike kicks, as spotted during his opening practice round at The Country Club on Monday. The right shoe features the word “lobstah,” the “r” appropriately absent, while the left features an illustration of New England’s trademark crustacean. A lobster doesn’t strike fear into the hearts of opponents quite like, say, a tiger, but when in Rome we guess.

McIlroy, fresh off a win at the Canadian Open on Sunday, will be looking to ride these bad boys to a fifth major victory this week. If he does manage to pull it off, expect celebratory lobster rolls for everyone.

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The post US Open 2022: Rory McIlroy’s lobster spikes might be the most Boston thing in golf history appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Tony Finau’s Nike outfit is the talk of the town (Tulsa in this case).

Seemingly every major tournament, Finau goes viral for his get-up, with golf’s fashion cops tasering each other in the face over whether Finau’s fits are fresh or fugly. See Sweatergate for reference:

I actually like the sweater Tony Finau is wearing but feel like Nike set him up with that hat pic.twitter.com/VAmxv6Iz5u

— Jake Woolf (@jakewoolf) April 9, 2022

That proud tradition continued at Southern Hills on Saturday when Tony Finau showed up to the range on a cold, misty morning dressed like the New York Botanical Garden.

Tony Finau takes the Nike flowering design to new heights pic.twitter.com/fJvIxuzZZ1

— NUCLR GOLF (@NUCLRGOLF) May 19, 2022

It’s like Tony Finau lost a bet with the Nike person in charge of scripting. #PGAChamp pic.twitter.com/19B8PjJtAH

— THP Golf (@THPGolf) May 21, 2022

The reaction of the Oklahoma gallery said it all.

Tony FInau. Richard Heathcote

Seconds after these images surfaced, the take whiplash began in earnest.

Tony Finau will wear literally anything Nike throws at him pic.twitter.com/FSIus5JvPs

— Christopher Powers (@CPowers14) May 21, 2022

https://twitter.com/willbardwell/status/1528042778436980743

Nike does Tony Finau so well. Love his major fits

— dillon (@lightlydhb) May 21, 2022

Ok, hear me out, Tony Finau's pullover today is pretty great

— Drew Cove (@covedrew) May 21, 2022

What the hell is Tony Finau wearing? I don’t hate it.

— Luke Warm (@warmluke_sports) May 21, 2022

Tony Finau should be arrested for wearing that pullover.

— Lord Sandwich (@JayCagle24) May 21, 2022

It’s not fair to malign the selfless keyboard warriors risking life and livelihood to bravely share their takes with the internet without sharing our own, however. So where do we fall on the love-it-or-loathe-it spectrum? Somewhere between indifferent and pretty good. All-over floral prints are very 2016, but still, it’s better than another beige sweater.

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The post PGA Championship 2022: You’ll never believe it, but the internet is in fits over Tony Finau’s Nike ‘fashion’ again appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By E. Michael Johnson
Editor’s Note: Twenty years ago, Tiger Woods put a Nike Tour Accuracy golf ball in play at the Deutsche-Bank-SAP Open in Germany, igniting a chain of events that caused a paradigm shift in the golf-ball industry in a little more than five months time. The below article is re-printed from the May 31, 2010 issue of Golf World that commemorated one of the seminal moments in the game in regards to equipment.

• • •

It was May 2000 when Hal Sutton heard that Tiger Woods had changed from a wound Titleist Professional 90 golf ball to Nike’s solid-core, urethane-covered Tour Accuracy sphere. Said Sutton, “That can be a very dramatic change in a person’s life.”

As it turned out, Woods managed just fine with the new ball. It was the golf-ball industry that underwent the dramatic change after Woods first teed up the Swoosh-logoed ball in competition 20 years ago yesterday—May 18, 2000, to be precise—at the Deutsche-Bank-SAP Open in Germany.

In early 2000, the golf world was abuzz with talk of the ball going too far. The focus, however, wasn’t so much on the ball, but on new drivers with excessive spring-like effect, including those that exceeded USGA rules. Nearly lost in the outcry was a win by Paul Azinger at the Sony Open in Hawaii using the Nike Tour Accuracy.

The lack of excitement over the Nike ball was understandable. Despite Callaway generating some interest over its multilayer, urethane-covered Rule 35 ball a few weeks earlier, market-leader Titleist continued to produce wound golf balls for the game’s best players.

