Welcome to Fully Equipped’s weekly Tour equipment report. Every Friday of PGA Tour weeks (plus other times, if news warrants), GOLF equipment editor Jack Hirsh runs you through some of the biggest news surrounding golf clubs on Tour, including changes, tweaks and launches.
Despite the move to breezy links golf this week at the Genesis Scottish Open, Tommy Fleetwood is still playing a club designed to hit moon balls.
Yes, Fleetwood still has his trusty 9-wood in the bag at Renaissance Club and plans to keep it in the bag for next week’s Open Championship as well. But that doesn’t mean his bag setup is unchanged.
This week, Fleetwood has added one of his TaylorMade GAPR Lo utility irons (a 3-iron loft) from 2018 while dropping his 56-degree wedge, something he did earlier this year.
“He thinks that the 9-wood is just too valuable to take out, but he needs a club that he can hit off the tee and into greens with a really low trajectory,” said TaylorMade Tour rep Adrian Reitveld. “So in reality, the two clubs actually go more or less the same distance, but just have totally different ball-flight characteristics.”
Adding the 3-iron, a club Fleetwood has used off and on for links golf is nothing new. The winds on costal layouts often require players to keep the ball low and that’s most easily achieved with a long iron.
But using a 3-iron in conjunction with a 9-wood that goes the same distance (roughly 235 to 240 yards) but at a completely different trajectory is a new tack. While modern high-lofted fairway woods offer much versatility, it would still be tough for a 9-wood to match the low peak height one could get with a utility iron.
Fleetwood has made moves like this before, including earlier this year in Miami, when he dropped his sand wedge to add a 4-iron between his 9-wood and 5-iron, specifically for long par-3s.
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It’s likely that Fleetwood is adding the GAPR specifically for one hole or shot at Renaissance and plans to do the same next week at the year’s final major in his hometown.
“Both are great off the links turf, and he has a ton of options at that top end of the bag which means he can only play two wedges, a 52 and a 60,” Rietveld said. “In Tommy’s opinion, that’s the perfect set up for Birkdale.”
Plan ahead for utility irons
Like Fleetwood, many other players chose to add 3-irons this week, but most went the more traditional route in dropping a top-of-bag club like a second fairway wood or hybrid.
Fleetwood’s TaylorMade stablemate, Rory McIlroy, is playing one of his older generation P760 utility irons, the 3-iron, that he’s used for years and is dropping his 5-wood to make room for it.
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Likewise Viktor Hovland (Ping iDi), J.J. Spaun (Srixon ZXiU), Aldrich Potgieter (PXG Gen8 X driving iron) and Xander Schauffele (Mizuno Pro 225 Fli-Hi) are all adding utility irons that before this week they have played at times for months or even years.
Min Woo Lee is using a new 20-degree Callaway Apex UT, but it’s a club he’s had ready for a few months so he could test it and even put it in play to get used to it for links golf. He first gamed this club at the U.S. Open.
It goes to show how much work Tour pros do with reps ahead of events. Gone are the days of players heading across the pond for the Open and Scottish Open, only to swap out clubs on the fly. That work is now being done months in advance so there is no adjustment period.
T-Grind (and low bounce) reigns supreme across pond
What do Alex Fitzpatrick, Brooks Koepka and Kurt Kitayama all have in common? Each switched to a Vokey T-Grind lob wedge this week, and the T-Grind is proving a very popular links-golf choice.
The T-Grind is most popular grind on the most popular wedge on the PGA Tour in the Vokey SM11, but on firm links turf, the T-Grind becomes even more valuable. Fitzpatrick was previously in the wider-sole A+-Grind, while Koepka was playing the rare B-Grind.
At the 2022 Open Championship at burnt-out St. Andrews, Vokey ran out of T-Grind heads, and the current grind trend began.
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“There’s this trend at this event with these conditions where a T-Grind really outperforms most of the other grinds we make, just due to how it’s made and what it does,” Vokey wedge rep Aaron Dill said then. “The rear section of the sole of the T grind is the lowest rear section we make, meaning when he opens up the face of the wedge, it sits as close to the ground as anything that we build in the Vokey line. So for guys to say, ‘This one fits me the best here,’ it makes a lot of sense.”
Notable names who are already using the T-Grind include Scottie Scheffler, Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay, Patrick Reed, Min Woo Lee and Fleetwood. Of that list, only Thomas is actually contracted to play Vokey wedges, which led the lob, sand and gap wedge count this week with 235 in play, or 52 percent of the field.
In a similar vein, Rory McIlroy has also made a wedge change this week, going to a lower bounce TaylorMade MG4 lob wedge from his MG5 gamer.
Check this out
This section is dedicated to cool photos we’ve snapped recently on Tour, but haven’t had a reason to share yet. This week, check out Rory McIlroy’s driver as he’s second in the field this week in SG: OTT.
Odds and Ends
Some other gear changes and notes we’re tracking this week.
Srixon launched new ZXi RKT fairway woods and hybrids with one model in each category … Lucas Glover added the new RKT 3-wood to his bag … At the ISCO Championship, Ryan Brehm (ZXi RKT), Sean Crocker (ZXi RKT LS), Brandon Robinson Thompson (ZXi RKT), all put the new Srixon driver in play … Patrick Reed is using a mallet for just the second time in his career, switching from a Scotty Cameron Tour Rat 1.5 to a new Phantom 12.5 Tour Prototype.
