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Press -Telegram weekly columnist  Mark Whicker. Long Beach Calif.,  Thursday July 3,  2014. E

 (Photo by Stephen Carr / Daily Breeze)

LA QUINTA – The Parade of White Belts reaches the U.S. mainland this week, having stirred the Pacific with a birdie tsunami.

In nine PGA Tour events during this season, which began in October, seven winning scores are 20-under or better.

Justin Thomas has three wins already, with scores that Tiger Woods at his peak would find fanciful. Thomas is 72-under in those victories.

Last week at Hawaii he shot 253, a PGA Tour record. That’s 27-under on a course that had only two par-5 holes, which he played eight times, at 10-under.

The previous week, Thomas went 22-under on a par-73 course at Kapalua, and that was with a par-5 double bogey Sunday. His first round of the season was a 75, but his scoring average is 67.3.

This has been coming. Jordan Spieth shot 30-under at Kapalua last year, Henrik Stenson won the Open Championship at 20-under, and Jason Day was 20-under at the 2015 PGA.

Now comes the Careerbuilder Challenge, still better known as the Bob Hope, traditionally the soft underbelly of golf.

But how do you know you’re in paradise when every week is a bird sanctuary?

“Better players, better equipment, better knowledge,” said Jason Dufner, who won here last year. “But some of the courses are almost becoming too easy. Last week (at Waialae Country Club in Hawaii), it’s a great event, but that was the softest I’ve seen that course, and the least amount of rough. It’s hitting off carpet at some of these courses. The courses have better agronomy. So guys are challenging 59. It could be anybody.”

As Bob Harig of ESPN.com noted, only three players broke 60 on the PGA Tour in the 20th century, but five have done so in this decade.

“Larry Nelson won the U.S. Open at Oakmont (in 1993),” Dufner said. “He told me that on the first hole, he’d hit four-iron into the green. Last year I hit pitching wedge three days, sand wedge the other day.”

“If you’re not shooting 20-under you might as well pack it up and go home,” William McGirt said. “You feel like you have to play perfect to win.”

It’s not that the guys are hitting more greens or fairways or even putting better. They just find new orbits off the tee.

In 1998, John Daly led the tour by averaging 298 yards. Last year, there were 27 pros who topped 300. This year, Smylie Kaufman leads with an impossible average drive of 322.

Any course with mundane par-5s is helpless. Luke List is already 50-under-par on the long holes this season.

“People will say the golf ball doesn’t go any farther, but they’re wrong,” McGirt said. “The drivers can’t get hotter. The ball is the only common denominator with all the shots.

“They’ve basically taken an old two-piece, hard-brick ball and made it spin. That benefits the bombers. They can get to the core and compress it better than anyone. I can’t do that, but I have a ball I know I can control.”

McGirt was on the practice tee at the Nicklaus course at PGA West. He was holding a thin briefcase with a “Trackman” logo on it. That, he said, has been the equivalent of the pentium processor.

Trackman is a radar device that collects data and profiles of a golfer’s swing. When you hear McGirt discuss it, you realize that Arnold Palmer didn’t do it this way.

“It detects a flaw before it gets out of control,” McGirt said. “If your swing is a degree and a half steeper than it should be, you can fix it before it becomes four degrees. You look at it and scratch your head and say it looks the same, but it’s not. Video doesn’t pick everything up.

“Because of this, I don’t have to have my teacher (John Tillery) with me all the time. I can hit 40 shots and e-mail them, and he can pull the numbers and say, here’s what the problem is. But some guys get caught up in it. They might start playing numbers instead of playing golf.”

McGirt said the crimson tide of birdies can mess with you mentally. But he admitted he wasn’t perfect when he won Memorial last year, that even in his best round he 3-putted twice. He was solid, not spectacular, when he nailed it down Sunday.

Eventually Mother Nature will withstand all the pixels and analytics. Last year, Danny Willett was able to shoot 5-under and win a cold, windy Masters.

Rain is expected here Friday. The afternoon lows? Anyone’s guess.

Contact the writer: mwhicker@scng.com