Paul Severn

What the industry didn’t know was that Woods had been testing the solid-core ball since January 1999—nearly 18 months before he put it in play. According to Rock Ishii, Nike’s director of product development for golf balls, Woods saw his driver spin drop 600 to 700 rpms but asked the company to tweak some aspects of the ball. In 2000, before the Masters, he hinted to the company that he was going to put it in play “soon” but did not say when.

“Honestly, I was surprised he put it in play during the season,” said Ishii. “Tiger usually makes his changes during the off-season. In early May 2000 we had another session with him that went well, but Tiger said he still needed some time to adjust to the ball. I went back to Japan and by the time I got off the plane I had a message saying he was going to use the ball in Germany. I went to Germany and Tiger finished third, mainly due to a 7-iron on the 70th hole that flew the green and went in the water. I thought he might stop using the ball after that, needing more time to adjust to the distance gains.”

Instead, Woods used—and won—with the ball at Memorial. Still, Ishii wasn’t sure the ball would be used at the U.S. Open. “Tiger asked me to make him a couple hundred of the balls so he could take them home and practice with them so he could get ready for the U.S. Open,” said Ishii. “That’s when we knew he would play it. We also knew after he won so convincingly with it that it would probably signal a paradigm shift in the market and on tour.”

Matthew Stockman
Woods at the 100th US Open

That it did. Woods not only won Memorial and the U.S. Open (a mind-blowing 15-shot victory) but went on a run in the U.S. that saw him win six of eight events after the switch, including the British and Canadian Opens. Woods’ success had other players curious—which resulted in companies paying notice.

One such situation was Titleist and Davis Love III. Love tested the Nike ball prior to the 2000 British Open at St. Andrews and was mulling a lucrative deal from Nike. Titleist lured him back into the fold with a 10-year, full-line contract.

“As far as we’re concerned, we’re at war and Love was our Midway,” said Acushnet chairman and CEO Wally Uihlein at the time. “Anybody who thinks we’re lying and dying. I’ve got news for them. We’re beefing up, we’re not backing off. We take very seriously any threat to our franchise and any attempt to derail our position in the marketplace.”

Actually, Woods’ switch to the Tour Accuracy might’ve actually strengthened the Titleist ball franchise. Although already in the planning stage, Woods’ success with the Nike ball, and the subsequent desire of players to see what all the fuss was about, forced Titleist to get in the multilayer urethane game sooner than it had anticipated.

“I’d like to see what you have in R&D coming out,” said Phil Mickelson (a Titleist staff player) to Uihlein at the 2000 U.S. Open. What Titleist had was a “Laboratory Test Ball,” which would become the Pro V1. Uihlein acknowledged at the time that his talk with Mickelson was a key in the decision so start production of the ball.

“It would be foolish and naïve to think that 30 days after a discussion I had with Phil Mickelson that voila, something falls out of the white-coated laboratory that represents a magic elixir.”

The Pro V1 prototype was first shown to a large number of players at the 2000 SEI Pennsylvania Classic, generating so much talk that Golf World likened it to, “a carload of teenage girls on its way to an ’N Sync concert.”

A few weeks later the ball debuted in Las Vegas with 47 players putting the Pro V1 in play (the previous week only one Titleist player, Corey Pavin, had used a non-wound ball), including winner Billy Andrade, and the stampede to solid-core balls was on. By March of the following year nearly percent of the tour was using solid-core balls, a number that became 100 percent by the end of 2002. Vijay Singh’s win at the 2000 Masters was the last of the men’s majors won with a wound ball. The paradigm shift found its way to the consumer market as well, where golfers could now purchase tour-level balls that flew farther but didn’t cut and the Pro V1 became perhaps the best-selling ball in history.

A very dramatic change, indeed.

The post How Tiger Woods sparked a dramatic shift in the golf-ball business appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By E. Michael Johnson
Tiger Woods’ five Masters victories have spanned more than two decades and coincided with what many consider to be the Golden Age of golf equipment technology. Certainly Woods’ use of the multilayer, solid-core Nike Tour Accuracy TW ball was a paradigm shift for equipment used by tour players and the distances they hit them.

