Rory McIlroy made some major equipment changes. Here’s why

ORLANDO — Tour equipment stories have become a fast-paced entity in recent years.

It used to be an afterthought when a player swapped into new gear but now, with social media and the new golf media ecosystem, we almost immediately get intel on anything and everything that hits a Tour range.

Although any new addition is interesting (at least it is to golf dorks like me), not everything moves the needle. There are, however, a select few players who cause a stir with every shaft swap and wrench twist.

And so it was this week at Bay Hill, where Rory McIlroy put the new TaylorMade Qi35 driver in his bag, along with a new Qi35 3-wood and 5-wood.

In my opinion, McIlroy’s new tools say more about where his goals for this year lie than anything else. Let’s be honest, there are two weeks this year that matter most to McIlroy: the Masters, for obvious reasons, and the Open Championship at Portrush.

Everything about what you are going to read below is based on his efforts and strategy to win one or both of those titles.

The timing is funny actually given some recent commentary about Tour winners and their reluctance to adopt new products early in the year. Thing is, though, Tour adoption of new product is not an exact science; there are many factors to consider when Tour teams are transitioning into new sticks…

Player schedule: Can the reps and player find the time, and preferred location in a timely fashion? Jon Rahm, for example, tests all his new gear at the Ely Callaway Performance Center.
Player needs: When it comes to performance, is the product adding value?
Not disrupting a heater: The player is on a run and the reps don’t want to throw a wrench in there.
Time of year: Some players don’t want to test in the winter.
Player tendencies: Some players are just HARD switchers (i.e., Sam Burns, Akshay Bhatia). Sometimes the process happens quickly, other times not. Just how it is. Si Woo Kim, for example, can swap clubs in an hour. Most others cannot.
A security blanket: Some players have clubs they are never getting rid of. Henrik Stenson’s 3-wood, for example.

And on and on. Drawn-out decision-making is in no way a commentary on the gear itself, although these days technology expands at maybe a 1-2% uptick year over year versus 6-10%, say, 10 years ago. Gone are the days of finding an easy extra 20 yards. The reality is performance gains on Tour now live in the creases. Could be a spin window, start lines (the window the ball flies out of), how a club performs on very specific shots, etc.

I remember a session last year at East Lake where McIlroy was NUKING some testing heads. The drivers had a perfect start line for Rory, which is roughly 2-3 ticks right of the centerline and falling back to the middle. But again, that is one of the variables players must consider. For any club to make it in the bag on Tour it needs to have proper spin, ball speed, launch, aesthetics, acoustics, forgiveness, start line, spin delta, etc.

And keep in mind that a switch also requires swapping out of something that already checks off those boxes. For Tour reps, the process can sometimes feel like a game of whack-a-mole.

The story behind Rory McIlroy’s gear switches

The ball swap

McIlroy is always looking for spin. He needs it everywhere, and although it’s fun on Top Tracer when he hits big tomahawk draws at 15 launch and 1,800 RPM spin, there’s no practicality to those shots. What Rory wants and needs to win requires him to raise his floor (you’ll hear that term a lot from me), and on Tour the first place to start improving is by looking at spin. That all begins with the ball.

In my opinion, the ball is, in fact, the most important piece of the puzzle.

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You cannot build a good bag around the wrong ball and vice versa. It all has to jive. Earlier this season Rory swapped into the new TaylorMade TP5 ball, which is the higher spin version in the TP5 family. This was key in this whole thing, said TaylorMade’s head of sports marketing, Keith Sbarboro.

“After Rory switched to TP5, he noticed a slight increase in spin with the driver [Qi10],” Sbarboro told me. “After doing some testing at home the last few weeks, he found the Qi35 spinning slightly less, this less spin matched up perfectly with his new ball. Just goes to show how important the ball is to everything.”

In simple terms, his old Qi10-and-TP5 combo spun a hair too much. But still, the green side spin and lower launch appealed to McIlroy, so he put the ball in play at Pebble. Because it was a Signature Event with no cut, it was a great time to field test.

McIlroy still won at Pebble with that slightly off combo, but the setup was soft and damp with little rollout for the most part. You can get away with a touch more spin in those conditions, when we’re talking about just 200-300 RPMs.

The shaft swap

Even McIlroy’s shafts speak to his control strategy. The OG Ventus Black is a board-y profile that makes sense given McIlroy’s speed and the fact that his primary shot with the driver is right to left. Regardless of the shot shape, speed always requires stability somewhere. But spin deficiency can sometimes be a problem. I was there that day on the East Lake driving range watching my friend Adrian Rietveld plant the seeds.

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The new Fujikura Ventus Black Velo+ “kicks” a bit more, so let’s call it a Ventus Black light. That extra kick will most likely result in a bit more spin and that is the case here.

