• 56% of players need more loft on their driver
• 50% of golfers play a shaft that is too stiff
• 65% of golfers need to play irons that are more forgiving
• 67% of golfers have their adjustable drivers set up incorrectly

• “They get on the plane. It’s just the two of them. They’re crushing beers. They take off. Have some food. This and that. They’re having a blast. Marino’s like, ‘This is the greatest time of my life! I’m flying private. I’m crushing beers!’

• “They’re standing kind of in the aisle or whatever and Ernie Els comes up to him and says something like, ‘Are you having a good time?’…and Els is like, ‘Now we fight!’ and straight-up headbutts him..hard…Ernie starts throwing him around all over the place, and the co-pilot comes back screaming.”

• Els essentially confirmed the story was true on the No Laying Up podcast earlier this week.

• Bill Speros profiles the commentator/host/comedian…”Feherty has battled drug and alcohol addition for many years but found that he could not say “no” to his own son’s request for money, even though he believed in his head that money would likely fuel his son’s drug habit.”

• “On Shey’s 29th birthday-July 29, 2017- Feherty got a call from his son, Rory, saying that Shey died earlier in the day. His death was ruled by a coroner to be the result of a mixture of alcohol and cocaine.”

• ‘”The truth is, I’d broken down on several occasions and given him money again. He was so sweet, and I couldn’t say no to him. Plus, like all of us addicts, he was a very good liar. He convinced me the money wasn’t for drugs. I’m sure I knew deep down he was lying, but I wanted to believe he was really on the way to coming out on the other side,” he told Golf Digest.”

• Dimeglio writes…”Opened in 2006, the Learning Lab is the backbone of Woods’ goal to provide kids a safe place to learn, explore and grow. The Lab offers students from low-income households and underfunded schools a variety of classes in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).”

• “Hitting a golf shot isn’t going to make anything better,” said Woods, the headliner in this week’s Quicken Loans National at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm in Bethesda, Maryland. “What we’re going to do, beyond our lifetimes, is lead education into the future. And that to me is far more important than anything I have ever won.

Read it.

• Graham Parker examines the conundrums in an excellent piece for the New York Times.

• “For players and managers there’s a calculus at play when deciding which tournaments to play each summer – one that is informed not just by the travel logistics of juggling between European and PGA Tour events, but by a player’s performance, tour standings and (in Ryder Cup years) the chance to get a preview of tournament venues.”

• “It can make for difficult decisions. Francesco Molinari, who is fourth in the European Ryder Cup rankings and is 15th in the world rankings, has spoken in the past of how he “loves” Le Golf National, which is just outside of Paris. The Italian is a three-time runner-up at the Open de France, and had he competed this week would have been arriving on a rare streak of playing well.”

• “I don’t think I need to prove myself that I’m good enough for the team,” Kaymer said. “I’ve done it in the past that I’m good enough but right now my results don’t really show what I’m capable of, and I have only two months’ time.”

• “So I will put everything into the next couple months that I have. I’m going to play a lot. I play all the Rolex Series Events just to gain points. I would hate to miss out. But in the end of the day, you need to be realistic.

During the the third round of the U.S. Senior Open at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colo., 10 years ago, Dottie Pepper–commentating for NBC–came closer to a black bear than she’d ever like to.

• Golf Digest’s John Strege writes...”I look up, and thank God we were in commercial break,” she said. “Here he comes full tilt, and he’s coming right at me. ‘It’s the bear! It’s the bear!’ He has making a dead beat for me.”

• “She dropped her yardage book and tentatively began to run. “Then I remembered, you’re not supposed to run,” she said….The bear eventually passed by and then through the fans on the left-hand side of the fairway-“they split like the Red Sea,” she said-and eventually made its way through the West Course and back into the wilderness.” (USGA’s photo below)