Equipment

Truist Championship Tour Report: McIlroy makes club changes in Charlotte, new club releases + more

Published

1 month ago

May 8, 2026

Rory McIlroy makes his first start on the PGA Tour since winning his sixth major championship, going back-to-back at the Masters Tournament, and he does so with new clubs in the bag.

As one of the favorites at Quail Hollow Club for the Truist Championship, a tournament that he’s won on four occasions, McIlroy switched out his double-Masters-winning TaylorMade Qi10 3-wood for the newer Qi4D model that he had been playing up until his tee time at Augusta National this past April.

“I had been using the (Qi)4D 3-wood at the start of the season,” McIlroy said Wednesday ahead of the Truist Championship. “I noticed that it just had a little bit of a left bias in it. So I went back to an old Qi10 for a while. But that wasn’t, it really wasn’t spinning enough. It’s more like a mini driver than a 3-wood. It sort of spins like 2,700, it’s pretty fast. It could be a good club for like Memorial, for example. But I felt like I needed a 3-wood that just spun a little bit more.”

After a week of testing with the TaylorMade team in Florida leading up to the Truist Championship, a discovery was made as to why the Qi4D head was performing the way it was.

“What was interesting is he was hitting it right out the center, but the club was kind of acting like he was toeing it,” said Keith Sbarbaro, TaylorMade’s VP of Tour Operations. “So he was getting a little bit of a left gear effect. It wasn’t drastic like a closed face, but it was just a slight overdraw.”

The fix: moving the center of gravity towards the toe and a little bit higher to help with the spin rates.

“The first hit came right out the middle, 3,200 spin, didn’t overdraw,” Sbarbaro added. “He had eight balls in a row. The spin rates were all 31 to 3,300, where he went back to his Qi10 and he hit some that were 32(00). Then he would get one at like 28(00). So it really matched up well, and he was still hitting it out of the center and seeing the flight he wanted. So it is just a much more playable 3-wood, and I think he’s pretty excited having the bag this week.”

Along with the 3-wood, McIlroy also acknowledged that he has a fresh set of irons in the bag this week in Charlotte. It was actually the original reason for the TaylorMade trip to Florida for the team to dial in the heads, lofts and lies to that of his previous gamer set. Don’t worry, blade fans; he’s not back into the cavity-back irons – just a shinier version of his RORS Protos.

Titleist launches new mini driver

Shortly after launching the GTS drivers and woods on the Tour, Titleist gifted gear heads with another option in the newly added lineup with the GTS300 mini driver. While no official information on the latest mini driver to hit the circuit, one could believe that the 300 could relate to the sizing of the head. The previous GT280 played at you guessed it – 280cc head – so it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that the latest head is a touch larger at 300cc.

Ryan Gerard gave his initial thoughts on the club.

“Mini drivers are a weird club; some guys really like them, I’ve been trying to be one of those guys,” Gerard said. “… I like the fact that this one’s a little bit bigger.

“Jason Day and I were talking about mini drivers and some of the new ones they have more of a round edge here (the bottom of the face) so they’re harder to get off the ground. I really like this kind of flush to the ground, so I can go down and get it a little bit easier.

“Going to tinker around a little … but my initial thoughts are there’s possibilities here.”

Take into account that the metalwood team at Titleist designed the original GT280, so consider this option more of a larger 3-wood than a smaller driver like other equipment manufacturers.

Tony Finau’s putting

Tony Finau has had a resurgent year on the greens in 2026. He switched into a Ping Scottsdale Tec Ally Blue putter earlier in the spring and, since then, has climbed to 18th on the PGA Tour in putting average, and is gaining strokes on the greens for the first time since 2022.

So it may surprise some to see him potentially switching putters at Quail Hollow Club ahead of the 2026 Truist Championship, and he’s doing it in a very unconventional way. Finau, a six-time winner on Tour, was spotted using a broomhandle putter, a less-than-traditional length putter.

“Putter’s felt good and bad, kind of inconsistent,” Finau said Monday at the Truist. “So I’m like, it’s (a long putter) something that I’ve thought about. It’s something never really fully gave a chance. So off week, I didn’t play last week, so I was like, maybe this is the time to give full chance.”

The way Finau was spotted gripping the club may be a more surprising aspect to the switch, with his hold on the club even less-than-traditional. Instead of the standard top-arm elbow pointed towards the hole and anchored into the chest, Finau has elected to externally rotate his forearm, having his thumb pointing down the grip of the club, towards the ball.

