Tag: Jason Dufner

WATCH: Jason Dufner drops and kicks club after errant tee shot

Former Auburn golfer Jason Dufner reacted like all of us after a bad tee shot.

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Professional golfers: they are just like us!

Playing in The Players Championship on Thursday, the former Auburn golfer and 2013 PGA Championship winner hit a bad tee shot and immediately did what many of us would: dropped the club and then kicked it.

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We feel your pain, Jason.

Justin Thomas: ‘2020 is beyond a bizarre year so far’

At the Charles Schwab Challenge, Justin Thomas said: “You can’t go into this thing thinking it’s going to be normal because it’s not.”

Justin Thomas didn’t want for golf during the COVID-19 pandemic that silenced the PGA Tour three months ago.

He made frequent trips to the Medalist Golf Club near his southeast Florida home for numerous money matches against fellow pros, including Tiger Woods. He faced Rickie Fowler in 18-hole matches where they used vintage persimmon clubs and balata golf balls on one occasion and played left-handed the other time.

But the fun and games are over.

Now the golf gets real as the PGA Tour returns after a 91-day pause with Thursday’s start of the star-studded Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, which has attracted the top 5 players in the world and 16 of the top 20.

MORE: Betting odds | Fantasy | By the rankings | Tee times

The former world No. 1 and current No. 4 knows he needs to knock off the physical rust but just as importantly has to quickly find his competitive edge when he puts his peg into the ground in the first round alongside playing partners Fowler and Jordan Spieth.

“I think the hardest thing for me is just going to be getting back into it,” Thomas said Tuesday at Colonial. “The fact that that four-footer I have on the first hole matters, and yeah, if I hit this ball in a hazard, OK, that’s a penalty stroke, and it’s real. It’s not just going out and having a money game with your buddies.

“Every shot counts, it matters, and it’s cumulative score for four days, and that’s I think for me the thing that’s going to be the hardest because I sometimes feel rusty after two, three weeks off, let alone four months.

“That’s going to be weird, but at the same time it’s going to be weird for everybody. I’m just going to hopefully try to get back into that as quick as I can.”

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Getting back into it is a challenge heightened by safety and health protocols developed by the PGA Tour in consultation with infectious disease experts. The plan creates a safety “bubble” intent to minimize the risk of the coronavirus.

The bubble this week for Thomas includes sharing a home with Fowler and Jason Dufner, with a chef on had to cook up all the meals. Thomas took the mandatory COVID-19 test upon arrival in Fort Worth. Is getting used to the grab-and-go meals at the course. Has practiced the social distancing guidelines inside the ropes with his caddie, Jimmy Johnson: being six feet apart, no more tossing a golf ball to each other, never touching the flagstick, trying to figure out how to check out the yardage book at the same time while talking about strategy, etc.

And he’s started to think about how everything is going to play out with no spectators on hand and no grandstands on the grounds.

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“It’s going to be different,” Thomas said. “I think that’s the thing that I was trying to get across to people is that you can’t go into this thing thinking it’s going to be normal because it’s not. I would say 2020 is beyond a bizarre year so far, and especially in the world of sports it’s just going to be different.

“If we all want to get back and play the game that we love and not just for us but for the fans and everybody at home, we’re just going to have to get over the fact that it’s going to be different and be a little weird.”

Thomas, who has 12 Tour titles, including the 2017 PGA Championship, has another distinctive challenge on hand – he’s making his tournament debut. He got his first taste of Colonial with a 9-hole practice round Tuesday morning, when winds were gusting 15-20 mph and the temps were rising toward triple digits.

“It’s awesome. It’s a place that I’ve always watched on TV and I love how it looks,” Thomas said. “It’s a place that I feel like I would like, and I do. It’s all right in front of you. It’s just a great old-school golf course where you put the ball in play and then it’s a second-shot course, and hitting to the small greens, and you have pure bent greens. I’m just excited to be here, because again, it’s a place that I’ve always wanted to come to, just never worked out in the schedule, and obviously would have liked to come under a little bit different circumstances than this year, but no matter what, I’m glad to be here.”

Thomas and Brendon Todd are the only multiple winners on Tour this season, with Thomas winning the CJ Cup at Nine Bridges and the Sentry Tournament of Champions. He also had three top-6 finishes, including a tie for sixth at the WGC-Mexico Championship in his most recent start.

Becoming the season’s first three-time winner will be tough for Thomas, who has gone nearly four months since he last hit a competitive shot on Tour and faces a loaded field featuring 101 players who have won on the PGA Tour. But there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.

“I’m glad to be back out and I’m glad to see a lot of familiar faces, media and officials,” he said. “This is what I’ve wanted to do my whole life, and it’s what I’ve loved to do forever, and it’s nice to be back out playing competitive golf again.”

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Coronavirus: Secret Golf Match Play Series announced for PGA Tour downtime

At a time when the world is starved for fresh golf content, Secret Golf plans to release up to six matches between PGA Tour pros.

