[PHOTO: Sean M. Haffey]

Question: I was watching the US Open with the pro at my club who said the extra length on Bryson DeChambeau’s wedges helped him pull off the bunker shot at 18. Is that true?

Answer: It certainly didn’t hurt, and DeChambeau believed it, saying afterwards, “That bunker shot was the shot of my life. I’ll forever be thankful that I’ve got longer wedges so I can hit it farther, get it up there next to the hole.”

Perhaps that is why DeChambeau’s caddie, Greg Bodine, was so confident in DeChambeau’s ability to pull it off. “G-Bo just said, ‘Bryson, just get it up and down. That’s all you’ve got to do. You’ve done this plenty of times before. I’ve seen some crazy shots from you from 50 yards out of a bunker.’ I said, ‘You’re right. I need a 55-degree. Let’s do it.'”

That 55-degree was a Ping Glide 4.0 model. As with all of DeChambeau’s irons, his wedges check in at 37.5 inches in length. That’s the length of a 6 or 7-iron and 2.25 inches longer than Ping’s standard 54 or 56-degree Glide 4.0.

Still, does it really make sense that a longer shaft helped with a shot that noted statistician Lou Stagner estimated at less than 1.7 percent chance of success? We reached out to Sonny Burgo, master clubfitter for Pete’s Golf, a perennial Golf Digest 100 Best Clubfitter for some context.

US Open 2024: Bryson DeChambeau called it ‘the bunker shot of my life’. Here’s the stat that proves it

“It would make sense in theory that the longer length would help, but there are always trade-offs,” Burgo says. “What you would gain on that random long bunker shot might well affect the full shot in terms of distance control or turf interaction. Wedge shots will probably fly higher, too.”

Most pros prefer to flight their wedges into greens on the lower side, and distance control is paramount. However, we are not here to nitpick a two-time US Open champion’s equipment decisions but to answer your question. In that regard, the longer shaft appeared to provide more speed and more height, which resulted in one of the great shots in US Open history.

MORE GOLF DIGEST US OPEN COVERAGE

The post Did a longer wedge shaft help Bryson DeChambeau win the US Open? appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

[PHOTO: David Cannon]

“Nothing is certain except death and taxes and that the Pinehurst No.2 greens are going to ruin your weekend,” Benjamin Franklin probably once said. Now, Franklin died about 100 or so years before the revered course was established, but the man was a genius for a reason. He also wasn’t wrong.

It looks like we’re in for a good deal of drama this week, especially with the chaotic Pinehurst greens built for maximum disarray. At this point, you might be better off putting with a blindfold on and just praying that things work out. This video from TaylorMade Golf exemplifies how tough putting might get at the US Open.

https://twitter.com/TaylorMadeGolf/status/1800526138571423816

That ball’s still rolling as you read this, right past Pinehurst No.4 and No.9.

The pros agree that the upcoming US Open greens are out to get the golfers this go-around. “I mean, they are extremely fast, Clark admitted. “If they get any firmer and faster, the greens, I mean, they’d be borderline. They already are borderline.”

Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan went into detail about what the best golfers in the world can expect from the fifth green’s dastardly setup. Spoiler alert: it’s bad.

“What makes the fifth hole so lethal is the green and its pernicious slope,” Duncan says. “The perimeter of the putting surface dips into shallow gutters of shortgrass behind and to the right, but the first third of the green is a false front. The left edge curls away down an incline.

“Shots that don’t make it all the way to the middle section of the green… will either roll back off the front or to the left.”

So, this all seems pretty bad for the players but pretty compelling for us viewers at home. Pros furious over greens and botched shots is exactly what the US Open is all about. Sorry to all golfers out there trying to make a living this weekend, but it looks like we’re in for some tremendous content.

MORE GOLF DIGEST US OPEN COVERAGE

The post US Open 2024: Judging by this video, Pinehurst No.2’s fifth green is going to be absolutely brutal this week appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

[PHOTO: Kith for TaylorMade]

You’re late. As always. Gotta run out the door and make your tee-time. Keys, tick. Clubs, tick. Glove, tick. Door locked, tick. Customised golf cart that makes your friends blush? Tick.

This could be you with one little $US1,500 purchase – well, there’s a $US35,000 ($A52,333) final payment, but who’s counting? – if you want to embarrass everyone else at whatever course you’re playing this weekend. The following is a must-have at this point and already a hit online.