Find out more about Finau’s reasoning for the unique grip and setup with the long putter here.

Webb Simpson’s irons

Quail Hollow member Webb Simpson has decided to step up his iron game ahead of the 2026 Truist Championship hosted at his home course. He’s not one to make changes often. He’s first to admit it, and “if something works,” he tends to run it out for “as long as possible.”

So when a shiny new set of Titleist T100 irons are in the bag of the Charlotte native, it’s a pretty big change. The clubs, in fact, came “right off the rack,” according to Simpson, and it’s a considerable move from a man who’s played muscle-back clubs for a long period of his career. So much so, Titleist even created a one-of-one prototype for the former U.S. Open champion. But they were a combination of what worked best for Simpson, including the sole shaping and grooves from a 2019 T100.

The real story about the irons isn’t to do with how new they are, or even the fact that they’re off the rack, but instead, what Simpson has done with them since he received the set.

Read more on the reasoning behind Simpson’s special iron set.

Quick Hits

Away from the Turist Championship, newly announced equipment-free agent Brooks Koepka didn’t take long to mix up his setup. He added four Vokey wedges to the bag: the SM11 48.10F, 52.12F, 56.10 and then a WedgeWorks 60B. The B grind is created for golfers who love the versatility of the M grind but would prefer a lower bounce option.

Club of the week

It would be easy to pick a Scotty Cameron every time Hideki Matsuyama is teeing it up on Tour. But the custom Cameron that was made for him at Truist is extra special. Usually, V soles are saved for irons, but the custom blade uses a unique sole design, along with some mint stampings.

Equipment

Then and now: Comparing Rory McIlroy’s current setup to his record-breaking 2019 Canadian Open victory

Published

3 hours ago

Jun 11, 2026

Alistair Cameron

In Rory McIlroy’s first appearance at the 2019 RBC Canadian Open, he crushed the record books to earn his 16th PGA Tour title in dominating fashion, winning by seven shots over Shane Lowry and Webb Simpson.

McIlroy’s score of 22-under-par 258 is the lowest 72-hole score to date at the Canadian Open, and his closing 61 is also the best final-round score in the history of one of golf’s oldest tournaments. Finally, with his win in 2019, McIlroy became only the sixth player to win the career Triple Crown, adding to his victories at the U.S. Open in 2011 and The Open Championship in 2014, joining Tommy Armour, Walter Hagen, Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino and Tiger Woods in a coveted list.

So, with that, why not compare his current setup to the clubs he used to break all the records?

Driver

2019: TaylorMade M5 (9 degrees), Shaft: Mitsubishi Tensei CK Pro White 70 TX
2026: TaylorMade Qi4D (9 degrees @8), Shaft: Fujikura Ventus Black 7X (45 5/8 inches)

McIroy led the Tour in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee in 2019; he’s doing the same in 2026. Between now and then, McIlroy has switched from the Mitsubishi Tensei CK Pro White 70 TX (a shaft with slightly more feeling in the tip) to the original Fujikura Ventus Black 7X, having just made the change to the heavier version from playing the 60X.

What’s interesting about McIlroy’s 2019 setup is that the weighting on his driver is actually set in the high-draw setting, using the T-Track weighting system, whereas in the Qi4D, he’s currently using a heavily rear-weighted setup. (Two 13-gram weights in the rear and only two 4-gram front weights.)

The TaylorMade M5 driver he played in during his Canadian Open win was the company’s first head that they claimed to design to initially exceed the USGA’s COR limit, and then injected with tuning resin to bring it back in bounds.

Fairway woods

2019: TaylorMade M6 3-wood (15 degrees), Shaft: Mitsubishi Tensei CK Pro White 80 TX; TaylorMade M5 5-wood (19 degrees), Shaft: Mitsubishi Tensei CK Pro White 90 TX
2026: TaylorMade Qi4D 3-wood (15 degrees), Shaft: Fujikura Ventus Black 8X; TaylorMade Qi4D 5-wood (18 degrees), Shaft: Fujikura Ventus Black 9X

The TaylorMade M6 fairway wood that McIlroy was using during the 2019 season is still in the bag of some of the best golfers on Tour in 2026. Just check out Justin Rose’s winning setup from the Farmers Insurance Open earlier this year. This year, though, McIlroy has still been searching for his top-end-of-the-bag setup, having played both the new Qi4D and the Qi10, which he won the Masters with.

