Equipment Insider: Awtal latest to win with new Ping irons

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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.

Check a couple of winning bags from last weekend and you can see that no matter how good a technology may be, it's never the only game in town.

Take Arjun Atwal, who Monday-qualified his way into the Wyndham Championship on the PGA TOUR and then won the thing. His driver was a TaylorMade Burner Superfast, a non-adjustable model whose speed from swing-to-to-ball is based on lightness and aerodynamics.

It has a large head (460cc, maximum under the Rules of Golf) in a non-traditional shape. The Superfast is half an ounce lighter overall than earlier TaylorMade drivers, which might as well be half a ton in golf club terms. Air flows around the clubhead with less drag, and the increased speed leads to more initial velocity for the ball. The club also has a dual crown design that lifts the launch angle and drops the spin rate, TaylorMade says, resulting in more dependable distance.

It worked for Atwal. He was 14th in the field in driving distance (300.4 yards average) and T3 in accuracy (80.4 percent of his fairways).

Now a completely different, but just as successful approach: Fred Funk won theJELD-WEN Tradition on the Champions Tour, lurking about at 50th in the field in driving distance (277.3 yards average; typical Fred) and T1 in accuracy (96.4 percent of his fairways; even more typical Fred). In Rounds 2 and 3, he didn't miss any; he only missed two all week.

Fred's choice for a driver was also a TaylorMade, but he went with the very adjustable R9 SuperTri. Both the weight distribution in the head and the face angle can be moved around in the SuperTri; it's the first TaylorMade driver to combine those technologies.

The moveable weight system, by now familiar, involves placing and replacing specific gram-weight screws in strategic receptacles in the head to promote a quicker or slower squaring of the club face, depending on the player's needs. The face control technology allows players to shade the face open or closed -- or downright change it aggressively -- by unscrewing and resetting the shaft into a different place in its fitting, which is mounted on the end of the hosel and seated in the hosel itself.

Many TOUR players get adjustable clubs, put the adjustments where they want, and never fool with the settings again. And Fred Funk has made a superlative living on his driving accuracy skill, even before adjustability became current. But the weekend's experiences go to show how many ways there are to skin this cat of driving the ball: Atwal's hyper-modern attack, or Funk's modern approach combined with the more traditional shape and very deep face of the SuperTri. Yet even then, the analysis doesn't divide along party lines. Even the SuperTri, with its more pear-shaped approach, has aerodynamic features that help the head get to the ball more efficiently.

Interesting, though: For his 3-wood, Funk went for a Superfast.

For irons, Atwal used Ping S56s, the company's latest tour model. It's been quite a debut for the S56s; players have now won five events with them, including the Open Championship (Louis Oosthuizen) and the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational (Hunter Mahan). Atwal put them in the bag just before trying to Monday qualify for Wyndham.

Atwal's putter was a Ping as well. Arjun was first in the field in putts per round with a 27.3 average; in Thursday's round he needed only 24 taps to get home.

Another big winner in the putting segment last week was Odyssey. John Mallinger used an Odyssey 2-Ball on his way to a T3 finish, his best of the year. A 62 on Sunday, with just 29 putts, certainly helped. And on the LPGA Tour, Ai Miyazato won the Safeway Classic with an Odyssey White Hot XG Teron model.