#NEW: KITH & TaylorMade for Garia Via 2+2 golf cart has launched. Deposits being taken at $1500 USD for the $35000 USD made to order product. pic.twitter.com/KmSuQUGLuw

— NUCLR GOLF (@NUCLRGOLF) June 3, 2024

Kith x TaylorMade 2024

This year's collection kicks off with a luxury golf car collab, a custom version of the Garia Via 2+2

Dropping Monday, 6/3 pic.twitter.com/YZqz64EltT

— Modern Notoriety (@ModernNotoriety) June 2, 2024

Who is getting a new $35,000 golf cart tomorrow!? @KITH @TaylorMadeGolf pic.twitter.com/l9kMc6XyFR

— GFNF (@GFNF__) June 2, 2024

Kith, TaylorMade, Garia and Jimmy Fallon are working together on this sleek and beautiful golf cart for the ages that can come with… ahem: a bluetooth stereo system with Subwoofer, an automatically engaged electromagnetic parking brake, custom Kith branding on the seats and dashboard, a refrigerator integrated into dashboard, a golf ball and tee holder mounted on the dashboard, eco and sport drive modes, artificial leather seats, LED head and tail lights, a maximum speed of 40kph, a USB charge point in the dashboard and (of course) four wheels.

That’s a hell of a lot of options and pluses, and we didn’t even say in all caps that YOU CAN HAVE YOUR OWN GOLF CART. It’s all built-to-order with a 16-week lead time. You could be driving around in your own cart this spring!

You might not own the most beautiful swing, but you’ll own the most beautiful ride. That’s better than any handicap or score. Once your foursome leaves the course, they’ll only have their memories. You’ll have state-of-the-art cup holders with rubber-grip inserts.

The post Get this tricked-out, made-to-order $52k TaylorMade golf cart appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

Titleist unveiled the new GT2, GT3 and GT4 drivers on the PGA Tour this week, an early look at the models the company most likely will be releasing commercially later this Australian winter. All three models appeared on the R&A and USGA’s list of conforming drivers this morning, as well.

The appearance kicks off the usual two-year cadence for the company’s woods launches, and Titleist also indicated that GT fairway woods will be making the rounds at this week’s Memorial Tournament.

While the company released no details about the clubs, the drivers appear to fall in line with a similar nomenclature of past versions. Like the TSR2, the GT2 appears to be the broader footprint of the three models, while the GT3 would be the follow-up to the classic pear-shaped TSR3, the most preferred model among Titleist’s tour staff. Likewise, the GT4 likely would line up with the low-spin TSR4 model.

A closer look at the images supplied to the USGA shows the GT2, like the TSR2, features a deep rear weight port centred flush in the rear skirt. Like its predecessor, the GT3 appears to feature a weighting system in the sole with five locations that can shift the centre of gravity either towards the heel, neutral or toe side. But taking a page from the adjustable weighting system seen in the TSR3 fairway woods, the GT3’s weighting system is in the forward section of the sole. The GT4, similar to TSR4, also appears to have a weight port in the back and the front of the sole.

No word on which players might be making the switch, but it is the earliest Titleist has debuted its drivers, months ahead of when the TSi drivers debuted in 2020 and weeks ahead of the tour appearance of the TS drivers in 2018 and TSR drivers in 2022.

RELATED: The 2024 Hot List for drivers

According to the company, Titleist drivers have been the No.1-played models on the PGA Tour for the past five years.

As for now, no commercial release date has been announced for the GT drivers and fairway woods.

The post Titleist GT drivers make their debut on the PGA Tour appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

[PHOTO: Sarah Stier]

Yuka Saso had a US Women’s Open title to her credit, having won the 2021 edition at Olympic Club about a month short of her 20th birthday. As such, she knew the two-shot deficit she faced heading into the final round at Lancaster Country Club in Pennsylvania was well within reach. She rebounded from a four-putt double-bogey with four birdies on the final nine to become the youngest player to win two US Women’s Opens.

That four-putt came on the sixth hole, but from there on our Saso was money. At the treacherous 149-metre, par-3 12th, Saso dropped her tee shot 10-and-a-half feet from the hole and made the putt. On the next hole, Saso clipped a nifty wedge from 67 metres to a few feet on the par-5 13th to take the lead. Minjee Lee then watched as her tee shot on 12 hit the green but rolled back in the water – the same hole where Nelly Korda took 10 in the opening round.

