Rory McIlroy driver uncertainty swirling at yet another major

OAKMONT, Pa. — Rory McIlroy has figured out some stuff this year: how to win at Augusta National (avoid blow-up rounds); how to free up more time for himself (accept fewer media requests); how to have more fun (travel the world with his daughter, Poppy, and play tennis with his caddie, Harry Diamond).

One thing McIlroy hasn’t solved for, though: which driver to keep in his bag.

Indeed, just a week after making his fourth driver swap of the year, Rory McIlroy has made switch No. 5 ahead of the U.S. Open this week, with a return to his once-trusty TaylorMade Qi10. Let’s recap how we got here:

McIlroy began the season with the Qi10 head that he’d been using for more than a year. In his first start of the year, at the Hero Dubai Desert Classic, he tied for fourth, and then, a couple of weeks later, won his first PGA Tour start of the year, at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. After a T17 at the Genesis at Torrey Pines — still with the Qi10 in his bag — McIlroy headed back east for the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill. His first driver switch came in the lead-up to that event when McIlroy put into play the new TaylorMade Qi35 driver (9-degree), 3-wood (15-degree) and 5-wood (18-degree).

After opening 70-70-73 and not loving his tee balls, McIlroy made a dramatic move: He ordered an Uber driver to pick up his Qi10s from McIlroy’s home club in Jupiter, Fla., and shuttle them two-plus hours north to Orlando so McIlroy could reinsert his old gamers back into his bag for the fourth round. (In that final round, McIlroy hit only five fairways and his SG numbers actually declined.)

“Sort of going back to what I’m comfortable with,” he said in the wake of that start. “I tried new woods for the first three days, didn’t quite work out the way I wanted it to. So, yeah, I went back to my old stuff today. I led strokes gained: off the tee in both Pebble and Torrey, so it was a really good idea to change [laughs]. And then, like yesterday, I lost strokes off the tee, which is the first time I’ve done that in a long time.”

His primary takeaway: He hadn’t given himself enough to acclimate to the Qi35 and would be keeping the Qi10 in play at least through the Masters.

When McIlroy won the Players Championship a week later, his strategy looked like a stroke of genius. Two weeks after that he tied for 5th at the Texas Open and then two weeks after that came his historic win at the Masters. McIlroy — and his bag — in the midst of a magical run.

After two more strong finishes — T12 at Zurich Classic (with Shane Lowry), T7 at Truist — McIlroy and his Qi10 driver arrived at Quail Hollow for the second major of the year, the PGA Championship. Then came an unexpected hiccup: on Tuesday of that week, McIlroy’s driver failed a compliance test. This was nothing unusual — drivers commonly fail CT testing — but because McIlroy declined to address the snafu (and all interview requests at Quail Hollow, for that matter), the story caught fire. That McIlroy hit just four fairways en route to his first-round 74 didn’t help quiet the chatter. He survived the cut but finished the week at three over, in 47th place.

In his next start — at the RBC Canadian Open last week — McIlroy had the Qi35 back in his starting lineup, albeit with a twist. The head was attached to a 44-5/8-inch shaft, which is an inch shorter than McIlroy’s typical shaft length.

After an opening one-over 71 at TPC Toronto, Mcllroy said: “I hit some drives that I liked and that I liked to see, so that was encouraging…it’s hard with the driver, like with the one I had been playing with previously, when I missed with it, I was a little bit left. Then my miss with this one is a little bit right. It’s just trying to figure that out and manage it a little bit.”

In the second round, McIlroy lost -2.810 shots off the tee against the field, shot 78 and missed the cut by 12.

And this week at Oakmont? We’ll give you one guess.

Yup, the Qi10 is back, even if McIlroy was coy about revealing that information.

Asked Tuesday if he’d settled on a big stick for this week, McIlroy offered only a “Yeah.”

“What is it?” the reporter followed up.

McIlroy: “A TaylorMade.”

Reporter: “What model?”

McIlroy: “I mean, come out and watch me hit balls, and you’ll see.”

Ok, then!

In fairness, McIlroy was more expansive when asked whether his driving struggles have been more tied to his swing or his equipment.

“A little bit of both,” he said. “Hitting a lot of drivers, every driver sort of has its own character and you’re trying to manage the misses. As the last few weeks go, I think I learnt a lot on Thursday and Friday last week and did a good bit of practice at home and feel like I’m in a better place with everything going into this week.”

What specifically had he learned?

“I learned that I wasn’t using the right driver,” he said with a smile.

McIlroy knows missing fairways won’t fly on this shin-kicker of a golf course. On a recent Oakmont scouting trip, McIlroy said he shot 81 with birdies on the last two holes, albeit in what he described as “impossible” conditions. “It didn’t feel like I played that bad,” he added.

This week, the rough-choked course will provide little reprieve.  

“Hit the ball in the rough and you’re not going to have any control of your ball going into the green, especially these greens that are pitched away from you,” McIlroy said. “You have to be able to spin the ball going into these greens if you want it to finish anywhere close to where you want it to.”

That starts with hitting fairways. And that starts with having confidence that you will hit fairways. McIlroy knows that. Asked how much he was set back at the PGA Championship by having to play with a substitute driver, McIlroy was quick to cite world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who also had to replace his driver that week after a failed conformance test.     

“It wasn’t a big deal for Scottie,” McIlroy said, “so it shouldn’t have been a big deal for me.”