Grace unknowingly makes major history

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HOBE SOUND, Fla. – One swing is all it takes for Tiger Woods to notice something is amiss with the new 6-iron placed in his hands just a few minutes earlier. Posted up on the back end of the double-sided range at Medalist Golf Club, the 14-time major champion is going through his first official testing session with TaylorMade since joining the equipment manufacturer’s Tour staff last January. On this particular day, Woods has been tasked with giving his thoughts on some of TaylorMade’s newest gear, including a single muscleback prototype 6-iron that was recently ground and built to Woods’ exact specs by Mike Taylor, a former master craftsman at Nike Golf who spent years creating Woods’ irons and wedges and was recently brought into the fold by TaylorMade. COMING TUESDAY ON PGATOUR.COM Jonathan Wall’s extensive interview with Tiger Woods, who discusses his testing process, equipment specs, working with other TaylorMade staffers — and how he would play golf if there were no equipment regulations.  The shape, look and feel tick all the necessary boxes for Woods, but there’s a piece of the equation that doesn’t check out. “That’s a lot higher,” Woods points out after taking a smooth cut with the iron. “[The iron] looks sweet, but the window is different.” Despite hitting shots that routinely go 192-195 yards with roughly 6,700 rpms of spin, Woods knows a tweak is needed to lower the launch angle. Keith Sbarbaro, TaylorMade’s VP of Tour Operation, suggests checking the center of gravity location against one of Woods’ old sets to ensure they match up. “This is why we test,” Woods says with a grin. Finding a new set of irons for one of the greatest ball-strikers in the history of the sport is akin to putting together a puzzle with 10,000 pieces. Eventually, it will all come together, but it takes significant time and effort to get there. Woods recalls knowing it was time to find a new iron set when he wore through the plating on three clubs in particular – the 8-, 9- and 7-iron (in that order). It was at that point he started the unenviable task of cherry-picking clubs from eight or nine sets to get the CGs to match. With the rise in iron technology and design, Woods knows he doesn’t have to go to those lengths to find a new set. Asked what separates Woods from other high-level professionals when it comes to his testing habits, Sbarbaro points to his unwillingness to adapt to the equipment he’s testing. “He doesn’t adjust,” Sbarbaro said. “He swings the club. The only other guy I’ve worked with a bunch, as a friend, who does that is Phil [Mickelson]. They don’t adjust. So many guys will hit an iron high like Tiger did on the first ball and then they’ll hit it lower the next time. He’s a tough critic. Tiger doesn’t adjust to the equipment; he makes it adjust to him.” Welcome to testing with Tiger Woods, an old-school gearhead who provides brutally honest feedback when he’s working through new product – even when the cameras are rolling, as they were on this particular day as Woods worked through a myriad of TaylorMade gear during the 90-minute session. When it comes to pinpointing the differences between his current sticks and a potential contender, Woods is wired to recognize even the most subtle change when he picks up a new club, beginning with the way it feels during the initial waggle. A number of times during the session, Woods verbalized to Sbarbaro and Brian Bazzel, TaylorMade’s VP of Product Creation, if a club passed the waggle test before ever taking a swing. “This club feels great going through the ground, especially when I waggle,” Woods said early on as he was getting acquainted to the prototype 6-iron. Woods told PGATOUR.COM during a one-on-one interview at Medalist that the waggle has been a part of his game going back to when he initially began playing golf, and was instilled by his father, Earl Woods, who believed in trusting the hands and letting them guide the golf swing. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve always waggled the club and tried to get a feel for it,” Woods says. The prototype 6-iron passes the waggle test but still doesn’t match up to the launch window Woods is accustomed to seeing with the re-badged set of Nike VR Pro irons currently in the bag. The good news for TaylorMade? It’s close. With Woods’ irons, not much has changed from a spec perspective since he was a junior golfer playing irons made by Confidence and Cougar that eventually turned into Mizuno MP-29s when he saved up enough money to buy a set. With the exception of the lie angle, which changed occasionally depending on the instructor he was working with, his specs have remained frozen in time since he was 16 years old – all the way down to the 50-degree pitching wedge. “I’ve never seen the need to change,” Woods says. “I know others have but when you’re comfortable with your iron specs like I am, doing that means I’d need to go through