Leaderboard: WGC-Mexico Championship

The TOUR Championship has wrapped, concluding the 2020-2021 PGA TOUR season. Patrick Cantlay hoisted the FedExCup trophy thanks in no small part to a putter switch he made late in the season. We may be slightly biased here at the Equipment Report, but we think it’s the perfect time to look back on some of the most significant PGA TOUR equipment stories of the year — and we had some good ones! Harris’ HoHum In January, Harris English won the Sentry Tournament of Champions with the same putter — a Ping Scottsdale HoHum — he used for his 2013 Mayakoba Golf Classic victory. Unique-looking putter, and a unique equipment tale here as we got the story from Ping TOUR Rep Tony Serrano about what English loves about his HoHum. Hideki’s Scotty switch Eternally in pursuit of the perfect putter, Hideki Matsuyama made a switch two weeks prior to the Masters, putting a 2012 Scotty Cameron Newport 2 Tour Prototype in the bag that was outfitted with a different grip than his Cameron Timeless. Rory returns to old Protos Rory McIlroy made a number of equipment changes in 2021. Most significant among the switches, certainly, was his return to his 2017 TaylorMade Rors Prototype irons prior to winning the Wells Fargo Championship. Phil’s PGA Championship-winning driver En route to his incredible PGA Championship victory, Phil Mickelson wielded a Callaway Epic Speed driver with a 47.9-inch shaft (right up against the USGA limit of 48 inches). We got the inside story of Phil’s build. Morikawa finds a putter that performs Struggling with alignment, Collin Morikawa built himself a custom TaylorMade TP Juno putter using the same MyTP custom putter builder that’s available to the public. While his gamer was ultimately slightly different, it was a wild “they’re just like us” tale. Rahm’s U.S. Open-winning wand Jon Rahm switched to an Odyssey Rossie S the tournament prior to his epic U.S. Open triumph. We got the full story of what happened at the Ely Callaway Performance Center in Carlsbad and why Rahmbo made the move away from the 2-Ball Ten putter he had been using. Rory calls a Cameron into Olympic duty Full-bag TaylorMade staffer captured the full attention of the golf equipment world when he arrived in Tokyo not with his TaylorMade Spider putter but with a Scotty Cameron 009M flatstick. We went in search of the story, and even though Rory has now made a return to the TaylorMade mallet, it was a fun feature to fill out. Phil takes the armlock plunge Always willing to experiment with his equipment, Phil Mickelson tried his hand (and arm) at armlock putting. Additionally, he used a prototype putter that featured an interesting backstory. And while the experiment is over, the story is well worth digging back into. JT takes a teen’s advice A question from a 15-year-old junior golfer prompted Justin Thomas to reconsider benching the Scotty Cameron Phantom X 5.5 with which he won 14 of his 15 PGA TOUR titles. Little changes, big playoff payoff for Cantlay Most recently on the “significant equipment storylines” front, Patrick Cantlay switched to a Scotty Cameron X 5 putter with a sightline (from an alignment aid-free version) and had the best performance in strokes gained: putting history. He then rode the red-hot putter to a FedExCup victory at East Lake. Sometimes the smaller adjustments pay the biggest dividends!

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This time last year, Scottie Scheffler was an equipment free agent without a PGA TOUR victory. A lot has changed since then. Scheffler won four times in a two-month stretch last spring — including his first major triumph at the Masters — en route to winning PGA TOUR Player of the Year. In the midst of those eventful two months, Scheffler also inked an endorsement deal with TaylorMade. Scheffler’s most notable gear changes in 2022 included a switch into TaylorMade’s Stealth Plus driver at the beginning of the year, and a switch into TaylorMade’s Stealth 16.5-degree fairway wood prior to winning the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play event (remember, the TaylorMade Stealth fairway wood finally replaced his longtime Nike VR Pro fairway wood that he’d used for a decade! Scheffler is wasting no time upgrading to TaylorMade’s latest and greatest. He has the TaylorMade Stealth 2 Plus prototype driver and a Stealth 2 3-wood in the bag at this week’s Sentry Tournament of Champions. Scheffler ranked 19th in Driving Distance (311.6 yards) last season and 100th in Driving Accuracy. Scheffler said Wednesday, however, the new Stealth 2 driver may move him up the rankings in the latter category by offering more stability on off-center strikes. “The testing process, it was pretty simple for me,” Scheffler said Wednesday from Kapalua Resort’s Plantation Course. “This was, I think, an easy fitting. The driver, when we were going through the fitting … I noticed at first it was really stable. So if I was hitting it left, the ball would always kind of hang left, and then if one head was going too far right, the ball would kind of hang there. So the thing I noticed, and was excited about, was how stable it was. And getting into it was pretty seamless. I went up to The Kingdom (TaylorMade’s fitting center in Carlsbad, California) this winter and just kind of got into the driver, and the numbers were matching up nicely, and I thought it was a lot more stable, so I put it in play.” His driver is so new, in fact, that TaylorMade hasn’t yet announced any technical information about the design. It just went onto the USGA Conforming Club List earlier this week. Judging by the photos of Scheffler’s new Stealth 2 Plus driver, it appears that TaylorMade is staying with the red TwistFace – uniquely made from 60 layers of carbon – that the company introduced in its previous Stealth drivers. The red carbon face, according to TaylorMade, helped achieve faster ball speeds when compared to the titanium that is standard in today’s drivers. It does appear that TaylorMade has made some changes from the Stealth Plus to the new Stealth 2 Plus driver, though. The crown seems to have a glossier black finish compared to its predecessor, and the sole appears to feature a redesigned sliding adjustable weight near the front of the sole. Although Scheffler has changed into the new Stealth 2 Plus 8-degree head, he’s sticking with the same Fujikura Ventus Black 7 X shaft that he used throughout 2022. Scheffler is also upgrading into a new Stealth 2 fairway wood with 15 degrees of loft. As he explained on Wednesday, when he’s testing out new fairway woods, Scheffler first looks for the club to produce the correct distance to create the desired yardage gaps in his set. Then, from there, he wants to see that he can hit all of the different shots he requires from a fairway wood. “I always look for distance first (with a new 3-wood),” Scheffler explained. “Like, when we do the fitting, we’ll get it going the right distance, and then (see) if I can hit all my shots. I noticed with this one I was able to hit kind of down into the ball more, and so that part excited me. The front edge sat a little bit squarer, so it’s got a little better look to While Scheffler’s new TaylorMade Stealth 2 Plus driver and Stealth 2 fairway wood are still unreleased and unannounced by the company, Scheffler already sounds comfortable with the new designs. He’ll put them to their first competitive test on Thursday when he tees off at 12:15 p.m. local time in the opening round of the Sentry Tournament of Champions.

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