The attractive reason this tournament winner has a ‘very strange’ gear setup

Sahith Theegala has quickly become one of the most popular players on the PGA Tour due to his candid nature with the media and his fan club led by his family that he follows during the course.

But now you can add an attractive reason to create what he described as a “very strange” golf bag for PGA Tour competition.

Theegala was Smylie Kaufman’s second guest on NBC during coverage of the second round of Happy Hour with Smylie on sentry Friday afternoon in Hawaii and Kaufman began a segment by asking Theegala about his bag placement.

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

last summer, as previously reported by GOLFTheegala told Ping tournament officials that he was done seeing the “7” at the bottom of his 7-iron and asked if they could make him a 7-iron that he didn’t to have the number 7 stamped on it. Thus, Theegala S’s “8 plus-iron” Ping Project was born.

“The 7-iron was always my least favorite club in the bag,” Theegala told Kaufman on 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 hit a 7-iron on a par-3, I’m like, ‘Oh my god, please. Just find land.’ Finally, I was like screw it. I’m shaving this 7-iron, making it an 8-iron.”

But Theegala’s unique configuration doesn’t just end with its iron seal.

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

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

Theegala isn’t using it this week at Kapalua, but he’ll also drop his 4-iron and put up a 24-degree 9-wood and confirmed he’d be back in the bag for some of the upcoming West Coast swings. The 9-wood actually came about as an “accident,” Theegala said when he asked someone to try it, not thinking he’d ever use it. He ended up playing 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 pick up a 26-degree 5-hybrid at some point this year after watching Ping Tour representative Kenton Oates play one.

So why is Theegala so determined to break the mold of the traditional golf bag setup? He says it’s all about having fun.

“It all started with — I like to have fun with golf,” Theegala said. “My friends and I are always brainstorming. Me and (my caddy) Carl (Smith) are always brainstorming what I can do to make it more fun, but also make it usable and efficient and something that would actually help me in my golf game. So I have a very strange bag.”

And if Theegala was trying to come up with an official name for that “8-plus-iron,” he took a cue from celebrity names. During a commercial break, Kaufman said Lance Armstrong sent him a text (good bow!) suggesting that if Theegala is a fan of the 2004 cult classic “Dodgeball,” he should rename the 8-iron “The Ocho” .

“I can try it tomorrow,” Theegala thought. “Everything will depend on the first shot. If ‘The Ocho’ pulls up, it can go up.”

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