Woods’ Masters career has also seen players go from drivers in the 260 cubic-centimetre range to 460 ccs, and in Woods’ case, the move from steel to graphite shafts in metalwoods. A few things have stayed constant over time for Woods, however. He continues to use a Scotty Cameron putter, and he only carries two wedges in his bag along with his pitching wedge when most players use three and a pitching wedge.

Even at 43 years of age, Tiger still hits those muscle-back blade irons better than any human on earth. Here’s a look at the equipment that Woods has won his five Masters titles with.

Tiger Woods’ equipment through his five Masters titles:

Tiger Woods tees off on the 15th hole during the 1997 Masters. (Augusta National)

1997:
Ball: Titleist Professional 90
Driver: King Cobra (True Temper Dynamic Gold X 100), 9 degrees
3-wood: Titleist PT15, 15 degrees
Irons (2-4): Mizuno MP-29; (5-PW): Mizuno MP-14
Wedges: Cleveland 588 RTG (56, 60 degrees)
Putter: Scotty Cameron by Titleist Newport TE I3

The clubs Tiger used at the 1997 Masters Tournament (Augusta National)

[divider] [/divider]

Dom Furore/Golf Digest, Golf World

2001:
Ball: Nike Tour Accuracy TW
Driver: Titleist 975D (True Temper Dynamic Gold X 100), 7.5 degrees
3-wood: Titleist 970, 15 degrees
Irons (2-PW): Titleist 681 Forged
Wedges: Titleist Vokey (58, 60 degrees)
Putter: Scotty Cameron by Titleist Newport 2 Tiger

Tiger Woods and Stevie Williams during the 2001 Masters. (Augusta National)

[divider] [/divider]

2002:
Ball: Nike Tour Accuracy TW
Driver: Nike Forged Ti (True Temper Dynamic Gold X 100), 9.5 degrees
3-wood: Titleist 970, 15 degrees
Irons (2-PW): Titleist 681 Forged
Wedges: Titleist Vokey Design (58, 60 degrees)
Putter: Scotty Cameron by Titleist Newport 2 Tiger

[divider] [/divider]

Tiger Woods watches his tee shot on the 15th tee during the final round of the 2005 Masters. (Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images)

2005:
Ball: Nike One Platinum TW
Driver: Nike Ignite 460cc (Mitsubishi Diamana Blue Board 83), 8.5 degrees
3-wood: Nike T60 Ignite, 15 degrees
Irons (2-PW): Nike Forged Blades
Wedges: Nike Pro Combo (56 degrees), Nike TW Blade (60 degrees)
Putter: Scotty Cameron by Titleist Newport 2 Tiger

[divider] [/divider]

2019:
Ball: Bridgestone Tour B XS
Driver: TaylorMade M5 (Mitsubishi Diamana D+ 60TX), 9 degrees
3-wood: TaylorMade M5, 15 degrees
5-wood: TaylorMade M3, 19 degrees
Irons (3-PW): TaylorMade P7TW
Wedges: TaylorMade Milled Grind (56, 60 degrees)
Putter: Scotty Cameron by Titleist Newport 2 Tiger prototype

The post Masters 2019: The winning clubs Tiger Woods has used for all five of his Masters titles appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

So it should come as no surprise that the swoosh had a commemorative ad ready to roll after the final putt dropped, capitalizing on this historic moment. The video, which Nike tweeted out with the caption “Never stop chasing your crazy dream #justdoit,” will hit you in every feel imaginable. Enjoy, and have the tissues ready:

https://twitter.com/Nike/status/1117497381832933376

Yep, can’t make a commercial any better than that. It’s been a long time since that win at Torrey Pines in 2008, and this video not only captures the journey from then until now nicely, but it also captures his entire journey from when he was a child to now as well. And they did it all in 52 seconds, ending it perfectly with a young Woods stating “I’m gonna beat Jack Nicklaus.” Two years ago, that was not only unlikely, but it was virtually impossible. His career was all but over, and just being able to walk again without feeling pain would have been a victory. Now, he’s a 15-time major champion, putting him just three away from Jack Nicklaus’ all-time record of 18. With Bethpage Black and Pebble Beach hosting the next two majors, two venues Woods has won majors at before, he’s got a chance to get that much closer to the record in 2019.

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