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Bryson DeChambeau’s WITB for 2023 features some interesting changes

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Former US Open champion and world number one Bryson DeChambeau is now a fully fledged member of LIV Golf, but whilst his style may not have changed, the tools of the trade have recently done so.

The 29-year-old, with a best of eighth place in seven LIV events, and with no victory since the 2021 Arnold Palmer Invitational, still provokes memories of his extraordinary distance:

Like most players, Bryson is a tinkerer, but after his agreement with Cobra ended at the turn of the year, there was more than the usual interest when, three days ago, he posted a video of the clubs in his current ‘whole new’ bag.

Given Bryson’s almost continual search for increased ball- speed and extra distance, the Long Drive World Championship runner-up is always going to attract attention when discussing his sticks, and the video already has close to 200,000 views.

He started the video by saying he is ‘super stoked’ and is looking forward to a ‘new year, new me’, before praising his new ‘Crushers‘ bag – the name of the team he captains for LIV, containing Mayakoba winner Charles Howell III and fourth-placed Paul Casey, who combined for 23 of the 26-under winning score.

During the video, Bryson confirms his irons remain the same length throughout, varying only in loft and weight, and he started working his way from the (usually) shortest clubs in the bag. But there are changes.

 

He still has his 56-degree Artisan wedge but has added a Ping Glide 4.0, with the same loft but a wider bounce, both now covering different turf conditions.

Having removed his 3-wood due to ‘flattening the face’ he says he is working on getting a new one.

Bryson is now playing Ping i230 irons  all the way through 60-degree, 56, 50 and 45-degree, made with a “draw-bias bounce and a closed face.” He is particularly impressed with a “slot” that seems to assist the clubs in going through the rough in much easier fashion and helped for the times he was in the thicker stuff during LIV Mayakoba.

The eight-time PGA Tour said that “Ping have done a really good job with [the length of the clubs]” and goes on to his Ping Crossover 2-iron with 15-degree loft, a “hybrid driving iron” that offers him “piercing bullets.”

He admiits that the question everyone wants to know is, “What driver am I using?” and he tells us that he is now using the TaylorMade Stealth driver, with 8-degree standard loft, although he is working with the manufacturer to produce less spin.

He has retained a Ping LST driver as his back-up, and again is working on a few things, mainly “face stuff.”

Finally, Bryson says he is keeping his LA Golf C2L-180 putter, although he has changed the angle of the grip and added lead tape to change the weight. Happy though he is, he is “working on stuff” with the company’s new carbon shaft, and is excited to see where that goes in the near future.

This is an experimental stage in Bryson DeChambeau’s career, so while he may have been “impressed by my own game, especially how far I hit it,” you get the impression there is more experimentation to come.

This is, after all, the player that carries several rulers marked in 5-inch sections so that he can have a spacial reference to how far to aim it.

The ‘new’ Bryson certainly seems happy with where he is at and is at pains to point out how much new Crushers GC merchandise there will be be but, ultimately, he admits, “I’m just trying stuff out.”

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‘Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight’ – LPGA pro offers candid take following rough AIG Women’s Open finish

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An opening round of 77 left LPGA pro Jenny Shin with a mountain to climb at last week’s AIG Women’s Open.

However, fighting back with rounds of 69 and 67, Shin found herself six shots off the lead and just outside the top 10 heading into Sunday as she went in search of her first major victory.

Shin, who won the US Girls’ Junior at just 13, couldn’t back those rounds up on Sunday, though, and after playing her opening nine holes of the final round in level par, she then bogeyed three holes coming home to slip down the leaderboard and eventually finish T23.

Taking to X following the final round, Shin offered a frustrated and honest take on how she was feeling, posting: “Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight. What a crappy way to finish.”

Shin has made 11 cuts in 13 starts on the LPGA Tour this season, but has been plagued by frustrating Sunday finishes throughout the year. Shin ranks 102nd on tour this year out of 155 for Round 4 scoring in 2025.

