Golf: Sergio Garcia Is Shopping For New Driver And Putter
By Les Bailey
Sergio Garcia played a practice golf round on Tuesday at the Blue Monster using a new R1 TaylorMade driver. He was able to find the fairways with relative ease, and doing so with a mild draw. Garcia has been contemplating a change from his current TaylorMade RBZ, but has yet to pull the trigger, and find a home in his bag on game-day. Sources say he’s close to putting the new club in his bag for the WGC-Cadillac Championship set to tee off on Thursday morning.
Garcia started conducting serious comparison testing between his current TaylorMade RBZ driver and R1 back at the Northern Trust Open, but it wasn’t until the last two weeks that he became really comfortable with the new driver.
The new driver has a 103 gram Mitsubishi Diamana 103X shaft, which is typical for Garcia, whose traditionally played heavier metal wood shafts due to the unique counterbalancing in his grips.
In addition to help off of the tee, the 33 year old from Castellon, Spain was also looking for a little help on the greens. He’s looking to make some changes to his Ghost Tour MC-72 putter. He worked with the MC 72 half-moon shape mallet with a Tour-only “Forged Milled” face insert at the World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship, but decided to switch to a version that included a plumber’s neck and gray forged milled face.
Garcia noted that the plumber’s neck helped him feel more comfortable at address. He also liked the fact that the gray insert didn’t contrast as much with the white head as the black Tour-only “Forged Milled” face insert in the previous version he tested at the Accenture Match Play Championship.
After missing the cut at The 2012 PGA Championship in August, Garcia adopted the claw grip with his putter, and came back with a surprise win at The Wyndham, which is the first of the FedEx Cup playoff tournaments. He then went on to garner a third place the following week at the Barclays. He had a strong finish to the 2012 season with a fine showing at the Ryder Cup. He had a T 15 at the Norther Trust Open in 2013 before being dismissed in the first round at Dove Mountain.
Garcia played three time on the European Tour before coming Stateside for the PGA events, and played well. He finished in a tie for second place at the Qatar Masters, and was T 17 at the Dubai Desert Classic. He is currently 16th in Race to Dubai points, and ranked 18 in the OWGR.
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