On the par-4 15th, Saso pured a 5-iron from 173 metres that caught the slope and rolled to within six feet. The ensuing putt dropped, stretching the lead to two, and when Saso drove the green with her tee shot at the par-4 16th for a fourth birdie in five holes, it gave her the cushion she needed to offset a three-putt bogey at 17 and secure her second open win.

That 5-iron was a Callaway Apex CB, part of a split set of irons where the 4 and 5-irons are the CB and the 6-iron through 9-iron are the company’s 2021 model.

It was off the tee and on the green, however, where Saso won the US Women’s Open. She ranked third in driving distance at 280.7 yards (256.7 metres) and third in strokes gained off the tee as well, gaining 1.18 shots on the field with her 9-degree Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond driver. And despite the four-putt stumble, Saso ranked first in strokes gained/putting, grabbing 3.4 shots on the field.

Not to mention grabbing the Harton S. Semple trophy given to the champion in the process.

What Yuka Saso had in the bag at the 2024 US Women’s Open:

Ball: Callaway Chrome Tour X

Driver: Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond, 9 degrees

3-wood: Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Max, 16.5 degrees

5-wood: Callaway Apex UW, 18 degrees

Irons (4-5): Callaway Apex CB; (6-9): Callaway Apex MB 21

Wedges: Callaway Jaws Raw (46, 52, 56, 60 degrees)

Putter: Odyssey Ai One Milled 3T

The post The clubs Yuka Saso used to win the 2024 US Women’s Open appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

[PHOTO: Sam Hodde]

It was more than a decade ago, but Davis Riley was keenly aware of his past with Scottie Scheffler as the pair met up in the final group of the Charles Schwab Challenge. “We’ll see if we can re-write the script a little bit,” Riley said of his chance to avenge a 3&2 loss to a 17-year-old Scheffler in the 36-hole final of the 2013 US Junior Amateur.

Riley didn’t just re-write the script but earned his first solo win on the PGA Tour (he paired with Nick Hardy to win the 2023 Zurich team event in New Orleans). On a blustery Fort Worth afternoon, Riley offset four bogeys with a quartet of birdies that proved to be more than enough as Scheffler stalled and no one else put any significant pressure on him.

A key moment came early at the 209-metre, par-3 fourth. Riley’s lead stood at three after a bogey on the second hole. A 6-iron to 27 feet, however, was followed by a make for birdie and the lead stretched to five when Scheffler bogeyed.

In fact, Riley flipped the script on almost every aspect of his game at Colonial Country Club. Coming into the event Riley was ranked 176th in strokes gained/off the tee; 156th in strokes gained/approach the green and 100th in strokes gained/putting. Riley was top notch in all three at Colonial. He ranked fourth in strokes gained/putting while averaging nearly 100 feet of putts made per round, best in the field. He was fifth in strokes gained//off the tee and second in strokes gained/approach the green.

Riley, who played a blade putter throughout college and on the Korn Ferry Tour, made the switch to a Scotty Cameron by Titleist Phantom X 7.2 tour prototype mallet in early 2022 looking for added stability with the toe flow he prefers.

“The way it looks, all the square lines, I feel like it frames the ball really well and everything sits super square,” Riley said. “I’ve always been a big believer in that putting, if you’re really comfortable looking over and everything feels square, it’s just going to set up for good putting.”

Which set him up for a big week in Texas.

What Davis Riley had in the bag at the 2024 Charles Schwab Challenge:

Ball: Titleist Pro V1

Driver: Titleist TSR3 (Project X HZRDUS Smoke Green RDX 65 TX), 9 degrees

3-wood: Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Max, 15 degrees

Irons (3): Titleist T200; (4-6): Titleist T100; (7-9): Titleist 620 MB

Wedges: Titleist Vokey SM10 (46, 50, 56, 60 degrees)

Putter: Scotty Cameron by Titleist Phantom X 7.2 tour prototype

The post The clubs Davis Riley used to win the 2024 Charles Schwab Challenge appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

[PHOTO: David Cannon]

They say you can’t win a tournament on the first day, but Xander Schauffele won the 2024 PGA Championship largely on the back of an opening-round 62 that tied the low round in major-championship history. That, along with ensuing rounds of 68-68-65, was enough for a one-shot victory over Bryson DeChambeau for his eighth PGA Tour win and long-awaited first major championship thanks to a final-hole birdie.

Schauffele had so many parts of his game working at Valhalla that it’s difficult to single out any one facet as being the key. Driving it well helps, however, and Schauffele did that, hitting it long (283.6 metres/310.1 yards, ranked 15th) and straight (ranked 16th in fairways hit).