the fitting process all over again, and there really was never a need to adjust.” Woods quickly transitions from hitting 6-irons to conducting head-to-head testing between his graphite-shafted TaylorMade Tour Preferred UDI 2-iron and a P790 long iron with steel and graphite shafts. He picks up roughly 1 mph ball speed and carries the club 270 yards, but it’s clear after several shots that he’s likely going to stick with his current UDI that seems to be working. One thing that stands out during the session is how much Woods talks to other players about their gear and has a pulse on current TOUR equipment trends. Simply put, he’s a sponge, soaking up any potential intel that could give him an edge. In between shots, he comments on the number of players currently using four-wedge setups on TOUR – “So many are going to that four-wedge system, man” – asks for Jason Day’s swing speed numbers and drops an interesting nugget about a recent conversation he had with Rory McIlroy regarding the 28-year-old’s trick to getting the most out of his TaylorMade driver. “Rory said the harder he hits it, the further it flies,” Woods notes. “Just hit it off the heel and let the gear effect take it. He said it’s crazy how far he can hit it when he does that.” With iron testing in the rearview, Woods switches gears to drivers and the search to find something that can unseat “Snowflake,” the nickname bestowed upon his ’16 M2 driver due to its one-of-a-kind qualities. Woods, who asks that the TrackMan numbers not be normalized during the range session, jokingly picks out a guy in a yellow shirt on the far right end of the double-sided range as the target, then begins to pump balls with an 8.5-degree M4 driver outfitted with a Mitsubishi Chemical Tensei CK Pro White 70TX shaft. (Note: Woods tested multiple drivers but all of them had the same CK Pro White 70TX shaft.) “The [M4] looks great,” Woods says. “But it’s just a touch open to me. It’s floating out there a bit.” When the driver produces a higher launch than what he’s accustomed to, he moves the loft sleeve down one click and gets a flight that’s “definitely flatter.” For a guy who played his first competitive tournament in 10 months at the Hero World Challenge in December and just got back into the groove of practicing on a regular basis, Woods doesn’t show any signs of rust. Save for the occasional mis-hit, Woods brought his A-game to the range. That’s evident from the 125-126 mph head speed and 181 mph ball speed that’s producing 12-plus degrees of launch and upwards of 316 yards of carry on a regular basis. Woods is then handed a 9.5-degree M3 460 that looks a bit upright to him at first glance, so a 8.5-degree head is brought in in hopes of solving the issue. Asked during the session if he notices TaylorMade’s new Twist Face design at address – the driver face is slightly curved in the high toe and low heel to improve mis-hit performance – Woods said, “I don’t see it at all. … Just need to test and get a feel for how it performs.” It only takes a few minutes for Woods to notice the 8.5-degree driver is still too upright. He goes back to his current M2 and takes a solid rip at the ball, producing a soft fade that goes 340 yards. “Best drive I’ve hit all day,” Tiger notes.Still searching for a suitable replacement, Sbarbaro suggests Woods try a 9-degree M3 440 that has a similar head shape to the smaller-headed drivers he’s played for much of his career. “I like it a lot,” Woods says after the first few waggles with the club. The results are equally impressive as he produces 310 yards of carry, 12 degrees launch, 2,500 spin right off the bat. Hoping to knock some spin off and showcase the adjustability the driver offers, Sbarbaro pushes the weights forward to the front of the track and has Woods hit another. Moving the weights forward causes Woods to lose a bit of forgiveness, but Sbarbaro notes it will help him gain speed and workability – two things he’s always looking for in a new driver. The results with the tweaked 440cc head are quite possibly the best of the day: 322 yards of carry, 15 degrees launch, 2,100 spin. “All right, that’s a perfect tournament ball,” Woods says of the shot that fades slightly before finding the imaginary fairway. With the session wrapping up, Woods seems upbeat about his prospects of finding a new driver. “I’m excited,” he tells Sbarbaro and Bazzel, “but I still need to do a lot more work on the range and course.” The session concludes with Woods being asked to hit a M3 that’s a half-inch longer than his current setup – known as “Dustin Johnson’s length” – for the sake of testing, but Woods immediately notices an air bubble in the grip that doesn’t feel right. Chances are almost any recreational golfer on the planet wouldn’t have picked up on the defective grip, but then again, Woods isn’t any golfer. It’s just one of the many quirks that make Woods so unique when it comes to his equipment and testing process.

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