Before this year, Jason Dufner didn't have much going for him. Sure, he had made over $7.5 million dollars in his career, but he had yet to win a PGA Tour event and he had just 16 top-10 finishes to his name. Prior to 2012, Dufner had missed the cut in over 40 percent of the events he played and his highest placing in the FedExCup was 25th (in 2011). Add to that his major-league choke in last year's PGA and his laughable last name, things weren't looking up for Jason Dufner.
But this year? His only missed cut was his first event, the Sony Open in Hawaii, and he has hardly come close since. A few weeks after a solid T24 at Augusta (his highest finish in the event) where he held the 36-hole lead, Dufner broke through at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans the last week of April, carding -19 and beating Ernie Els in a playoff while also holding off world number one Luke Donald. He's also spending time with the golf team from his alma mater, Auburn University, and quoting Kanye West on Twitter (he's actually an interesting golfer to follow on Twitter). After two wins, Dufner leads the Tour in money earned (already having surpassed his career high), ranked eighth in the world, and I think at one point he might just have cracked a smile. Maybe.
Adams Golf doesn't really have much of identity right now. They've stopped airing the "number one hybrid on the Champions Tour" commercials (or maybe I've stopped watching Golf Channel at 2 AM?), and they don't really have a repetitive nomenclature. They're not revered for their huge revenues like Nike or TaylorMade, and they don't have the rich history of Titleist or Mizuno.
Short of only the TaylorMade Rocketballz, this year's Adams Fast 12 fairway woods are some of the most hyped in the business. They have feature after feature designed specifically to give golfers the most distance, not only on-center strikes but on off-center hits as well. It remains to be seen if their sale to TaylorMade-Adidas helps or hurts the company, but in recent years Adams has been putting out some of the best woods in golf, and this year seems to be no different.
Butch Harmon is one of the biggest names in golf. He has been Golf Digest's top-ranked golf coach every year since 2003, and he is the mastermind behind Tiger's early career swing. He has coached some of the biggest names in golf, including Greg Norman, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Adam Scott, and Natalie Gulbis.
For the seventh major championship in a row, the victor of this year's Masters was a first-time major winner. Not since Phil Mickelson in 2010 has someone won their second major, and by my count that is the longest such streak ever. With Tiger Woods perpetually on the mend and endlessly ineffective, and Phil Mickelson often too headstrong for his own good, Bubba Watson is another in the line of new entries to the major winner's circle.
As I do nearly every year, I was quick to pony up a good deal of cash for the new Tiger Woods PGA Tour video game. Like with most good video games I've been engrossed with it since the day I bought it, but that doesn't mean I love the game.
