NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
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Pinehurst No. 2 presented unique challenges for players at last week’s U.S. Open. That requires some unique equipment setups as well.
Tiger Woods benched his usual TaylorMade M3 5-wood in favor of a 2-iron, something he tends to do when he plays Open Championships and wants to keep the ball closer to the ground. For lower-trajectory shots at the Donald Ross masterpiece, Woods deployed a TaylorMade P770 2-iron.
GolfWRX.com noted that it’s a 2021 version of the P770 model – the same setup he used at the 2022 PGA Championship at Southern Hills (where Woods made the cut but withdrew on the weekend).
Woods’ mixed bag during his preparation at Pinehurst also included two new additions to help him deal with the famed crowned greens on the No. 2 course: a pair of TaylorMade MG4 Proto wedges with different squared-off sole grinds than his typical setup for his 56- and 60-degree wedges.
The rest of Woods’ bag was unchanged, including TaylorMade’s Qi10 LS driver, Qi10 Tour 3-wood, 2023 model P770 3-iron, P7TW blades (4-PW) and Scotty Cameron Newport 2 GSS prototype putter.
Meanwhile, Patrick Cantlay returned to the comfort of his old Titleist 718 AP2 irons with his custom grinds on the leading edge, giving up on the Ping Blueprint S irons he switched into earlier this year. Seven of Cantlay’s eight career wins came with his 718 AP2 irons.
Cantlay’s results for much of the year haven’t been up to his usual standards, and the move back into his longtime irons reaped immediate dividends as he jumped to the top of the leaderboard with a 5-under opening round. He ranked second in strokes gained approach and first around the greens after lagging in both categories on tour this season.
The irons weren’t the only big change in Cantlay’s bag. Like others gravitating toward the newest driver in the Titleist arsenal, including Adam Scott at the U.S. Open, Cantlay put the new Titleist GT2 driver into his bag at Pinehurst after testing it against his old TSR2 driver at the Memorial.
According to Titleist, 19 players at Pinehurst gamed a GT2, GT3 or GT4 driver, 10 of them for the first time in its major championship debut including Denny McCarthy and No. 1 amateur Gordon Sargent.
Scott Michaux