Only once in his career has Kevin Na cracked open of those detailed green-reading books.
It was last year, on the 17th green at Waialae Country Club, where Na needed a birdie-eagle finish to shoot 59 in the third round of the Sony Open. Sizing up his 10-footer, he glanced at the book, adjusted his read, made the stroke and ... missed. He settled for 61 but eventually won the event.
“It didn’t work out too well,” Na recalled Thursday, “so that was the last time I saw it.”
Of course, Na’s longtime caddie, Kenny Harms, routinely used the book to verify his initial read – or at least he used to, before the PGA Tour adopted the local rule that cracked down on the green-reading materials.