The post Worst seed at Match Play scores massive 8-and-6 upset — and he wasn’t supposed to be in the field appeared first on Golf.

The post Worst seed at Match Play scores massive 8-and-6 upset — and he wasn’t supposed to be in the field appeared first on Golf.

There were plenty of pitched battles across 32 matches on Day 1 at the 2022 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play. Harold Varner III traded blows all day with Shane Lowry before winning 2 and 1. Jordan Spieth took and surrendered his lead against Keegan Bradley several times before sneaking away with a 2-up victory.

But the duel between Maverick McNealy and Joaquin Niemann was not one of those matches. Instead, it was one of the most lop-sided in the history of the tournament.

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McNealy was the last player admitted into the tournament, for which he received the worst seed in the event, lucky number 64. That earned him an opening-round showdown with 14-seed Joaquin Niemann, the top-ranked player in their group. You wouldn’t have known it based on how the match unfolded, though.

The 26-year-old pro jumped out to a quick 1 up lead when his steady par at Austin Country Club’s 1st hole topped Niemann’s own bogey 5. He made it 2 up at the 3rd and 3 up at the 5th, which is when the thumping truly began. After winning holes 6 and 7 to push his advantage to 5 up, McNealy stepped on the gas and won three of the next four holes.

By the time he sank his short par putt on the 12th hole, the match was over, with McNealy earning an epic 8-and-6 victory. It wasn’t quite as dominant as Tiger Woods’ infamous 9-and-8 trouncing of Stephen Ames back at the 2006 Match Play, but it was close.

Incredibly, McNealy wasn’t even supposed to play this week. But by a turn of fate, Sam Burns went on and won his second-straight Valspar Championship in a playoff last Sunday, and as a result, decided to bow out of the Match Play. That allowed McNealy to take his spot in the field.

It turns out McNealy was already in town. He flew in as an alternate just in case, but also so he could watch his brother Colton’s hockey game just north of the course.

“I found out on Monday night. I flew here on Sunday with my team, was preparing last week like I was going to play this week,” McNealy explained after his round. “I was actually watching my brother’s adult league hockey game on Sunday night, and I got a call from my agent, we got a call from Sam Burns’ agent saying he was going to withdraw from this week.

“That was about five minutes before my brother was on the ice and they scored the goal with 15 seconds left to go up 2-1 and win, so it was kind of a fun five minutes there.”

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You wouldn’t be blamed for thinking of McNealy as a match-play master, and while he admitted to playing matches regularly at home, he also revealed that he hasn’t played the format in competition in years.

“I play match play every week at home for $5 birdies or Chipotle or whatever it is. There’s lots of good guys to compete with in Vegas at home,” McNealy said. “I play a bunch of match play. But official match play, it’s the first time in five years.”

With a few more wins like he had on Wednesday, he might owe those “good guys” back in Vegas a little more than Chipotle.

McNealy continues his tournament on Thursday with a match against Kevin Na beginning at 3:39 p.m. ET.

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The post How this pro could improve his putting stroke — through dental equipment appeared first on Golf.

The post How this pro could improve his putting stroke — through dental equipment appeared first on Golf.

Maverick McNealy had aced the 8th at Torrey Pines when he revealed how his shot was even more rare. Not only had he made a hole in one during Friday’s third round of the Farmers Insurance Open, but he had done so on a day when about 30 family and friends were stationed around the green. Talk about perfect timing. 

“My uncle is a dentist in town, and the dental office took the day off and they were all there watching so it was really, really fun,” McNealy told announcer Amanda Balionis on the CBS broadcast.  

“I guess watching holes in one is better than pulling a few molars out,” analyst Nick Faldo said.  

“That’s a nice way to treat your family and friends,” announcer Jim Nantz. 

Gear

Turns out, McNealy was just paying back a favor. 

After his round of 67, which had moved him up to a tie for eighth entering Saturday’s final round, he told reporters that he was “wanting a way to like grip my putter consistently like a grip trainer.” And he knew that his uncle, Bob Randolph, was a dentist. And he remembered that dentists have “that stuff they use for impressions.” So …  

“We wrapped some of that around my putter grip on like Monday, so I saved my putter grip the way my hands go on the putter on a backup putter on Monday,” McNealy said. 

