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Major championship season has hit Tulsa like a summer heatwave. The last time this event was played at Southern Hills in 2007, it reached triple digits all four days and Tiger Woods went on a heater 🔥 🔥 to win by two strokes.
The Big Cat isn’t the only Team TaylorMade past champ in the field this week. He’s joined by Martin Kaymer (2010), Rory McIlroy (2012, 14’) and Collin Morikawa (2020). The course underwent a renovation in 2018, which included some significant changes. As these champions take on the revamped layout, let's unpack the major tweaks to their bags.
Certain athletes defy Father Time. Tiger Woods is one of them. It was only a short while ago that the 15-time major champion was flying his 3-iron 240+ yards to the amazement of our Tour staff. It was particularly impressive when you consider the weakened loft and the fact that he was hitting a butter knife with rebar attached to it.
For all of Tiger’s defiant powers, things are different with this comeback. Don’t get me wrong, we mere mortals are amazed and appreciative that he’s even able to play golf at this stage let alone compete in majors. After his trip to Augusta earlier this year, our Tour team made an observation and reached out to Woods with a simple question.
“Would there be any benefit to a 3-iron that went higher and farther?”
His answer: “There’d be a huge benefit…”
Knowing that P·770 packs a lot of performance into a compact blade-like shape, we started there. Powered by a hollow-body construction filled with SpeedFoam™ Air and a Thru-Slot Speed Pocket on the sole, the design is all about added forgiveness and faster ball speeds. With these insights in mind, we built various P·770 3-irons and 2-irons (even a couple P·790s) and sent them off to Jupiter, Florida.
After substantial testing, Tiger showed up to Tulsa with both P·770 irons is his bag. As anticipated, the P·770s are carrying 8-10 yards farther, launching higher and spinning right around 4000 rpms – which is optimal. 🤌
We've grown accustomed to seeing it over the past 25 years, but Tiger's iron game is dialed. He's hitting precise yardages and managing the distance gap at the long end of his bag with the help of P·770. Furthermore, replacing his 5-wood with a 2-iron will help him maintain the ball flight and trajectory he's looking for (stingers anyone?) with an added element of control.
Tiger rarely tweaks his bag, but this one is notable. If you're like us, you can't wait to see the results in live competition. Is it Thursday yet?
TIGER WITB
Rory McIlroy comes into this week with an unreal track record at this championship, having won it twice and compiled five top-10 finishes. Although this is his first time competing at the venue, don’t bet against the Northern Irishman.
“We’ve dialed Rory in to where he’s freely hitting both shots with his driver. The one where he teases it down and lets it fade slightly into the fairway. Then the one that’s high and turning over that’s part of his DNA,” says Senior Tour Rep Adrian Rietveld. “When he’s in control of both those shots, he can go around any course in the world and win.”
The specs of Rory’s driver have been locked in since early in the season, when he sprinted out of the gate in two events on the DP World Tour (T12 and 3rd). For a player with Rory’s speed, the focus is always on dispersion and accuracy. To achieve it, our team shortened the length slightly for added control. He didn’t lose anything on the distance front.
On Monday of the first major of 2022, we met him on the range and clocked his ball speed at 189-190 mph.
INSIDE THE SPECS
The World No. 7 has oscillated between Stealth and SIM 3-woods, but both models have similar specs. The lofts check in right around 14.25°, which is up from the 13° he’s played in the past. The increased loft lets him see a bit more of the face at address, while spinning it right at 3,200 rpms. It gives him a club he can take off the tee or off the deck with extreme confidence, hitting ball speeds upwards of 179 mph and carries of 300+ yards.
Rietveld calls Rory: “The best 5-wood player I’ve ever seen,” and his 19° Stealth Plus 5wd might be the most interesting club in his bag. Why? Because it’s one of the most versatile. Rory’s 3-wood is pushed to maximize distance and accentuate the strength of his game – hitting the ball a lot farther than everyone else. That creates a substantial gap in yardages when you jump from his 3wd to his longest iron. Insert the 5-wood. It’s a club that needs to cover 250 yards or 290 – and every number in between.
“It’s really a unique club for Rory because of that versatility,” says Rietveld. “It’s shorter than a standard 5wd and has a slightly stronger loft at 17.5°. It’s like watching an artist at work seeing all the different shots he can hit with it.”
Rory’s switch to the new TP5x ball was a big factor in optimizing the performance of his fairway woods. For him, that ball was spinning less, but more importantly, it was “holding” the spin. As Rietveld describes it, every player at this level has a high-spin ceiling and a low-spin floor with each club. The best way to judge the performance of a golf ball is to measure how much spin jumps on their high-spin swings. When that jump is minimal, or “holds,” that when the ball is right.