Schauffele put Callaway’s Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond driver in play at the start of the season. The club is the most compact driver in the line and is designed for high swing-speed players seeking to reduce spin. The 10.5-degree head has a 45½-inch Mitsubishi Diamana PD 70TX shaft that is tipped one inch. The adjustable weights are set at seven grams in front and nine grams in back, allowing him to work the ball both ways.

PGA Championship 2024: Xander Schauffele wins at Valhalla with 72nd-hole birdie

Into the greens, Schauffele swung his Callaway Apex TCB irons to great effect as well. The irons, fitted with True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue 100X shafts, have a decidedly classic look thanks to a relatively straight leading edge, thin topline and a hosel transition that looks like they were made for a tour player. But the clubs have tungsten weighting that makes them play more forgiving than they look.

“When I was 13 to 15 years old, I played blades and I quickly learned they were not good for me,” Schauffele told Golf Digest when he first put the irons in play. “No reason to make the game harder.”

Schauffele ranked third in strokes gained/approach the green, picking up nearly eight shots on the field. He also was first in greens in regulation for the week, hitting a remarkable 84.72 percent. The work with the driver and irons is a continuation of his season as he currently ranks second on the PGA Tour this year in strokes gained/tee to green.

Asked on Saturday what his mindset going into the final day would be, Schauffele simply said, “I think I need to really just stay in my lane and do a lot of what I’ve been doing and just worry about myself.”

Well said. And well done.

What Xander Schauffele had in the bag at the 2024 PGA Championship:

Ball: Callaway Chrome Tour

Driver: Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond (Mitsubishi Diamana PD 70TX), 10.5 degrees

3-wood: Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond, 15 degrees

Hybrid: Callaway Apex UW, 21 degrees

Irons (4-PW): Callaway Apex TCB

Wedges: Callaway Jaws Raw (52 degrees); Titleist Vokey SM10 (56 degrees); Titleist Vokey SM10 WedgeWorks

Putter: Odyssey Toulon Las Vegas Prototype

MORE GOLF DIGEST PGA CHAMPIONSHIP COVERAGE

The post PGA Championship 2024: The clubs Xander Schauffele used to win at Valhalla appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

The latest drop from the creative minds at FootJoy and Todd Snyder, the American menswear designer whose golf capsules have become staples for the elevated dresser, features two limited edition golf shoes in a fresh, bright icy aqua colourway. The launch, titled, the “Mint Julep” Premiere Series, takes its inspiration from the classic Kentucky Derby cocktail, a fitting nod to old school Americana that also defines past FJ x Todd Snyder looks. This time, the two-shoe limited release sees signature FootJoy styles, the Wilcox and Field models, receive premium leather upgrade and minty-hued accents for a sophisticated, unexpected, timeless summer white shoe spin. The men’s golf shoe launch is expected to sell out, and hit the Australian market on Wednesday. You can also expect to see FootJoy ambassadors such as Justin Thomas, Max Homa, and Adam Scott wear the icy kicks during the PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in, fittingly, Louisville.

“We’ve taken design details like the broguing on a bespoke shoe and inspirations from the iconic Derby and combined them with state-of-the-art technology and modern style,” Todd Snyder said in a press release.

FJ x Todd Snyder Premiere Series – Field FJ x Todd Snyder Premiere Series – Field

As two of the most popular models preferred by pros and players alike, the Wilcox and Field models are both waterproof, featuring the best of FJ technology in terms of translucent cleat design, rubber grip, spiked traction, and insole comfort. While the Field offers a more minimalist, discerning look, the Wilcox has a classic eyelet design for old-school swagger.

FJ x Todd Snyder Premiere Series – Wilcox FJ x Todd Snyder Premiere Series – Wilcox

“It’s been a pleasure to partner with Todd and his team over the last several years, combining his fresh take on men’s fashion with the modern classic styling of Premiere Series,” Chris Tobias, vice-president at FootJoy footwear, said. “With a combination of high fashion, superior comfort and golf-specific performance innovation, these shoes are made for players with a discerning sense of style.”

Available at footjoy.com.au, while stocks last.