And now his putting-trainer hack is in the hands of his club manufacturer. 

“So the Callaway guys have it. We’re going to scan it and like replicate it, just have it as a grip trainer,” McNealy said. “It’s great because I’m playing great this week, so I want to remember how my hands go. It’s just a funny cross-section of dentistry and golf.”

Said a reporter: “Good oral hygiene is important.”

“Absolutely. Floss every day,” McNealy said. 

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The post Why Maverick McNealy uses a line on the ball off the tee and not with his putting appeared first on Golf.

The post Why Maverick McNealy uses a line on the ball off the tee and not with his putting appeared first on Golf.

Maverick McNealy explains how a line on your ball can help your driving accuracy.

The post Why Maverick McNealy uses a line on the ball off the tee and not with his putting appeared first on Golf.

The post How Maverick McNealy plans to take on the 17th hole this week appeared first on Golf.

The post How Maverick McNealy plans to take on the 17th hole this week appeared first on Golf.

Maverick McNealy has a specific strategy when he takes on the island green for the first time this week at The Players Championship.

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The post Intensive video review results in costly penalty for Pebble Beach contender appeared first on Golf.

The post Intensive video review results in costly penalty for Pebble Beach contender appeared first on Golf.

Two weeks after embed-gate, Maverick McNealy found himself in the most unenviable of positions Saturday. He was on the fifth hole during his third round at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am when he came upon his ball resting against a pitch mark in the rough beyond the green.

Immediately he knew he’d have to move carefully. The wind was gusting and his ball rested dangerously in an unsecured position. He quickly began his pre-shot routine.

McNealy, who was 10-under at the time and flirting near the top of the leaderboard, took a practice swing and addressed his ball. Almost instantaneously, it rolled off the pitch mark and back into the rough.

The ball had moved all of an inch, but that was more than enough to constitute a potential rules violation.

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McNealy stepped away and turned his head toward the heavens. Then he called a rules official over.

“I took my practice swing, addressed the ball, looked up at the hole, looked down at the club, and was about ready to hit it,” he told the official. “I was being very careful because I thought the ball was in a precarious position, and I was trying to hurry up and hit it before it moved, and then it just fell back.”

Initially, the rules official believed the situation was not worthy of assessing a penalty. As long as McNealy’s ball hadn’t moved as a result of him addressing the ball, he’d be allowed to play it from its original position penalty-free. But, to be sure, the official wanted to utilize a video review to ensure the movement hadn’t been caused by McNealy’s address.

“I was being very careful, but I did address it,” the player repeated. “I don’t think I caused it to move because I was being careful cause I thought it was already on the back of a pitchmark.”

But a lengthy video review did nothing to exonerate the 25-year-old pro, appearing to show the ball move the exact instant he placed his club next to it.

As a result, the rules official had no choice but to assess a one-stroke penalty under rule 9.4(b) of the Rules of Golf, which penalizes players who cause their ball to move — even accidentally — when it is off the green.

Sharp golf fans might remember a similar situation involving Dustin Johnson at the 2016 U.S. Open in which he accidentally moved his ball with his putter. Johnson was assessed a penalty at the time, but a recent update to the rules of golf would not have penalized him because his incidental movement occurred on the green — a new exception outlined in the rulebook.

McNealy would go on to make bogey on the hole and enters in the final round Sunday just three strokes off Jordan Spieth’s lead. Still, we’re guessing he won’t be buying a lottery ticket on his way out of Pebble Beach Sunday.

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The post 2 clever tricks this PGA Tour player uses with his gear appeared first on Golf.

The post 2 clever tricks this PGA Tour player uses with his gear appeared first on Golf.

The equipment you choose to use on the golf course can have a serious impact on what your score reads at the end of a round. That’s why it’s so important to ensure your equipment is perfectly dialed into your particular game.

It’s easier than ever to get your perfect clubs, too. Professional fitters can make sure your clubs and shafts are matches for your needs, and many companies allow for color/stamping personalization, too.

Maverick McNealy, the 25-year-old Stanford grad, takes personalization of his equipment up a notch. As we learned on our recent Fully Equipped podcast, McNealy drastically alters the weighting in his irons to fit his release pattern. Also, he marks his golf ball in a particular, unconventional way in order to help with his long game alignment and putting.

