🏌🏻Why Golf Balls Have Dimples

Good morning! Round 2 of the FedEx Cup season finale - the Tour Championship is in progress - you can watch all the action live on Peacock and ESPN+.

For all tournament updates and the latest news, check out our Youtube channel.

Today’s Trivia: How many times has Xander Schauffele been a runner-up at the Tour Championship? Answer at the end of the email.

⛳ This day in history: Three US Amateur champions were crowned on this date, August 30: in 1969 Steve Melnyk won at Oakmont, shooting a 70 in the final round during a year the event was stroke play; 1987 Billy Mayfair won by defeating Eric Rebmann, 4&3, at Jupiter Hills, and in 1992 Justin Leonard was the champion.

ALBATROSS
Unstoppable Scheffler Extends Lead @ Tour Championship

Scottie Scheffler shot 6-under 65 at East Lake to open up a seven-stroke lead after the first round. He’s the first player to hold a lead of seven strokes or more after 18 holes of a Tour event on record (1983-present).

He has won six times this season but interestingly, it is Scheffler’s first lead after the first round since the 2022 Tour Championship. But for the 29 players chasing him there’s still hope: Scheffler is 0-for-3 to date with either the 18-hole lead or co-lead.

📌 Can Schauffele Catch Up? Xander Schauffele shot 1-under 70 and broke par at East Lake, extending his streak of 29 consecutive rounds at par or better but he struggled off the tee, especially on the back nine.

He sits T-2 and seven back. He’ll play in the second-to-last group on Friday.

🚀 Morikawa In Contention: Collin Morikawa reeled off six consecutive birdies starting at 10, tying the longest birdie streak of his career and setting the longest birdie streak in Tour Championship history, and shot 66 to improve to 9 under.

He is tied for the second spot on the overall FedEx Cup leaderboard alongside Schauffele.

⛳️ Birdie Barrage @ East Lake: East Lake presumably was made tougher but not on Thursday. Birdies were made in bunches, including by Sahith Theegala, who stormed home with five circles on the card in his final six holes to shoot 67.

Adam Scott, who finished second last week to advance to the FedEx Cup finale, picked up where he left off and recorded his eighth consecutive first round under par, shooting 5-under 66.

Justin Thomas, who started the day 10 back, carded seven birdies including at his final two holes, to also shoot 5-under 66.

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TWEET
Worth Mentioning

EAGLE
LPGA Star Changes Name Midway Through The Season

Former World No 1 Atthaya Thitikul has decided to go by her nickname “Jeeno” going forward. The 21-year-old, took a share of the early lead at the 2024 FM Championship after an opening 3-under 69 but ended the day tied for second place.

Thitikul's mother originally gave her the nickname “Jeen,” which roughly translates to “Chinese people” in Thai. She feels "Jeeno" would be an easier name for people to remember.

It was her coach who added the “o.”

📍What's happening at the FM Championship? Marina Alex carded a bogey-free, 4-under-par 68 to take the lead after one round of the inaugural FM Championship at TPC Boston.

The 34-year-old from New Jersey is a two-time winner on the LPGA Tour, hoisting trophies in 2018 and 2022. She has slipped to No 121 in the world rankings and has missed four cuts in her past six starts.

The eight players left at 3-under 69 included Allisen Corpuz and Lauren Coughlin, who were recently confirmed as members of the upcoming US Solheim Cup team.

Also tied there are Yealimi Noh, Haeran Ryu of South Korea, Nicole Broch Estrup of Denmark, Jeeno Thitikul of Thailand and Yuri Yoshida of Japan.

LOCKER ROOM
What else is making news

Solheim Cup: Dunning Golf, official uniform supplier of the US Solheim Cup team for the second consecutive year, revealed team US uniforms for the forthcoming match at the Robert Trent Jones Club in Virginia from 13-15 September - click here to check them out.

TV Ratings: There was a 42% increase in audience for last week's AIG Women's Open in comparison to 2023. But the PGA Tour's BMW Championship continued to witness a decline.

US Senior Amateur: Louis Brown, 61, of Marietta, Georgia, defeated Dan Sullivan, 57, of Pasadena, California, to claim the 2024 US Senior Amateur title.

BIRDIE
This Is Why Golf Balls Have Dimples

You'd think that smooth golf balls would travel farther than the dimpled ones we use today - but that would be wrong.

When a smooth ball travels, its front surface will come into contact with the air. That air will then smoothly go over the front and separate from the ball towards the back.

That separation leaves a "turbulent wake region" behind the ball, which creates drag on the ball.

But if we add dimples to our theoretical ball, we will be able to minimize the turbulent wake and, therefore, the drag on the ball.

The dimples on a golf ball create a thin turbulent boundary layer of air that clings to the ball's surface. This allows the smoothly flowing air to follow the ball's surface a little farther around the back side of the ball, thereby decreasing the size of the wake.

A dimpled ball thus has about half the drag of a smooth ball. Additionally, dimples also help with lift.

A smooth ball gets lift from backspin, which makes the air pressure on the bottom of the ball greater than on the top, thus creating an upward force on the ball.

But while ball spin contributes about one half of a golf ball's lift, the other half is provided by the dimples, which allow for optimization of the lift force.

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DRIVING RANGE
Fix Your Slice

In today's video, we share simple strategies to help you fix your slice and improve your overall game.

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