Phil Mickelson plans to carry a pair of drivers in his bag this week. Both clubs are Callaway Fusion FT-3s, but one is set up for a longer draw and the other for a controlled fade. Mickelson says he'll hit the first club for distance and the second when control off the tee matters most.
"I had played the course exclusively with a fade and there are a number of holes where you can move the ball left to right and have it be very effective. I have a driver that I have been working with Callaway on getting some extra pop, and this thing goes, it really goes," Mickelson said of his first driver.
"But there are holes like No. 7, you have to have control of your ball, same on 10 and 13, you have to control that fade. So that's where I came up with the two driver concept. I can hit a little controlled cut on the holes where distance isn't as big of a factor, like No. 7, like No. 10 and I can use that draw driver and get a little extra pop on some holes. Maybe No. 8 I might be able to go for now in two and some of the other par 5s, I can move it 15 left to right and get it down there. It's nice having that little extra punch."
The internal weighting of Callaway's FT-3 driver is designed to promote either a draw, fade or neutral hit. Callaway uses a carbon composite for the clubhead, combined with a titanium face, to free up weight that can be positioned as needed to help the golfer get a particular shot.
"Because we were able to free 44 grams of discretionary weight as a result of the carbon composite body in the FT-3 Driver, we have been able to reposition that weight in a variety ways on both the horizontal and vertical axes to impact center of gravity and moment of inertia," said Larry Dorman, senior vice president of global press and public relations for Callaway Golf. "This benefits every level of golfer, from tour pros to weekend players."
It's a good concept, but does leave golfers who want to work the ball with a choice to make. Mickelson said he had tried to limit himself to one driver, but the conditions at Augusta really dictate that he have two this week. He experimented with two drivers last week in his run-away win at the BellSouth Classic.
"I had been working in the off-season to get this longer driver in play," he said. "We got it dialed in to where I could hit just a very long draw. But all of the little finesse shots like carving it around the trees on 13 and so forth, the club wasn't designed for that and just wasn't doing it."
So that leaves Mickelson needing to choose which club he removes from the bag to make room for his extra driver. He's already removed his sand wedge, believing that a pitching wedge, lob wedge and gap wedge will be enough for his needs. Now he's trying to decide if a long iron or a mid-iron won't make the cut.
"Three-iron, 4-iron, it could be somewhere in the middle," he said, "it could be a 7 or 8. I just don't know what club that is yet. It will probably depend on whether it's wet or dry conditions."
Other golfers aren't so surprised by Mickelson's choice.
"I think you'll find, and not just on this course, you'll find a lot of people using two drivers now," Colin Montgomerie said. "Why try and change one swing to accommodate a hole? Why not if the club is designed to go left or right or whatever, why not use that? We have a number of courses that you can think of immediately that would favor both and certainly used more than a 3 iron or 4 iron in a round of golf."
FROM DOUBLE EAGLE TO DOUBLE DRIVER
Masters week cannot roll around without consideration for "the shot heard 'round the world" -- a 235-yard, 4-wood shot that Gene Sarazen hit on Augusta's par-5 15th hole. The shot, of course, went in for a double eagle and gave Sarazen an eventual victory in the 1935 Masters over Craig Wood (although it required a playoff the next day).
The Wilson Turf Rider 4-wood was, for 1935, a pretty technologically advanced club. It boasted a hollow back to put the weight forward in the clubhead, which helped get the ball up in the air quickly. We might consider such a club, then called a spoon, to be a utility wood -- it was effective in getting Sarazen's ball out of the slight hollow in the 15th fairway's wet grass.
"(Sarazen) took a quick look over the hill to the distant green, and then rode into the ball," wrote Herbert Warren Wind in "The Story of American Golf."
Then, as we would see a well-struck utility club today, "It shot up like a streak and fled for the green."
Sarazen was a professional who truly cared about his sticks and was open to new ideas with his equipment. In the 1930s, he adapted a reminder-grip style that Wilson had experimented with but never used on its clubs.
He worked in a machine shop during the off-season in 1932 to invent the sand wedge, an iron with a heavy sole and flange to quickly get the ball up and out of the sand. His 4-wood with its hollow back was another example of his adoption of new technology for the time.