We get into the specifics of each equipment alteration below, but don’t forget to listen to our entire interview with McNealy in the Spotify embed.

1) He marks his golf ball a little differently

At one point or another, almost every golfer has experimented with drawing a line on their golf ball to help with alignment on the greens. It usually works like this: read the putt, aim the line on your golf ball right down the target line of your putt, aim the putter down the golf ball line, and stroke away.

McNealy, on the other hand, uses a line on his golf ball, but not for alignment on the greens. As he explains in the Fully Equipped Instagram video below, McNealy draws a line to help with tee shots instead of putts, and he uses a single dot when putting to ensure focus.

Check out the video below to see how Mcnealy marks his Callaway Chrome Soft X golf ball, and why.

2) He uses irons with lead tape in the toe

Lead tape is nothing completely new; many golfers use it to add weight to their club heads. McNealy uses lead tape for weighting purposes, but for a slightly more particular reason.

According to his interview with Fully Equipped, McNealy uses lead tape on his driver, fairway woods and irons in order to shift weight more out toward the toe sections. He says that by shifting CG (center of gravity) away from the hosel, the toe doesn’t shut as fast through impact. That helps him with his release and timing.

“I always have the Callaway guys build my clubs a little light, because I like to put lead tape on there to change the center of gravity,” McNealy explains. “I almost always put lead tape on the toe of my driver and fairway woods, because I like to slow that toe down. For me, the way I feel the clubface on the club is having weight away from the hosel, because that gives me that torque feeling in my hands. So the more weight you put on the toe, the harder it’s going to be to close the toe, and the more feel I have and awareness of the face.”

Lead tape isn’t the only adjustment McNealy makes to his irons, though. He gets some work done under the hood, as well.

“I took all of the hosel plugs out of my irons, and I make up the swing weight difference by putting lead tape on the back of my irons and wedges,” McNealy said. “And that’s a huge reason why the Callaway MBs now have a weight button on the back, so I don’t have to use those hosel plugs that most other companies use to match their swing weights. And it matches all the closure rates on my irons. For me, that’s just a fancy way of explaining what I feel, which is I want the club head to feel the same way, and I want to be able to time that face and make that face square to the target the same time every time.”

While not all of us have McNealy’s ingenuity, professional fitters and club builders can help you make specific adjustments to your equipment so that it minimizes your misses, and helps you play better golf. And if you’re fighting a left miss, try out McNealy’s toe-heavy trick!

Want to overhaul your bag for 2021? Visit the expert fitters at our sister company, True Spec Golf. For more on the latest gear news, check out our latest Fully Equipped podcast below.

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The post Dress like Maverick McNealy: Never go wrong with a classic color-block polo appeared first on Golf.

The post Dress like Maverick McNealy: Never go wrong with a classic color-block polo appeared first on Golf.

As amateurs, we may struggle to play like the pros, but that shouldn’t stop us from dressing like them. In this new GOLF.com series, we’ll highlight styles inspired by some of our favorite guys and gals on Tour every week. After all, this could be the “it” factor that will take your game to the next level.

Maverick McNealy’s look for the second round of the Sanderson Farms Championship is a true classic. Black pants and a color-block polo are an easy combo for any guy or gal trying to figure out what to wear. This one from Under Armour is particularly nice because it’s cut with a looser fit for extra comfort, but doesn’t look too boxy. Throw on your favorite solid colored cap and you’re ready to hit the links! Shop the look below.

Under Armour UA Playoff 2.0 Edge Lit Shirt

This lightweight, loose fit, colorblock shirt comes in a few different colors and is sure to be one of your go-to styles

Buy Now from www.linkconnector.com

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The post On full blast: As the PGA Tour resumes, Maverick McNealy has never been more focused appeared first on Golf.

The post On full blast: As the PGA Tour resumes, Maverick McNealy has never been more focused appeared first on Golf.

For the practitioners of an outdoor sport, PGA Tour pros are accustomed to tight quarters: locker rooms, hotel rooms, fitness rooms, trailers. Still, there’s only so much quarantine a man can take.