He continues to play the Rory Proto irons and his specs have gone unchanged for the last few years. The lofts are close to standard with 4° increments between irons, while lie angles change at a .5° increment. They weigh in at D4.5 with Project X Rifle 7.0 shafts and 6.5 in his wedges (NOTE: Tour pros generally use softer shafts in their wedges for added feel).
Earlier this year, he made the decision to switch to high-bounce soles in all of his MG3 wedges and immediately noticed a lower and more controlled flight. He also noted how much better the club slid through the turf with, especially from 50-75 yards. He tops off each club with the multi-compound black on black grip with two wraps.
RORY WITB
Ball striking royalty. Iron king. Two-time major champion in just eight starts (that’s wins 25 percent of the time according to our calculations 😉). The superlatives go on and on when it comes to reigning Champion Golfer of the Year and 2020 PGA Champion Collin Morikawa. As 2022’s first major is underway in Augusta, let’s go deep on Collin’s set up.
Collin was an original SIM loyalist when it came to his driver because of how he could play his preferred cut off the tee…until he met his Stealth Plus 9.0° for the first time at a June 2021 testing session at The Kingdom. It’s no secret how much Collin pays attention to the details of every club in his bag. He wants to learn the why’s and how’s of the technology to understand how the club can best benefit him in tournament play. Once Collin built that trust with 60x Carbon Twist Face, he saw immediate results in his testing session.
“(The fitting) was quick. For me, can I trust the driver? Can I know it’s going to come off the face really hot, really nicely with the launch monitor numbers? After the first few hits, even though we hadn’t had every lie and loft perfectly adjusted, you could feel that when you found the center of the face the ball was going. The trust factor was fully there and after that it was just tweaking things knowing that the ball is going to go as far. I definitely picked up noticeable distance and a little ball speed, which is obviously an advantage for me.” - Collin Morikawa
INSIDE THE SPEC
CLUB: DriverHEAD: Stealth Plus 9.0°LOFT SLEEVE: 8.5°SHAFT: Diamana D+ 60TXTIPPING: 1”SHAFT LENGTH: 45 1/8 EOGGRIP/SIZE: Z Cord 58R 1L, 3RSWING WEIGHT: D3
The iron setup of Collin Morikawa is perhaps the most intriguing. When TaylorMade engineers created the P·700 series, part of the intention of the series was to allow golfers the option to play a combo set of irons to best match each model to each shot required within their game. Collin is one of the many TOUR pros that have taken advantage of that ability. With Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 shafts and a Z Cord (58R 0L/4R) grip.
COLLIN WITB
While we likely won’t see any adjustments this week in Tulsa, Collin has made tweaks to his combo set based off course conditions and demands on numerous occasions. None more meaningful than last year’s Open Championship when Collin made the iron switch of a lifetime. After noticing the difference in conditions at the Scottish Open, Morikawa felt something different with his 7-9 irons (P·730) in terms of how they interacted with the links turf.
“I wouldn't be here through these two rounds if I hadn't played last week at Scottish. I've played in firm conditions. I can think of places I've played in tighter, drier conditions, but just having fescue fairways and the ball sitting a little different was huge to see last week. I changed my irons, my 9 through 7-iron that I normally have blades in," said Collin after his after his second round 64 at Royal St. George's. "I changed to the MCs strictly because I couldn't find the center of the face. I was hitting these iron shots last week that I just normally don't and my swing felt good, but it was a huge learning opportunity.”
After making the switch, the rest was history!
SHORT GAME SETUP
Collin loves to try different 60° wedges and switch them out based on playing conditions. For some time, he gamed Milled Grind Hi-Toe at courses with high rough. The larger face and higher CG placement meant he could catch it a little high off the face and still get the results he wanted.
However, he recently changed his wedge technique to improve turf interaction and consistency in his bunker play. In the past, he shied away from the TW Grind because he felt like it dug too much in the sand – even though he loved the performance chipping and all full swings. Now that he’s tweaked his technique, he’s getting the full benefits of the Milled Grind 3 with a TW Grind.
“It’s the short shots around the green, in the bunker and from inside 90 yards where he’s really trying to see improvement,” says Rietveld. “Right now, the versatility of Tiger’s grind is allowing him to see the results he wants.”
Martin Kaymer has seen limited action in 2022, having made just three starts on the PGA Tour, but the two-time major champion comes to Tulsa with two new pieces in his bag. It’s no surprise that the biggest change this season has been his Stealth Plus driver. Kaymer has added 10 yards of carry distance with the added juice of 60x Carbon Twist Face.
In addition, he’s gone to a new 60° Hi-Toe 2 with 9° of bounce, which he says has helped improve his short pitch shots and bunker play. Performance around the green will be critical at Southern Hills, where par saves will be critical on the challenging green complexes.
KAYMER WITB