The day after every PGA Tour event, Golf.com usually posts a breakdown of the clubs the winner used for the week. It gets pretty specific down to which shaft and flex and what loft the player is using. So this week, after the Waste Management Phoenix Open, they had Hunter Mahan’s clubs he used in the tournament. Since I play Ping myself, I was really interested to see what he was playing. I noticed he was using the Ping Eye 2 wedge. Yes the same wedge that is “exempt” from the new USGA conforming grooves rule and the same wedge that caused such a stir with Phil Mickelson when he used them in the Farmers Insurance Open.
I read some of the comments on the article and other people noticed the wedge as well. One commenter from the article said they talked about it yesterday during the telecast and they specifically said Ping made a wedge specially for Hunter with the same look as the 1990 Ping Eye 2 but they put the conforming grooves in it. Now I watched the entire telecast and I didn’t catch that part. I did hear them talk about Hunter going to the Ping Fitting Center and trying to figure out if he wanted a 59 or 60 degree wedge. So I couldn’t tell you if a special wedge was made or not. I also couldn’t find it after a few Google searches so I don’t know if it was talked about or not during the telecast. I could have easily missed it sometime. So again I don’t know.
If this is the case and the wedge was specially made, it makes sense on why Hunter is not getting so much grief for the wedge. I am going to continue to look for some information on this wedge used by Hunter to see if it is really specially made with the conforming wedges. So I will update soon. Just thought it was really interesting that he used that wedge and he has caught zero grief. And this could quite possibly be the first time a winner on the PGA Tour has used the wedge.
Photo Credit: Fred Vuich/SI
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