“I’d had enough of being inside,” Maverick McNealy says.

It’s a late-spring afternoon and he’s ringing in by cell phone while racing through the desert in his Ford Explorer, golf clubs in trunk, excitement in his voice. Las Vegas, where he lives, is in the rearview mirror, a city under lockdown, its courses shuttered. Ahead of him lies Scottsdale, an oasis at the moment, where golf is up and running. He’s on a beeline for it, a four-hour road trip just to get some swings in.

“I’m looking forward to some fresh air,” the 24-year-old says. “But more than anything, I’m itching to play.”

A lot of golfers have been feeling that way lately. But few have better reason to be champing at the bit. Among the many things cut short when golf pressed pause on the 2019–20 season was McNealy’s first campaign as a full-fledged member of the PGA Tour, and he’d been on a fine run, with 10 cuts made in 11 events, highlighted by a T-5 in wind-whipped conditions at Pebble Beach. A hot streak, you could call it, even if McNealy wouldn’t.

“‘Streak’ suggests it’s temporary,” he says. “I like to think of it as an indication of more to come.”

Lofty expectations are familiar to him, as they are for anyone who has followed his trajectory in the game. The oldest of four sons of Silicon Valley billionaire Scott McNealy and his wife, Susan, Maverick came of age in a tight-knit, type-A, sports-mad home. Hockey was his first love, and he played it at a high level as a junior. By his early teens, though, he’d made a full transition from ice to grass. Four years at The Harker School, the Stanford of Bay Area high schools, gave way to four years at Stanford itself. The term “student-athlete” gets tossed around too lightly. McNealy really was one, acing classes for his major in management science and engineering while absorbing lessons from his upperclassmen teammates, Cameron Wilson and Patrick Rodgers, both of whom combined the swagger of golf alphas with a deeply analytical approach to the game.

Drawing on their influence, McNealy began journaling about every round, detailing not only his swings and scores but also the thoughts and feelings they aroused. Sensing that his short game needed work, McNealy, in the absence of ShotLink data, devised his own Strokes Gained Putting system. The numbers demonstrated that he’d sensed right. Intense focus on the flatstick bore fruit quickly. In his sophomore year, McNealy won seven tournaments, matched Tiger Woods’ Pac-12 record for a single-round score with a 61 and walked off with the Haskins Award as college player of the year.

Like his three younger brothers — Dakota, Colt and Scout — Maverick was named for an American car. (Their grandfather was an automotive executive in Detroit.) That proved prophetic. He was driven.

“He was always an incredibly dedicated and detail-oriented student,” says Alex Murray, a noted Bay Area–based golf instructor who taught McNealy from his grade-school days until an amicable parting of ways last summer. “I’ve never met a young player who was more motivated to improve.”

For all his inner fire, press coverage often cast McNealy as a soaring talent who could take or leave the game. His monied background helped shape that perception (unlike many young golfers, he was not exactly working without a net), so did his high-profile, highly involved father, who once asserted publicly that his son could make more valuable contributions to the world by doing something else. It made for a good story: The number-one ranked amateur in the country was golf-ambivalent enough that he might not pursue a living in the game. McNealy himself might even have believed it. But in the summer of 2017, when he announced his intention to turn pro, the decision seemed so natural as to have been preordained.

“I’ve loved every minute,” McNealy says. “I’ve got the best office in the world.”

His pro career was not an instant rocket shot. But after failing to earn his PGA Tour card in 2018-19, McNealy fought his way onto the main stage by finishing the year in the top 25 on the Korn Ferry Tour. Last summer, while gearing up for his current rookie run, he began working with Butch Harmon, whom McNealy praises for, among other things, conveying complex concepts in simple terms. Distilling what he’s learned into layperson’s lingo, McNealy says: “Butch basically has me trying to be more athletic over the ball.”

The more buzzed-about change in McNealy’s life has happened off the course. For more than a year, he’s been dating LPGA star and Pepperdine grad Danielle Kang, a pairing that qualifies as opposites attracting. Even by the straitlaced standards of professional golf, McNealy is a far cry from a wild and crazy guy. He didn’t drink in college and still abides by the home rules of his childhood: hats forward, no piercings, no tattoos. The extroverted Kang, who also lives in Vegas, stands in marked contrast, and her outgoingness has, McNealy concedes, helped draw him out of his squarish shell.