Miyu Yamashita won the 2025 AIG Women’s Open with a composed final round of 70 to win her first major of her career by two strokes.

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How a late golf ball change helped Cameron Young win for first time on PGA Tour

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Cameron Young won the Wyndham Championship on Sunday for his first victory on the PGA Tour.

Young dominated all weekend at TPC Sedgefield, running away from the pack to win by six strokes and put himself in contention for a Ryder Cup pick in September.

Ahead of the event, the 28-year-old switched to a Pro V1x prototype golf ball for the first time, following recent testing sessions with the Titleist Golf Ball R&D team.

Interestingly, Young played a practice round accompanied by Fordie Pitts, Titleist’s Director of Tour Research & Validation, at TPC Schedule early last week with both his usual Pro V1 Left Dot ball and the new Pro V1x prototype.

Per Titleist, by the second hole Young was exclusively hitting shots with the Pro V1x prototype.

“We weren’t sure if he was going to test it this week, but as he was warming up, he asked to hit a couple on the range,” Pitts said. “He was then curious to see some shots out on the course.  Performance-wise, he was hitting tight draws everywhere. His misses were staying more in play. He hit some, what he would call ‘11 o’clock shots,’ where again he’s taking a little something off it. He had great control there.”

According to Titleist, the main validation came on Tuesday on the seventh hole of his practice round. The par 3 that played between 184 and 225 yards during the tournament called for a 5-iron from Young, or so he thought. Believing there was “no way” he could get a 6-iron to the flag with his Left Dot, Young struck a 5-iron with the Pro V1x prototype and was stunned to see the ball land right by the hole.

“He then hits this 6-iron [with the Pro V1x prototype] absolutely dead at the flag, and it lands right next to the pin, ending up just past it,” Pitts said. “And his response was, ‘remarkable.’ He couldn’t believe that he got that club there.”

Following nine holes on Tuesday and a further nine on Wednesday, Young asked the Titleist team to put the ProV1x balls in his locker. The rest, as they say, is history.

Check out Young’s winning WITB here.

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Rickie Fowler makes equipment change to ‘something that’s a little easier on the body’

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Rickie Fowler fired an opening round of one-under par on Thursday at the Wyndham Championship, as the Californian looks to make a FedEx Cup playoff push.

Fowler is currently 61st in the standings, so will need a strong couple of weeks to extend his season until the BMW Championship, where only the top 50 in the standings will tee it up.

Heading into the final stretch of the season, Fowler has made an equipment switch of note, changing into new iron shafts, as well as making a switch to his driver shaft.

The 36-year-old revealed this week that he has switched from his usual KBS Tour C-Taper 125-gram steel shafts to the graphite Aerotech SteelFiber 125cw shafts in his Cobra King Tour irons, a change he first put into play at last month’s Travelers Championship.

Speaking on the change to reporters this week, Fowler made note that the graphite shafts offer “something that’s a little easier on the body.”

“I mean, went to the week of Travelers, so been in for, I guess that’s a little over a month now. Something that’s a little easier on the body and seemed to get very similar numbers to where I was at. Yeah, it’s gone well so far.”

Fowler has also made a driver shaft change, switching out his Mitsubishi Diamana WB 73 TX for a UST Mamiya Lin-Q Proto V1 6 TX driver shaft in his Cobra DS-Adapt X, which he first implemented a couple of weeks ago at the John Deere Classic.

However, according to Fowler himself, the testing and potential changes are not done yet.

“Probably do some more testing in some different weight configurations with them once I get some time. Yeah, I feel like we’re always trying to search, one, to get better but are there ways to make things easier, whether that’s physically, mentally, whatever it may be. So yeah, I thought they were good enough to obviously put into play and looking forward to doing some more testing.”

Fowler gets his second round at TPC Sedgefield underway at 7.23 a.m ET on Friday.

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