The same shaft swap can be seen in the fairway woods as the driver, along with slightly less loft on the 5-wood.

Irons

2019: TaylorMade P750 (4) Buy here, TaylorMade P730 (5-9), Shafts: Project X 7.0
2026: TaylorMade P760 (4), TaylorMade Rors Proto (5-9), Shafts: Project X 7.0

The biggest difference between McIlroy’s custom set and the stock P730s is the groove design. While the P730s were constructed with 14 MX-9 grooves on their milled faces, McIlroy’s proto heads instead use the higher-spinning, 16-groove layout of the TW2 grooves. Other big differences between the sets are that McIlroy’s 7- and 8-irons have thinner toplines, are 1 degree stronger in loft, and are 1/4 inch longer than the original P730 builds.

With McIlroy’s 4-iron, the switch from P750 to P760 sees a transition to a two-piece construction with Speed Foam in it, which allows McIlroy to launch the ball slightly higher, with more workability.

Wedges

2019: TaylorMade Milled Grind (48-09SB), TaylorMade MG Hi-Toe (52-09SB, 56-09SB, 60-LB09), Shafts: Project X Rifle 6.5
2026: TaylorMade MG5 (46-09SB, 50-09SB, 54-11SB, 60-08LB @61), Shafts: Project X 6.5 (46-54), Project X 6.5 Wedge (60)

Between 2019 and 2026, McIlroy’s focus on his short game has been much more apparent. It was the reason why he switched back to the TP5 golf ball, to help with launch, spin and control with his wedges leading up to his career Grand Slam victory in 2025. The most apparent changes to McIlroy’s wedge setup are his lofts and bounce. He’s slowly delofted his pitching to a sand wedge, but has increased the loft on the lob wedge, bending his current 60-degree to 61. With that, adding more loft to his lob wedge also slightly increases the bounce and leading-edge sit point, so, as a result, he plays a lower-bounce lob wedge compared to 2019. The MG5 wedges are also softer than the first Milled Grind option from 2019. McIlroy also no longer plays the full-face grooves found on the Hi-Toe.

Putter

2019: TaylorMade Spider X
2026: TaylorMade Spider Tour X

Notice anything similar. Yes, the copper finish on Rory McIlroy’s Spider X putter in 2019 is a slightly more reflective finish than the recently released torched PVD finish. McIlroy was using the True Path alignment system, but now uses only a single white sightline.

Ball

2019: 2019 TaylorMade TP5 (#22)
2026: 2025 TaylorMade TP5 (RORS)

As mentioned above, McIlroy had transitioned from the TP5 to TP5x golf ball since his victory in Canada in 2019, but now is black with the same style of golf ball as his victory at Hamilton Golf & Country Club.

Grips

2019: Golf Pride Tour Velvet Cord
2026: Golf Pride MCC

Interesting, McIlroy actually used Golf Pride’s Tour Velvet Cord grips during his victory in 2019 (it was during a 2+ year switch to the corded TV) as opposed to his usual MCC grips, which he has played for most of his career.

Equipment

From the GolfWRX Classifieds: Titleist Vokey Proto Wedges 54M, 60T

Published

6 hours ago

Jun 11, 2026

Will Schube

At GolfWRX, we are a community of like-minded individuals who all experience and express our enjoyment of the game in many ways.

It’s that sense of community that drives day-to-day interactions in the forums on topics that range from best driver to what marker you use to mark your ball. It even allows us to share another thing we all love – buying and selling equipment.

Currently, in our GolfWRX buy/sell/trade (BST) forum, @Putt4Dough is selling some prototype wedges from Vokey Wedgeworks. These include a 54 degree wedge with the M grind and a 60 degree wedge with a T grind.

From the listing:

(1) Titleist Vokey Proto Wedge 54M with a Tour Issue DGS400 shaft and Golf Pride Tour Velvet (logo down). Standard length, lie, and loft. BB&F ferrule. Raw wedge in good condition. No initials. Price is $200 shipped. Buy both wedges for $380 shipped.

(2) Titleist Vokey Proto Wedge 60T with a KBS Tour 130X shaft and Golf Pride Tour Velvet. Standard length, lie, and loft. Raw wedge in good condition. No initials. Price is $200 shipped. Buy both wedges for $380 shipped.

To check out the full listing in our BST forum, head through the link. If you are curious about the rules to participate in the BST Forum, you can learn more here: GolfWRX BST Rules.