NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
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The Rory McIlroy shoulder-season iron experiment is already over, virtually before it started.
After trying out cavity-back irons for the first time in his career in Australia last December and Dubai in January, McIlroy returned to the United States with his old familiar blades in the bag at Pebble Beach.
“Sort of messed around with some different iron setups and sort of messed around with like a different ball and a few equipment changes,” McIlroy said ahead of his 2026 PGA Tour debut. “That experiment’s over. Back to the trusty irons that I’ve played basically my whole career.”
Rory McIlroy reverts to his “trusty” TaylorMade Rors Proto blade irons to start the PGA Tour season.
matthew huang, icon sportsire via getty images
McIlroy switched into TaylorMade’s P-7CB long irons (4-6) when he played in the Australian Open at Royal Melbourne at the end of last season and put the short irons in play for two DP World Tour starts in Dubai last month. But when he came to defend his title at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the TaylorMade Rors Proto irons (5-9) and TaylorMade P760 4-iron he’d used to great success for nine years were back in play because the new irons “just didn’t feel as familiar as I wanted it to,” he said.
“I felt like the cavity backs just had a little bit of a right bias in them,” McIlroy explained. “So whatever way the weight of the head was or whether it was the blade length, I would hit shots – I’d make swings that I feel like I’d make with my blades that would be a very neutral ball flight and then with the cavity backs they would just like start to tail off to the right.
“I felt like in a way it’s not a bad thing because I don’t like seeing the ball go left. So it made me feel like I could fully release like my iron shots, which is great in theory and great in practice, but then once you get on the course with a card in your hand, for so many years I’m used to feeling that like held-off position through impact and then to go from that to trying to release it, it just was a different feel, especially under pressure or in the heat of competition.”
His switch to TaylorMade’s next-generation TP5 golf ball, however, has stuck.
“The ball’s great,” he said. “I mean, the ball, it launches pretty consistently a degree lower with every club through the bag. Very, very similar spin rate. I maybe picked up a touch of speed with the longer clubs, with the driver. … I think it’s a slightly higher compression than previous TP5s so I’m getting a little bit more speed off the … driver and the woods.”
Charley Hull deploys TaylorMade Qi4D bybrids instead of fairways in Saudi Ladies win.
triston jones, let
Charley Hull stands out in a lot of ways on the women’s circuit, especially with her Malbon apparel she’s sported since inking a deal with the bold clothing line in 2024 along with Jason Day and Fred Couples.
But more integral to Hull’s rise to third in the Rolex Women’s World Rankings is her full TaylorMade setup. She used her clubs effectively in firing a final-round 65 to rally to win for the fifth time on the Ladies European Tour at the PIF Saudi Ladies International. That came on the heels of a top-20 finish in the LPGA season opener in Florida.
Hull deployed an unusual setup for her in Riyadh, benching her fairway woods in favor of a pair of TaylorMade Qi4D hybrids (15 and 19 degrees) on the desert layout.
As for her driver, Hull made the switch in November from the Qi10 to the Qi4D LS (low spin).
One of the few LPGA players to use blades, Hull stuck with the TaylorMade P770 (4-iron) and P7MBs (5-PW). She also still games the MG5 wedges she started using when she won the LPGA’s Kroger Queen City Championship last September. And she likely won’t replace the TaylorMade TP Soto blade putter with the L-neck hosel she’s used since 2021, having finished a career-best 14th in strokes gained putting last season after struggling a bit on the greens in 2024.
Scott Michaux
