Motorsports And Golf Gearheads Unite As Pennzoil And PXG Team Up

At first blush, motor oil and golf equipment may seem like strange bedfellows. But while one tunes engines and the other fine-tunes swings, both Pennzoil and PXG are in the performance game, laser focused on maxing power and pushing driving to the limit.

The pairing made instant sense to PGA tour pro and PXG staffer Jake Knapp, a Costa Mesa native known for a mullet flow as wild as his bumpy road to the top circuit.

“Between Pennzoil and PXG you have two top-tier companies and they both obviously have to do with driving. I thought it was a cool collab and when I finally saw the black and yellow driver I thought it worked really well,” Knapp quipped, adding that the ‘Long way me drive’ tagline etched on the sweetspot was a clever touch.

To tee off the promotion of the limited-edition big stick born from the collaboration, Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin and Knapp went head-to-head in a friendly long drive contest at Brickyard Crossing Golf Course—a unique layout with several holes set right inside the infield of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Knapp had a blast and said it was fun to find out how big of a “golf geek” that the New Zealander IndyCar Series driver turned out to be.

“He seems to love golf and plays during race weeks a bunch. It was fun to chitchat with him about golf and then also learn a bit about what he does on a week-to-week basis.”

Knapp, who turns 31 in a few days, spent years grinding on the mini tours before finally breaking through and his path was anything but linear. After falling short at Q-School in 2021 and losing his status, he took an eight-month detour working as a nightclub bouncer to bankroll another run at the dream. Three years later, he was hoisting a trophy as a PGA Tour winner at the Mexico Open.

His stint managing late-night lines and defusing tense situations didn’t just help him stay afloat financially—it also gave him clarifying perspective that still serves him well on the course today.

“I think there’s definitely been a benefit. Hopefully I don’t have to deal with crowds, I leave that up to tour security,” he joked. “But I think it helped me more so in the overall aspect of having an appreciation for being able to play golf for a living. The money we can make in golf and the opportunities we have are far greater than checking IDs at a door at midnight”

Tee Box Speed Demon

This season, Knapp boasts one of the fastest swings on tour, averaging a clubhead speed of 123.54 mph. That outpaces stars like Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele.

Knapp attributes his blur of a tee shot simply to a lot of time working out and an early knack for hitting bombs even before he had his teenaged growth spurt

“I was fortunate enough to hit it far as a kid when I wasn’t very tall. Then I grew maybe five or six inches and that helped. But it was a lot of time spent in the gym training and working on it. Speed is a skill kind of like anything in our game,” he said.

Maybe it helped that one of Knapp’s old pastimes was speedcubing, he used to be able to solve a Rubik’s cube faster than it takes most players to read a putt.

“Realistically, nowadays I can do it in 90 seconds but when I used to do it a lot it was right around a minute or so.”

In motorsports, multi person crews tweak cars in mere seconds in the thick of a race. If golf allowed pitstop-style crews to rush onto the course mid-round to tweak golf clubs, Knapp believes such adjustments could be a meaningful difference maker.

“It wouldn’t be too bad if you were playing a particular course where you have to draw or fade the ball on certain holes. I think on Quail Hollow No. 2, for the PGA Championship I would have loved if somebody could have come in and given me a driver that was going to hook about 30-yards. That would be very nice to have maybe once or twice a round.”

Keeping with the racing theme, Knapp’s dream car is a coupe famous for defying physics in its appearances as Paul Walker’s go-to ride in the long running street racing franchise.

“I personally always loved an old school souped-up Nissan GT-R for whatever reason, growing up in the Fast and Furious era. I would love to drive something like that down Pacific Coast Highway. I’d be all in on that.”

Knappster Vibes

The UCLA product, currently 57^th in the FedEx Cup standings, may look like a poster boy for SiriusXM’s new country station The Highway but his musical tastes run more bass drop than banjo.

“Sometime in the morning if I need to get myself going I’ll listen to some type of hip hop or electronic music. But then usually before afternoon rounds when I’m already worked out and gone through my day I listen more to white noise or meditation sounds—waves crashing, things like that to help slow everything down.”

His top golf goals for the balance of the season are to compete in one or both of the remaining two majors and to make a push, with some high leaderboard finishes, onto Keegan Bradley’s radar to garner captain’s pick consideration for team USA.

“They like guys that are playing well right now so I’m going to do my best to prove that over the next few months and hopefully I’ll be playing later this summer in the Ryder Cup.”

A big puckhead, while his Anaheim Ducks, who are also a sponsor, didn’t make the playoffs this year, he’s bullish on their future prospects.

“I think we have most of the pieces, but maybe one more true goal scorer and one or two big mature defensemen. But for the most part we have most of the pieces, it’s just a matter of letting those guys mature, get better and build that team chemistry. I think in a year or two we are going to be in a really good spot.”

Knapp’s journey, like the Anaheim Ducks team he pulls for, is a work in progress but trending up and he certainly has the horsepower to hit serious paydirt in the sport.