“My friends all tell me that since I met Danielle, I’ve become a lot more fun,” he says.

While it would never be mistaken for a Justin-Rickie-Jordan spring-break getaway, the couple’s social-media presence strikes a cut-loose mood. It’s also altruistic. In early April, in their #ChallengeEachOther Instagram campaign, McNealy and Kang started doing just that as a Covid-19 fundraiser for a Las Vegas food bank. Their first challenge — juggling a golf ball with a club 10 times before catching it in a pocket — touched upon a trait they have in common: bottomless wells of competitiveness. As further evidence, consider the metric they rely on to measure the seriousness of a golfer.

“We decided that the way you tell whether someone is a real golfer is to ask, Would you rather three-putt or get punched in the face?” McNealy says. “For us the answer is easy — we’d both much rather get punched in the face.”

To avoid the kind of agony he fears the most, McNealy asked his parents to ship something to him from California: an old plaid carpet that he had in high school. It’s now laid out in his garage in Las Vegas, the perfect putting mat and alignment aid. Through golf’s shutdown, McNealy had been using it to stay sharp with this short game. But he was so revved up he needed to shift into another gear. Among his goals this year is to play in the season-ending Tour Championship, and he knows what it will take to get there. Range time. Course time. Competition.

“I’ve just got to keep improving,” McNealy says.

Out in the desert, he pressed the pedal of his ride, gunning for the road ahead.

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The post How an ugly carpet became one pro’s secret weapon appeared first on Golf.

The post How an ugly carpet became one pro’s secret weapon appeared first on Golf.

This week, Maverick McNealy is diving back into life on Tour. The 24-year-old is part of a loaded field as the PGA Tour returns to competition at the Colonial, with 16 of the top 20 players in the world playing the event.

McNealy, who calls Las Vegas home, has been able to return to the course to tune up his game in recent weeks. But before that it was back to basics. While courses were closed due to the coronavirus, he was hitting foam balls into a net in his garage — and that was actually the high-tech piece of his setup.

You can see part 3 of our interview series with McNealy below:

“The best thing I have at home is this ugly plaid carpet that I stole from my parents’ house back home that was my putting mat back in high school,” he said. McNealy, who grew up in Palo Alto, regained his putting mojo during a trip home last summer — at a crucial turning point in the PGA Tour season.

“I swear, if I putt on that I make everything. I was putting terrible [at the] back end of the Korn Ferry season last year, stayed at my parents’ house when we played [TPC] Stonebrae, putted on that mat every night and made everything all week,” he said. The Korn Ferry’s Ellie Mae Classic is held across the bay from McNealy’s childhood home (and his alma mater — McNealy went to Stanford).

“Finished third, got my Tour card. So that’s my secret weapon,” he said. The rest is history; McNealy graduated to the PGA Tour for the 2019-2020 season and has made 11 of his last 12 cuts, including three top-15 finishes his last five starts. The rookie’s adjusting well.

So how should the average golfer find his or her own carpet equivalent to help train up before a return to the course?

“I think the prep work should be done by the time you go outside. You’ve gotta check your setup, ball position. Get that setup dialed in — all you need is a mirror. For me, my putting mat has a plaid line so I know exactly where my ball position and feet are, and just get back to baseline so that when you get out there you’re ready to go.”

While courses across the country have largely opened up, McNealy added one more basic drill for golfers stuck at home. “For me putting, my favorite thing is just put a dime on the floor and just take practice swings over the dime seeing if you can have the line on your putter go back and forth over the center of the dime. It’s really simple and it’s really great for getting an even pendulum.”

This week, McNealy can put that carpet practice to proper use.

“I’m excited to have one golf ball and have it mean something. One ball, you have one job and do it. It’s very simple.”

You can see McNealy’s series of interviews with GOLF.com below.

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The post At Home With Maverick McNealy: Part III appeared first on Golf.

The post At Home With Maverick McNealy: Part III appeared first on Golf.

Maverick McNealy’s at home drills to improve your game before you head out to the course.

The post At Home With Maverick McNealy: Part III appeared first on Golf.