The post Todd Snyder and FootJoy launch ‘Mint Julep’ golf shoes ahead of PGA Championship appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: The new Cobra LIMIT3D irons will break new ground as the first commercially available clubs made completely through additive manufacturing, or what’s known as three-dimensional (3D) printing. In this case, the process creates essentially a hollow iron where the inside section is an intricate steel lattice structure that joins the front (face) and back of the head. This saves as much as 100 grams of mass that is positioned as tungsten weight pads in the low heel and low toe. The result is an iron with the compact shape of a players iron with the forgiveness of a game-improvement design, all with the intention of maintaining the single-piece solid feel of a forged blade.

SET MAKE-UP, PRICE & AVAILABILITY: 4-iron through pitching wedge; Australian pricing is TBC. Limited quantity of 500 sets – and only 15 sets in Australia – available from June 10.

3 COOL THINGS

1. What is 3D printing? Traditionally, irons have been produced in two common ways. Either they are forged where huge presses smash heated metal into a specific shape, almost always made of a single material (carbon steel). Or irons can be investment cast, where a liquified metal (again, usually steel) is pored into a mould to achieve a certain shapes and thicknesses. The former generally creates a more consistently solid feel due to the thicker structure of the one-piece design, while the latter method generally creates more opportunity to create thinner faces and cavity-back designs, leading to more ball speed and more saved mass for more perimeter weighting to create more forgiveness (higher moment of inertia). 3D printing has been around for decades as a prototyping tool, and Cobra’s team has used it in several instances to create lightweight polymer structures within its King 3D Printed putter line-up. As well, the company has produced more than 40 3D printed prototype clubheads that have been used by some tour players, including wedges played by Rickie Fowler.

In simple terms, the process works not much differently than the way a laser printer sprays ink onto a piece of paper. What’s different, of course, is that instead of ink creating letters and numbers, in 3D printing the laser uses a powder to build layers of a design on top of each other with each pass. It’s like each clubhead is growing from nothing to a fully formed iron. Specifically, the process for the Cobra LIMIT3D irons is called direct metal laser sintering.

While creating prototype designs or even polymer structures within a commercial offering is one thing, manufacturing a full set of irons with this kind of process for widespread availability was not a practical consideration, financially or otherwise. Or at least it wasn’t until now.

“When you look at those two traditional methods, you say, ‘Well, forging is great, it has its purpose, and casting is great, it has its purpose,’ but if you want to do something different, how can you?” said Mike Yagley, Cobra’s vice-president for innovation and AI. “Forging was great but there were things you couldn’t do with it that precipitated the need for casting, things like undercut cavities, thin faces, wide bodies, hollow designs. So that was casting’s advantage, but if you really want to do something different, how do you do it? Well, 3D printing has precipitated the ability to do some things that those two cannot do.”

That new thing is what makes the LIMIT3D irons so different, essentially an iron design that combines the elements of feel, solidity and the compact shaping of a forged, single piece design with the forgiveness of a cavity back.

2. How is it used here? The assumption here might be that a hollow iron is hardly a new idea. Removing weight from the middle of an iron creates more mass to redistribute to the perimeter, just like we’ve seen for the better part of a decade. Of course, to make that kind of a design feel good often required some kind of filling to control unwanted vibrations. So why go to the trouble of 3D printing? Because while the interior of this iron is not solid metal like on a forging, it is a weight-saving structure that is still metal, in this case the same 316L stainless steel powder used to “grow” the main body of the LIMIT3D iron. Using 3D printing allows the interior of this iron to both save weight and enhance feel, said Ryan Roach, Cobra’s senior innovation engineer.

“One of the key advantages of additive manufacturing is the ability to execute what we call ‘lightweighting’, or taking weight out of the structure,” Roach said, describing the interior of the iron as a lattice structure that joins front to back. It’s almost like a series of ultra-fine I-beams, although the structure of each cell of the lattice work is like a tiny dodecahedron. Crudely, when viewed as a separate element, the lattice work appears to be like an ultra-strong, ultra-stiff, ultra-dense chicken wire that connects front and back.

“Putting that lattice that touches from the front to the back makes it basically almost as stiff as if it was solid, which then gives them that blade-like feel, blade-like performance,” Yagley said. He compared a 3D printed section of the LIMIT3D iron with a similar sized section of a forged iron and noted how the LIMIT3D weighed 35 percent less. “That’s why it’s critical for it to be as stiff as the body and connected. It’s not going to behave the same [if it were a polymer], and the reason is because the lattice is essentially the same material as the body and the face.”

