Equipment Insider: Pettersson's lofted driver fits steep swing

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Each week in the Equipment Insider, Adam Barr -- PGATOUR.COM's equipment columnist -- will provide breaking news, notes and analysis focused on PGA TOUR players. Adam will also appear in video segments for PGATOUR.COM.

Check out more of Adam Barr's equipment coverage at AdamBarrGolfGearGuide.com.

Well, let's put it this way. If you shoot 60-67 the last two days, you'd better win. Easier on the psyche.

Perhaps that's how Carl Pettersson felt when he used his insurance stroke to bogey the last, but still hoisted the trophy at the RBC Canadian Open. Pettersson's 72-hole week was sprinkled with bogeys -- nine of them -- but showered with better stuff. Nineteen birdies and two eagles got the job done.

That included three-birdie runs at Nos. 13, 14 and 15 both Saturday and Sunday at St. George's Golf & Country Club in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke. The course -- tougher than Pettersson's Saturday 60 and some other rounds under 64 made it look -- is an old-school track marked by walk-through, tree-lined alleys and knee-high rough. Shorter, straighter hitters tend to excel.

Carl Pettersson's Nike driver features a special compression channel.

In My Bag: Carl Pettersson

Driver: Nike VR Tour (11.5 degrees loft with Fujikura S.I.X. shaft) Irons: Nike Pro Combo (4); Nike VR Split Cavity (5-PW) (all with True Temper Dynamic Gold Lite S400 shafts) Wedges: Nike VR (49 and 55 degrees loft); Nike VR V-Rev (60 degrees) Putter: Odyssey White Hot XG #7 long Ball: Nike ONE Tour

That's Pettersson. His weekly driving average was 285.4 yards, good for 57th in the field. But he hit 73.1 percent of his fairways -- tied for 9th in the field -- which kept him out of pine tree trouble and allowed him to take full advantage of the second-shot focus of that respected track.

To drive the ball, Pettersson relied on a Nike Victory Red Tour driver with 11.5 degrees of loft and a Fujikura S.I.X. shaft. The driver, interestingly for a straight hitter, has a pear-shaped profile that is designed to allow for some workability. The most modern-looking element of the design is the compression channel, a veritable trench in the sole behind the face. It helps increase the energy of impact, Nike says, returning more speed to the ball. The formula yields extra yardage, say Nike engineers.

By the by, does 11.5 degrees of loft seem high for a TOUR player? That depends on personal launch conditions. Carl's swing de-lofts the club face at impact; he actually "traps" his drives. The Fujikura shaft Pettersson was using is fairly light at 60 grams; lightweight shafts tend to help launch the ball a little higher. Combine that with the loft, and you have an optimal flight for Pettersson: high enough to get where it's going while still taking advantage of Carl's naturally low-spin swing.

For irons, Pettersson chose Nike's VR Split Cavity (except for the 4-iron, which was an old Pro Combo). This model of VR is forged, but the cavity performs the by-now familiar function of moving weight to the perimeter of the head for a measure of forgiveness on off-center hits. In the cavity, the weight of the head is split into two zones. It's heftier down low for the solidity better players seek. In a way, a muscle back does the same thing, but the Nike approach splits the cavity more definitively, instead of transitioning gradually into the muscle.

Pettersson's long putter was an Odyssey XG #7, with a multi-layer insert face. The inner layer is an elastomer that provides a soft feel, Odyssey says, while the thin outer striking surface (which has urethane in it) gives feedback the player can feel and hear.

BERNIE GETS OVER THE BURN: For his trip over Barry Burn and the rest of Carnoustie during the Senior British Open Championship, Bernhard Langer had a bag full of Adams Golf clubs. Perhaps thinking of the ill-fated Jean van de Velde in 1999, Langer didn't hit driver on 18. But his Adams Speedline driver and its 9.5 degrees of loft served him well elsewhere on the course.

The speed part comes from the driver's deep aerodynamic story. Adams engineers shaped the crown of the club head in a way that works better with air flow on the way down, reducing drag and increasing the speed through impact. More speed equals more distance, of course. Heel and toe "scoops" from the head shape enhance this effect, Adams says. And the optimized face area generates extra MPH as well.