The endearing reason this Tour winner has a ‘very weird’ gear setup

Sahith Theegala has quickly become one of the more popular players on the PGA Tour because of his candid nature with the media and his fan club led by his family that follows him around the course.

But you can now add an endearing reason for making up what he described as a “very weird” golf bag for PGA Tour competition.

Theegala was NBC’s Smylie Kaufman’s second guest during the “Happy Hour with Smylie” coverage of the second round at the Sentry Friday afternoon in Hawaii and Kaufman started one segment asking Theegala about his bag setup.

“Sahith, when I saw you at the Tour Championship on Sunday last year, and I realized that you had two 8-irons — technically — in your bag,” Kaufman said. “One was a 7-iron, call it the 8-iron-plus, it made me do some digging on maybe one of the most unique golf bags I think I’ve ever seen on the PGA Tour.”

Last summer, as previously reported by GOLF, Theegala told Ping tour reps he was done looking at the “7” on the bottom of his 7-iron and asked if they could make him a 7-iron that didn’t have the number 7 stamped on it. Thus, Theegala’s Ping Blueprint S “8-plus-iron” was born.

“7-iron was always my least favorite club in the bag,” Theegala told Kaufman Friday. “It’s just been in my dome since I was a kid. I swear, I never hit it on the range. Every time I had a 7-iron to a par-3, I’m like, ‘Oh god, please. Just find land.’ Finally, I was just like screw it. I’m shaving down this 7-iron, making it an 8-iron.”

But Theegala’s unique setup doesn’t end with just his iron stamping.

For starters, Theegala doesn’t carry a 3-wood and instead uses a 5-wood, which he just updated in the last month to Ping’s new unreleased G440 model.

And for five or six events a season, he’ll also put in what he describes as a “really strong” 2-hybrid he calls the “Frankenhybrid” or “Frank” for short.

Theegala isn’t using it this week in Kapalua but he’ll also remove his 4-iron and insert a 24-degree 9-wood and confirmed it would be back in the bag for some of the upcoming West Coast swing. The 9-wood actually came about as an “accident” Theegala said when he requested one to try out, not thinking he’d ever use it. He ended up gaming it at Augusta National last year and the rest of the majors.

While the 9-wood isn’t completely unheard of on the PGA Tour, another club he’s considering is. Theegala said he wants to get a 26-degree 5-hybrid in the bag at some point this year after seeing Ping Tour rep Kenton Oates play one.

Irons

So why is Theegala so set on breaking the mold of the traditional bag setup in pro golf? He says it’s all about having fun.

“It all started off with— I just love to have fun with golf,” Theegala said. “Me and my buddies are always brainstorming. Me and [my caddie] Carl [Smith] are always brainstorming like what can I do to have more fun but also have it be useable and efficient and something that would actually help me in my golf game. So I have a very weird bag.”

And if Theegala was struggling to find an official name for that “8-plus-iron,” he got a celebrity naming suggestion. During a commercial break, Kaufman said Lance Armstrong texted him (nice flex!) suggesting that if Theegala is a fan of the 2004 cult classic “Dodgeball,” he should rename the 8-plus-iron “The Ocho.”

“I might try that out tomorrow,” Theegala mused. “It’s all going to depnd on that first shot. If ‘The Ocho’ pulls out, it might stick.”

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