What a week for Casey Jarvis. What a fortnight for Casey Jarvis. A winner in Kenya, and now a winner in his home country.
With back-to-back victories, the 22-year-old has surged up the Race to Dubai Rankings into third, while his latest win at Stellenbosch Golf Club also secured him a place in The Masters and The Open.
Forget all that, though, for the real story of the week wasn’t the emotional victory on home soil, but the manner in which he overcame significant equipment trouble at the start of the week.
It’s never nice to arrive at oversized baggage and find your equipment damaged, but it happens all too frequently (a tip for you: check out the best golf travel bags).
For your average golfer on holiday, it’s not so much of a problem - a set of similar spec hire clubs will normally do a good enough job for a few days.
However, for the tour golfer, a snapped driver is the stuff of nightmares.
Jarvis realized that the shaft in his TaylorMade Qi4D LS driver had snapped during his travels from Kenya to South Africa.
"Built to hit bombs," is how Golf Monthly’s Kick Point host, Joe Ferguson, describes TaylorMade's latest big stick.
Maybe so, but it's not so easy to hit bombs dead straight if you're adjusting to a new driver shaft, is it?
Tony Johnstone, who was on commentating throughout the week, described just how difficult it could be for a player to feel totally at ease with a new shaft, even if it was the exact same spec.
Basically, we're talking about lots of woven carbon fibers. From shaft to shaft, they're going to feel ever so slightly different, especially for tour pros.
So we like to think that after another fruitful week at Stellenbosch, Jarvis sent TaylorMade Senior Tour Representative, Sam Day, a nice bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.
For it was Day who saved the day, stepping up to build a replacement driver on the eve of the tournament.
According to TaylorMade, Jarvis was a little nervous about the new shaft at first (understandably, of course), but a video call with Day on Thursday put him at ease.
With rounds of 67, 68, 64 and 67, Jarvis actually made it look rather easy.
So, just how impressive was this feat?
“It shouldn't be a big deal swapping a shaft in and out nowadays with how tight the manufacturing tolerances are,” says Ferguson, a PGA professional and a former club fitter at Celtic Manor for both Titleist and TaylorMade.
“However, having spoken to TaylorMade, even Jarvis himself mentioned that it didn't quite feel the same, so to shrug that off and go out and win his home national Open... bravo!”
Bravo indeed. Now go and get yourself a new travel bag, Casey.
A quick mention for one of the clubs at the other end of Jarvis' bag - and it was a good job that Jarvis’ putter didn’t get damaged when it was in transit.
The TaylorMade Spider Tour was hot in Kenya, and it was hot again in South Africa.
As we reported a couple of weeks ago, the Spider is the dominant putter bucking the zero torque trend on the PGA Tour at the moment.
Jarvis may well wish to get his Spider bubble wrapped before jetting off to his next tournament.
And he'll definitely want to avoid any equipment mishaps when touching down in Georgia for his Masters debut in April.