The driver head swap

TaylorMade’s Qi35 would be considered the “more forgiving, higher MOI profile” of the line. Typically at Tour speeds, the LS model is where you’d think most players would fall. At times on Tour you’ll find Tour-only heads; the Qi35 (DOT) is a slightly smashed-in (front to back) version of the retail Qi35. This gives their Tour staff the LS look (sort of) with higher MOI benefits of the retail model. Not apples to apples, but a more forgiving option for a Tour player.

McIlroy is now in a higher spinning head, shaft and ball. The whole package equals control.

During his Tuesday presser, McIlroy was asked about the ball change and he offered some interesting insight.

“I think it’s all really come from the ball change a few weeks ago,” he said. “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 and a half and a 54. 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 comfortable going back to three wedges.”

Tour heads

Tour-only heads are definitely a thing we did when I worked at Callaway, and there’s a reason and they drive gear dorks crazy.

My response was always, (1) The clubs don’t have unicorn dust. (2) These are the best players in the world and they require more specificity than Bob in your men’s league. (3) Typically, these days, they spin a bit more. (4) Most times it’s to compliment a shot shape.

This is year two of the DOT as many TM staffers had that head in play last year with Qi10, most notably McIlroy and Scheffler. It’s a smashed in version (front to back) of the Qi35 Core model giving Tour Staff a higher MOI version with an LS-ish look. Nothing crazy.

These are McIlroy’s ideal driver numbers:

Launch:
9-10 Degrees Fairway Finder
12-13 Degrees Full Send 

Spin:
2200-2400RPM Full send (Draw and Hammer Fade)
2600-2800 Fairway Finder

Cruising Ball Speed:
185-190MPH 

A few more new toys

McIlroy also put the Qi35 3-wood, 5-wood, a new P770 Proto 3-iron and a new MG4 46˚ pitching wedge (@48).

In regards to the 3-wood, McIlroy wanted something hotter that filled the 300 to 310-yard gap (yes, you read that right).

On the 3-wood, he said: “Then I sort of had to look at the top end of the bag then of how I was going to configure it. For a while I’ve been looking for a club that sort of carries 300 in the air. I feel like there’s a lot of golf courses we go to that really pinch in at like 310, 320, and I would hit a 3-wood — I can’t hit driver because it’s just too narrow, but then I would hit 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’m actually, 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. So I sort of, and I messed around with that the mini driver last year, but I just couldn’t quite get comfortable with it. So I’ve sort of been playing around with like stronger 3-woods. So this 3-wood that I have carries like 300, 305 in the air, which is a really, it’s a really good club for me to have.”

McIlroy’s new 5-wood, which is also spec to spec with his previous gamer, allows enough of a gap against the new P770 3-iron.

Here’s what McIlroy said about the 5-wood: “I’ve [moved] from a 5-wood to a 4-wood. And that 4-wood sort of bridges that gap. And then I’ve got the 3-iron that sort of replaces the 5-wood. 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. So that was sort of the reasoning behind ’em. 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 that it’s nice to have those options up at the top end of the bag.”

Funny thing is, spec to spec both are pretty damn close to his Qi10 — this new Qi35 is just that hot. Tommy Fleetwood got 8 yards instantly in his 5-wood at the same spec.

Basically, the top of the bag gaps look like this:

Driver: 330
3-wood: 300
5-Wood: 280
3-Iron: 265

The new MG4 pitching wedge (46@48) was built to give him a 145-yard club that he can use when he has the 3-iron in the bag pulling his 50 out.

Rory McIlroy: What’s in his bag

Driver: TaylorMade Qi35 (DOT) 9@8.25 (3g front, 13g back, FCT SLEEVE: 1.5°), Fujikura Ventus Black Velocore+ 6X (45.75″ EOG, Tipped 1″, D5)

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3-wood: Qi35 Bonded (15@14), Fujikura Ventus Black 8X (Tipped 1.5″, D4, 42.5″ EOG) 

5-wood: Qi35 Bonded (18@17), Fujikura Ventus Black 9X (Tipped 2″, D4, 41.5″ EOG)

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Irons: TaylorMade P770 PROTO (3), P760 (4) RORS PROTO MB (5-9), Project X HZRDUS 105 TX (3), Project X 7.0 (4-9, Length: +.25″, Lie: 1˚ Flat)
Loft Progression: 20/23/26/30/34/38/42

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Wedges: TaylorMade MG4 Raw (46/09SB, 50/09SB, 54/11SB, 60/08LB), Project X 6.5 (46-54), Project X 6.5 Wedge (60)

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Putter: Spider Tour X (Loft 3, Lie 69.5), Short Slant, Full Line, Pure Roll insert, Black Stepless shaft, 34 1/2″ EOG, E0

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