3. What makes it better? Forgiveness is an interesting concept in an iron with a shape designed to appeal to better players. In other words, you can make an iron more forgiving simply by making it bigger. As well, you can thin out the face for more deflection and ball speed and use a heavy, dense material like tungsten pushed to the perimeter to increase stability in similar-sized iron. What makes the LIMIT3D iron interesting is that its only intention is forgiveness with feel. In the mind of Cobra’s team it’s better because it allows them to design a more compact iron that’s more forgiving. That means the LIMIT3D iron uses a lower toe height, shorter blade length, narrower sole and thinner topline than a comparable iron, like for instance the King Tour players iron.

For Cobra’s team to innovate within the lattice structure, they benefited from a computer-assisted design technology firm called nTop, whose software made it easier to see in real time how every little tweak of the lattice structure could make the head more functional and more forgiving.

“So we’re able to have the ability to analyse structures with lattice in them, which is kind of a chore if you’re trying to do it through the software that we normally would use because there’s a lot of element sizes, and everything is very detailed,” Roach said.

The upshot of the LIMIT3D is that according to the company it has the lowest centre of gravity of any of Cobra’s current players or players distance irons, with the highest forgiveness (MOI, a measurement of the stability on off-centre hits). Its internal testing showed both more distance and tighter dispersion than Cobra’s current King Tour irons. More remarkable is that such a design can now be a real consumer product, Yagley said.

“Ryan and his team have been pounding the street working with vendors, material suppliers and saying, ‘OK, how can we get this to the point where we can actually afford to do this and sell them?” Yagley said of the LIMIT3D set, which will sell for just over double the price of a set of King Tour irons. “If we did this 10 years ago, the price might literally be $30-50,000 for a single set.”

The post Cobra LIMIT3D irons: What you need to know about the first commercially available set of 3D printed irons appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

[PHOTO: Andrew Redington]

The idea behind the PGA Tour’s signature events was to have the best players on the circuit play against each other more often. At the Wells Fargo Championship, the script set up nicely as Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele were poised for a final-day showdown. McIlroy, however, showed that “extra gear” people talk about and he cruised past Schauffele to win the tournament for the fourth time.

After three-putting the par-5 seventh then watching Schauffele roll in an eagle putt to take a two-shot lead, McIlroy responded with a birdie-birdie-eagle burst on holes eight, nine and 10 to take the lead. Two more birdies on 13 and 14 stretched the lead to five as Schauffele bogeyed the 12th and 13th. A hole-out from the bunker at the par-5 15th gave McIlroy another eagle for good measure and an eight-hole stretch where he went eight-under-par.

Rory McIlroy demolishes Xander Schauffele, and everyone else, to head to Valhalla on fire

As always, the driver was a weapon for the four-time major champion. McIlroy ranked first in strokes gained/off the tee, picking up more than six shots on the field with his TaylorMade Qi10 driver. McIlroy’s driver has 9 degrees of loft and a Fujikura Ventus Black 6x shaft. He was first in driving distance, averaging 337 yards (308 metres).

“The driving is more just me committing to most of the time hitting that little cut that I’ve been hitting off the tee, and then having the freedom to just, every time I hit a good tee shot, the more confidence I get and then the more I want to just keep hitting it,” McIlroy said.

McIlroy’s putter also was working and when that’s the case, few can match him (non-Scottie Scheffler division). McIlroy ranked eighth in strokes gained/putting for the week with his TaylorMade Spider X X3 mallet putter. That included an absolute show on the final day when he rolled in 133 feet of putts in the first 14 holes.

Interestingly, this was the first week McIlroy used a TaylorMade TP5x ball with no number on it. Previously he used golf balls with the number 22, a nod to his marriage to Erica Stoll on April 22, 2017, but also because the number 22 meant “powerful” and “high risk, high reward”.

Instead, the ball simply has RORS on it instead. And as McIlroy showed at Quail Hollow, he’s plenty “powerful” without the number 22.

What Rory McIlroy had in the bag at the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship:

Ball: TaylorMade TP5x

Driver: TaylorMade Qi10 (Fujikura Ventus Black 6x), 9 degrees

3-wood: TaylorMade Qi10, 15 degrees

5-wood: TaylorMade Qi10, 18 degrees

Irons (4): TaylorMade prototype; (5-9): TaylorMade Rors prototype; (PW): TaylorMade MG4

Wedges: TaylorMade MG3 (50, 54 degrees); Titleist Vokey Wedgeworks (59 degrees)

Putter: TaylorMade Spider X X3

The post The clubs Rory McIlroy used to win the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.