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Five Storylines to Know About Tiger, Rory, Scottie & Team TaylorMade at Augusta
It’s arguably the greatest week on the golf calendar, as the year’s first major is here. Team TaylorMade has three past champions and six total players in the field this year: Tiger Woods, Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Dustin Johnson, Tommy Fleetwood and Kurt Kitayama.
Let’s get right into it and break down the five things you need to know about Team TaylorMade heading into Augusta.
Rory led the field in driving distance at the 2022 Masters averaging 318.5 yards off the tee for the week. This year, heading into Augusta, Rory made a few tweaks to his driver at the WGC Dell Technologies match play.
McIlroy switched from his Ventus Black 6X shaft in favor of a new Ventus TR Blue 6X shaft at a shorter 44 inches, while also adding more backweight into his Stealth 2 Plus driver with a 19g weight.
The results? At Match Play, Rory had two 420-yard drives, five drives between 370 and 380-yards, 11 drives between 350 and 369-yards and 23 drives between 320 and 349-yards. In total, Rory hit 63 drives over 300-yards in the seven matches he played in the event.
Heading into Augusta, McIlroy ranks first in driving distance and sixth in strokes gained off the tee.
Tiger Woods has probably influenced almost every golfer in the field this week one way or another. For Scottie Scheffler, it came at the 2020 Masters during a practice round when Scottie witnessed first-hand the masterclass of iron play Tiger possesses.
At the time, Scottie was in the P·730 irons, but had past experience playing clubs crafted with Tiger’s design influence. Once Scottie saw the P·7TWs in action, he had to try them.
"What I noticed when I hit them at home was my ability to hit different windows. When I flighted it down, I could pinch it lower than I could with the P·730 and when I wanted to hit it up, I could hit it higher. I saw more variability in the shots and then the distance control was basically the exact same. I saw the benefits of being able to flight it down and keep it flatter and not have that overspin and just have a little bit more variety.”Scottie Scheffler
Augusta is known to be a second shot golf course…and as our friend Justin Ray tells us, the proof is in the stats. Six of the last eight Augusta champions have ranked inside the top-five that week in strokes gained approach per round.
Good news for Team TaylorMade, we have a ball strikers galore.
That includes reigning champion Scottie Scheffler, who hit 11% more greens in regulation than the field average in his breakthrough victory here last April. Scheffler certainly has the ball-striking form to become the fourth repeat champion: he leads the Tour this season in strokes gained off-the-tee, greens in regulation and strokes gained tee-to-green.
Since the beginning of 2020, Collin Morikawa leads the PGA Tour in strokes gained approach per round, picking up nearly a full stroke on the field per 18 holes. With his P·770/P·7MC/P·7CM combo set, he’s second on Tour in that metric, as well as inside the top 10 in greens in regulation and average proximity from 175 to 200 yards.
Tiger Woods hit 80.6 percent of his greens in regulation for the week when he won in 2019, the highest number by a winner here since Woods himself hit 83 percent in 2001. The five-time winner of this tournament showed off a handful of vintage approach shots earlier this year at Riviera, when he gained more than half-a-stroke per round with his approach play.
Fellow P·7TW gamer Tommy Fleetwood’s tee-to-green game was terrific at Augusta a year ago, ranking third in the field in driving distance and T-7th in greens in regulation.
Dustin Johnson’s approach play has been stellar at this event in recent years. Since 2019, he’s hit the green in regulation more than 70 percent of the time here, fueling three top-12 finishes in that span.
You’ll be seeing these bags everywhere this week with the freshest design and accessories on the golf course. Watch for some special bling with defending champion, Scottie Scheffler.
- Stealth 2 Plus 9.0° driver
- Stealth 2 Plus 15.0° 3-wood
- Stealth Plus 19.0° 5-wood
- P·760 3-4 iron
- Rors Proto 5-PW
- Milled Grind 3 (54° HB)
- TP5x Golf Ball
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