Notebook: Jordan Spieth on long quest to replace favorite, broken driver

ATLANTA – Jordan Spieth revealed at the Tour Championship that he has been looking for the right driver for the last four months. 

 

He said the driver he had used the last two years cracked on Wednesday of The Players Championship, where he shared the 54-hole lead with Martin Kaymer. He said he has tried a couple of new heads and can't seem to get the right combination. And he said he hasn't had time to try the latest driver from Titleist. 

 

Spieth, who makes his Ryder Cup debut next week, said he has lost 20 percent in driving accuracy since May. 

 

"I'm not driving the ball worse than anyone else, but it's a strength of mine," he said. "When your strength becomes average, something has to make up for it. And the rest of my game hasn't made up for it." 

 

PGA TOUR BALLOT: The PGA Tour has sent out its year-end awards ballot to the players. Voting closes Sept. 25, and the awards are to be announced the week after the Ryder Cup (a week before the 2014-15 season begins). 

 

Rory McIlroy figures to be a lock as player of the year with his two majors. The others on the ballot are U.S. Open and Players Championship winner Martin Kaymer, Masters champion Bubba Watson, FedExCup champion Billy Horschel and three-time winner Jimmy Walker. 

 

GOLF BUZZ: Who would you vote for as PGA Tour player of the year?

 

The rookie ballot features only three players. Chesson Hadley was the only rookie who won, though it was an opposite-field event in Puerto Rico. The other two candidates didn't even become members until midway through the season – Victor Dubuisson and Brooks Koepka. 

 

TRINGALE'S RETURN: Cameron Tringale heard about the changes to Masters criteria, such as cutting back on the number of players from the previous year's majors who were invited. So when he was runner-up at The Barclays – in effect assuring him a spot in the Tour Championship – it didn't register until later he was going to Augusta National. 

 

The field from the Tour Championship gets in the Masters, U.S. Open and British Open. 

 

"I didn't think this got you in," Tringale said last week. "I really didn't think that was the case." 

 

It will be his first appearance at the Masters, though certainly not his first trip to Augusta National. Tringale played at Georgia Tech and says the Yellow Jackets were invited to play the course once a year. 

 

"I've played there four times," he said. "I haven't broken par." 

 

He said he shot 73 the first time, and that was about as close as he got. No matter. The course changes from Wednesday to Thursday during the Masters, much less from one year to the next. Besides, Tringale said he was busy taking pictures. 

 

"I was thinking, `I might never make it back here,'" he said. 

 

DIVOTS: Michelle Wie is the inaugural winner of the Rolex Annika Major Award for the LPGA player who accumulates the most points in the majors. Wie won the U.S. Women's Open and was runner-up in the Kraft Nabisco Championship. ... Davis Love III, who rarely passes on a chance to play golf in Hawaii, is making his Champions Tour debut this week in the Pacific Links Hawaii Championship at Kapolei Golf Club on Oahu. ... Tiger Woods didn't go the entire year without a trophy. His foundation received the Steve Patterson Award for Excellence in Sports Philanthropy. It will be honored Thursday in Princeton, New Jersey, by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. ... The BMW Championship will return to Crooked Stick in 2016. 

 

STAT OF THE WEEK: There are five Americans in the top 25 in the world ranking who are not playing in the Ryder Cup – Billy Horschel (14), Tiger Woods (15), Dustin Johnson (17), Chris Kirk (22) and Steve Stricker (25). 

 

FINAL WORD: "As a TV spectacle, it's far better than the Super Bowl. Only one comes close – the 100 meters in the Olympics. Maybe. And it only lasts 10 seconds. Golf generally is not amazingly suspenseful on TV, but that is off the charts." – Geoff Ogilvy, on the Ryder Cup.