Brendon Todd is shooting straight at Heritage. A few years ago, he wasn’t making cuts
Brendon Todd scored five birdies in the second round of the RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing on Friday on his way to a score of 68 that will ensure he will make the cut and play this weekend.
Todd, who spent a lot of time vacationing and playing golf tournaments on Hilton Head Island as a kid, drove the ball well. That’s a significant statistic for Todd. Over three years, from 2016 through 2019, he suffered from the “driver yips,” which resulted in missing countless cuts.
“It was tough,” Todd said after turning in his second-round scorecard at the Heritage. “A lot of people wouldn’t even keep playing.”
Todd, 36, of Watkinsville, Georgia, didn’t quit when many would have. With the help of a South Carolina-based swing coach, who proposed different kinds of drills, he’s hitting drives straight and making cuts again.
On Friday, Todd hit 10 of 14 fairways off the tee. And his short game, his strength, which never left him during his three-year drought, was strong as usual. He nailed a 23-foot birdie putt on 4 and a 30-footer for birdie on six. He also holed birdie putts on 11, 12 and 13. When the wind picked up, gusting to 30 mph at times, he gave two strokes back with bogies on 14 and 18 “but 68, to move inside the cut line and get a crack at it on the weekend,” Todd said, “will be good.”
His two-round score of 140 is two under par and five back of the leaders as of Friday afternoon.
Todd attended high school in Cary, N.C. and grew up playing against PGA Tour pro Webb Simpson in the Raleigh, N.C. area. He’s been playing on Hilton Head golf courses, including junior tournaments, since he was 12 years old because his family vacationed here.
Todd joined the tour in 2009.
In 2014, his winnings were $3.4 million and he won the HP Byron Nelson Championship.
In 2015, he had earned $1.8 million and had four top 10 finishes.
Then the yips hit.
“I was hitting the ball to the right and losing the ball,” Todd said with a laugh. “Most people would call it the ‘driver yips.’ I hit enough bad shots every round to shoot 74 instead of 68 or 70.”
In 2016, he entered 29 events and missed 25 cuts.
In 2017, he entered 9 events and missed 8 cuts, and his PGA Tour earnings plummeted to $14,925.
2018: Six events, six missed cuts.
Then he began working with swing instructor Bradley Hughes, a former PGA Tour pro originally from Melbourne, Australia who lives in Greenville, S.C. Hughes is a golf book instruction author; Todd has read Hughes’ “The Great Ball Strikers.”
“It’s more old school teaching than today’s ideas,” Hughes, who was watching Todd’s second round on Friday, said of what he teaches. “But it’s still golf.”
Hughes had Todd do a series of drills designed to help him square up the club face so he hit the ball solid.
“I could not have done it without him because I went through a handful of teachers and nobody summed it up like he did and had me practice the way he did,” Todd said.
The drills occur away from the golf course or on the driving range, Todd said. For example, he hit a “contact bag” with his clubs many times learning how to square up the club with each hand and move through the golf ball.
“He talks a lot about feeling certain pressures in the golf swing versus trying to put the golf club in a certain spot,” Todd said. “It’s more like, ‘feel this pressure here, feel this pressure here,’ and that’s going to get the golf club to work in the right fashion.”
In 2020, Todd won the Mayakoba Golf Classic, then the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in 2021, earning the largest paycheck of his career, $1.3 million.
Entering the Heritage, Todd had made the cut in nine of the 14 events he had entered in 2022. He also has had one top 10 finish and four in the top 60 en route to earning $724,285 in 2022.
His goals have not changed since he joined the PGA Tour in 2009: Winning tournaments and playing in majors and working to make the FedExCup finals.
“All you’re trying to do is try to win every week, but enjoy playing the game and competing on the greatest tour in the world,” Todd said.
His father, Martin, made the trip to Harbour Town Golf Links to watch his son. He takes in five to six tournaments a year. Brendon’s game, he says, is in good shape. And he’s proud of the way he bounced back. He likes his chances at the RBC Heritage.
“He’s hitting the ball straight,” Martin Todd said. “He knows where it’s going. He’s a great putter and a great chipper. He should be able to do well.”
This story was originally published April 15, 2022 at 3:11 PM.
