Equipment

The equipment adjustments that made Davis Thompson a PGA Tour winner

Published

1 day ago

Jul 11, 2024

Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from an article our Andrew Tursky filed for PGATour.com’s Equipment Report. You can read the full article here.

Thompson entrusts Craig Allan, director of Sea Island’s Golf Performance Center, who works with various PGA TOUR players on their fitting needs. Last year, Thompson informed Allan that something wasn’t right with his irons. He’d been striping his driver with a Titleist ’21 Pro V1 and Titleist TSR3 driver, but he was struggling with distance control with his irons due to low spin, while catching too many fliers out of the rough.

Allan offered Thompson three solutions: weaken the lofts of his current irons, test out some higher-spinning golf balls, and test out different iron heads and shafts. Thompson didn’t want to hit the ball higher with his irons; he wanted to address the golf ball instead. Initially, Thompson decided to change into a Titleist Pro V1 Star prototype golf ball that offers higher spin rates.

Although the ball change provided a nice solution for his iron play, his driver play suffered.

“(At the) Memorial (Tournament presented by Workday) last year, I started playing a spinnier Titleist golf ball, and it was great for my iron setup at the time,” Thompson said. “But kind of over time I saw my driver’s stats kind of go down, which is kind of a strong suit of my game. So we were trying to figure out after Valspar (Championship) this year how we can get the driver back going.”

Following the Valspar, Thompson and Allan got back to work in the testing center. Thompson was ready for Allan’s third option, which meant he would switch back into his previous Titleist Pro V1 ’21 golf ball, restore his driver dominance, and begin looking at different iron heads with weaker lofts and different shafts to gain spin and distance control.

After two weeks of testing different iron head-and-shaft combinations with the lower spinning golf ball, Allan and Thompson decided on the Titleist 620 MB irons (5-9) equipped with True Temper Dynamic Gold Mid Tour Issue X100 shafts, which offer slightly higher spin and launch compared to the True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 shafts that Thompson was playing previously.

Head over to PGATour.com to read the full article.

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Whats in the Bag

Adrien Saddier WITB 2024 (July)

Published

57 mins ago

Jul 12, 2024

GolfWRX Staff

Adrien Saddier what’s in the bag accurate as of the ISCO Championship. More photos from the event here.

Driver: Mizuno ST-Z 230 (9.5 degrees)
Shaft: Mitsubishi Tensei 1K White 70 TX

3-wood: Mizuno ST-Z 230 (15 degrees)
Shaft: Fujikura Ventus Black 8 X

Check out more in-hand photos of Adrien Saddier’s clubs here.

Hybrid: Mizuno ST-Z (19 degrees)
Shaft: Fujikura Ventus Black HB 9 TX

Irons: Mizuno Pro Fli-Hi (1), Mizuno Pro 243 (4-7), Mizuno Pro 241 (8-9)
Shafts: Fujikura Ventus Black HB 9 TX, KBS Tour-V 130 (4-PW)

Check out more in-hand photos of Adrien Saddier’s clubs here.

Wedges: Mizuno T24 (46-08S), Titleist Vokey Design SM10 (50, 56-08M), WedgeWorks (60-A)
Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100

Putter: L.A.B. Golf DF3

Grips: Golf Pride MCC, Golf Pride Tour Velvet

Check out more in-hand photos of Adrien Saddier’s clubs here.

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Product Reviews

Three Swing Challenge: Testing the Edel Array F-2 putter

Published

4 hours ago

Jul 12, 2024

GolfWRX Staff

This week on the Three Swing Challenge, we have the Edel Array F-2 putter. With the Array line of putters, Edel gives golfers several different options to match their putting styles and tendencies. It is a cool concept, but let’s see how it performs.

Why three swings?

Many years ago, the legendary Barney Adams, founder of Adams Golf told us this:

“My formula as a fitter was three shots only. I discounted No. 1 just because it was the first one, counted 100 percent of No. 2 and discounted No. 3 because the player was starting to adjust.”

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Equipment

New plaque commemorates Rory McIlroy’s famous Scottish Open 2-iron shot

Published

4 hours ago

Jul 12, 2024

GolfWRX Staff

Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from an article our Andrew Tursky filed for PGATour.com’s Equipment Report. You can read the full article here.

In case you forgot, McIlroy closed the tournament with back-to-back birdies to snatch the title from Scotland’s own Robert MacIntyre. McIlroy’s final approach was a perfectly executed 2-iron stinger to 11 feet, a putt he holed for a one-shot victory.

The shot was so good, in fact, that The Renaissance Club in Scotland commemorated it with a plaque. And McIlroy was happy to recall one of the best shots of his career in his Wednesday press conference. He had not yet seen the plaque but had seen photos posted online.

“To hit two iron shots like that and to hole the putts what I needed to, yeah, it was awesome,” McIlroy said. “Sort of I felt in some ways bad that it came at the expense of Bob but at the same time it was amazing to win a tournament that I had never won before. Good memories and good to be back.”

Looking back, the famous shot actually almost never happened at all … at least, not with a 2-iron.

McIlroy has a 5-wood in the bag most weeks instead of a 2-iron. But in preparation for last year’s trip to Scotland, McIlroy dove into his stash of backup clubs in his garage and pulled out a 17-degree TaylorMade P760 2-iron. The low-flying iron was meant to replace his higher-flying 5-wood, giving him the option to hit the ball a bit lower and with less spin to pierce the Scottish winds.

Obviously, that decision worked to perfection.