With professional golf tournaments around the world on hiatus due to concerns of COVID-19, former PGA champion Steve Elkington and his partners have dreamed up a modern-day version of Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf to bring golf fans the fresh content they crave.

It’s called the Secret Golf Match Play Series for COVID-19 Relief and it will consist of up to six matches that will be played prior to the continuation of the PGA Tour season. The matches are expected to be shown on television – negotiations are ongoing and event production is pending discussions with the PGA Tour – and streamed via the Internet to a global audience along with a companion app that includes exclusive behind the scenes and interactive content to enhance the viewing experience as the competition unfolds.

Among those PGA Tour stars committed to partake in the stroke-play matches are Secret Golf regulars Marc Leishman (World No. 15), Jason Dufner, Russell Knox, Andrew Landry, Ryan Palmer and Pat Perez. Each has been allowed to challenge a player of their choice to face them that may not be on its roster of more than 30 tour pros, male and female. (Potential women Secret Golf ambassadors include Stacy Lewis, Brittany Lincicome and Gerina Piller.)

The initial matchups will be named at a later date, Elkington said, along with the courses, but they will all be at private venues that are closed to the public. Players will wear microphones as they talk, interact and informally educate fans about the shots they are going to hit and just hit. Prepare for plenty of trash talk.

“There are levels of trash talk,” Elkington said. “There are guys who make a lot of noise like Pat Perez and those who are more discreet and pick their spot. Jason Dufner is a real quiet and stoic guy, but in our group you can’t shut him up. It just depends who his audience is. He’s like a parrot that never talks when you ask him to talk.”

As for the stakes?

“Pride mostly,” Elkington said. “The scorecard is a big thing for these guys, but could they be making some side bets for added charity money? I wouldn’t put it past them.”

(Video courtesy Secret Golf.)

The players will carry their own bags, and players, crew and commentators numbering less than 10 in total will follow all safe distancing guidelines advised by the CDC. Elkington will provide on-course commentary and color throughout the match, and Diane Knox will conduct pre-during-post round interviews and provide social media support throughout the event.

“We’re going to ham it up,” Elkington said. “You never get to hear what the Tour player is thinking right after he hits a shot. We’re going to ask them what happened – good or bad?”

The PGA Tour canceled the Players Championship after the opening round on March 12 and later canceled or postponed all tournaments through May 17. All of the Secret Golf matches are expected to be released while the Tour’s schedule is suspended. (It is tentatively scheduled to resume with the Charles Schwab Championship, beginning May 21.)

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“We huddled and felt we needed to do something to help people of all ages at grave risk from the virus. We did not at the time know what to do, but we knew it would be important to offer hope and maybe some ways to show golf fans how to be safe, and maybe offer up something to help everyone get by as we are virtually in quarantine,” event organizers said in a release. “Our events had to be charity based, fall under the guides of the CDC, and be highly sensitive of how the country’s health was as a whole before we would release our matches.”

“When we see the virus flatten, see positive trend statistics support very positive change, and diligently listen to CDC guidance we will at that time make a decision and begin to release the series,” said Vito Palermo, a founding partner of Secret Golf.

Proceeds from these events will go to the charitable foundations of participating players as well as the United Way Pandemic Relief Fund.

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Jason Dufner signs equipment deal with Cobra Golf

The winner of the 2013 PGA Championship, Jason Dufner, will be using Cobra clubs and bags starting this week at the Mayakoba Championship.

Jason Dufner, the winner of the 2013 PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y., has signed an endorsement contract with Cobra Golf. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but Dufner will be using Cobra clubs and start using a Cobra bag this week at the Mayakoba Championship.

While the deal was officially announced on Tuesday, Dufner, 42, recently attended a Cobra event at Drive Shack in West Palm Beach, Fla., with Greg Norman, instructor Claude Harmon and Rickie Fowler.

At that event, the former Auburn University standout explained that his friendship with Fowler played a large role in developing his relationship with Cobra. Dufner said that he and Fowler are close friends, that they have played a lot of practice rounds together and he frequently stays in Fowler’s guest house when he is in South Florida.

During one of those practice rounds, he tried Fowler’s Cobra driver and liked it so much he put one into his bag. After that, he started tinkering with muscleback blades and cavity-back irons made by the Carlsbad, Calif.-based company.

“I sat down and thought that I was going to play (Cobra’s) stuff next year,” he said. “I talked with them and tried to see what they were going to do with marketing and branding and if they were going to add any new players. It just kind of worked out that they were ready to take a step with another new player.”

Among the clubs that are in Dufner’s bag this week are a Cobra King F9 Speedback driver (10.5 degrees) with an LAGP Olyss 6X shaft, a King Driving iron (4), and King Forged CB irons (5-PW) and King V Grind wedges (52, 56, 62 degrees), all with True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue AMT S400 shafts.

“Another great thing about Cobra, and this isn’t a knock on any other brand, is that they don’t have a huge staff,” Dufner said. On the PGA Tour, Fowler and Bryson DeChambeau are the only other full-time Tour players. “So they have more time to spend with you, more time to be around you and really dig into what your equipment needs might be.”

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