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Rory McIlroy made a significant equipment change before the start of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, switching from a TaylorMade TP5x golf ball to the brand’s other five-piece offering, the TP5. With the help of that ball, McIlroy went on to win at Pebble Beach, and now he’s at it again.
After testing some new woods and wedges this week in Orlando ahead of the Arnold Palmer Invitational at the Bay Hill Club and Lodge, McIlroy has a new wedge set, driver and fairway woods.
“So, because this ball, especially with the shorter irons, spins a little bit more, especially with the sort of three-quarter shots, I feel a little more comfortable playing those, so I actually weakened my pitching wedge by a degree and a half, to sort of bridge the gap between having a 46.5 and a 54,” Rory said on Wednesday. “So that’s my 48 degree, and then 54, 60. I just feel like with the ball, I’m a lot more comfortable playing those sort of half- and three-quarter shots, so (I’m) comfortable going back to three wedges.”
Previously, McIlroy had been a four-wedge player, using TaylorMade MG4 (46, 50, 54, 60 degrees) wedges fitted with Project X 6.5 shafts. Weakening the 46-degree pitching wedge and removing the 50-degree gap wedge allowed McIlroy to add another club to his bag.
“I sort of had to look at the top end of the bag then and how I was going to configure it,” he explained. While he did not discuss his driver during his press conference on Wednesday, McIlroy has switched to TaylorMade’s standard Qi35. He also added two new fairway woods.
“For a while, I’ve been looking for a club that sort of carries 300 in the air,” McIlroy said. He added that many tour stops have fairways that pinch in around 310 or 320 yards, making driver a risky play, but that wasn’t making him happy.
“My 3-wood, that’s going like 285, 290, but guys that are shorter than me are hitting driver sort of 300 or 310, so I feel like I was at a disadvantage in some ways, even to like people that hit it shorter than me, depending upon the course setup.”
Many pros have turned to mini drivers to create near-driver distance with enhanced accuracy, but McIlroy said he wasn’t comfortable with them, so he’s opted for a stronger-lofted 3-wood, a TaylorMade Qi35 with 15 degrees of loft.
“And then, I’ve went from a 5-wood to a 4-wood. And that 4-wood sort of bridges that gap,” he said. McIlroy’s 4-wood is an 18-degree TaylorMade Qi35.
But he wasn’t done there.
“Then, I’ve got the 3-iron that sort of replaces the 5-wood,” McIlroy said, referring to a TaylorMade prototype 3-iron that looks like a recently-released P·770. “So I’ve got a club that sort of flies 260, a club that flies 280, a club that flies 300, and then the driver,” McIlroyt said. “So that was sort of the reasoning behind them. It just sort of gives me more options off the tee, especially with being so comfortable at the other end of the bag with the wedges and hitting those three-quarter shots. It’s nice to have those options up at the top end of the bag.”
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Rory McIlroy makes equipment changes at Arnold Palmer Invitational
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