What Rory McIlroy’s $995 equipment mistake can teach you about getting new golf clubs

If the world’s best golfers struggle to get used to new golf equipment, the rest of us might need to lower our expectations too…

Leading golf brands spend millions on sponsorship deals with tour stars, knowing it reflects well on them to have their products used by the best players in the world.

But it’s not a good look when one of those tour stars puts the brand’s new clubs in the bag and then decides he’d rather go back to the old ones, particularly when switching back has an immediate positive effect on his performance.

Rory McIlroy’s costly TaylorMade Qi10 vs. Qi35 to-and-fro

Rory McIlroy had switched to the new TaylorMade Qi35 driver and woods for the Arnold Palmer Invitational, but after three rounds, he’d had enough.

McIlroy decided he wanted to go back to the trusty TaylorMade Qi10 woods he’d used to win the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am a month earlier, but there was a problem: his old bats were at his South Florida home, some 170 miles away.

Fortunately, club transportation is a problem money can solve, as McIlroy’s putting coach Brad Faxon revealed. “He had them Uber’d from his house on Saturday night, which is pretty extraordinary” explained the eight-time PGA Tour winner on Sky Sports.

Asked about the cost of the taxi ride, McIlroy said: “No idea. Not my department.”

But McIlroy’s manager, Sean O’Flaherty, confirmed that the ride cost $665 plus a $330 tip. The clubs arrived at Bay Hill around 9.30pm and were back in McIlroy’s bag for the fourth and final round.

Why Rory McIlroy switched back to TaylorMade Qi10

After the round, McIlroy explained the switch: “Sort of going back to what I’m comfortable with. I tried new woods for the first three days, but it didn’t quite work out the way I wanted. So, yeah, I went back to my old stuff today.

“I led Strokes Gained: Off the Tee in both Pebble and Torrey, so it was a really good idea to change,” he joked. “Then, [Saturday at the Arnold Palmer], I lost strokes off the tee, which is the first time I’ve done that in a long time. Yeah, just went back to what was familiar.”

Ahead of The Players Championship, he was asked about the club change again.

“You’re always looking for a little edge, and for me it was like, OK, if I can find something that goes 300, that would be great, just for — not just for what’s coming — for a lot of golf courses we go to nowadays, it seems like fairways pinch in at like 310, 320 [yards], which is just awkward enough for me to hit driver. But then if I hit 3-wood 285, 290, I feel like I’m not quite pushing it up there as far as I can. If I have to hit 7-iron into a green instead of 8-iron, I’ll deal with it,” he said. “Some years you vibe with a new piece of equipment a little easier. Like that Qi10 that I’m using that they brought out last year, it was like love at first sight. I was like, this thing is amazing. I think when you feel like that about a golf club, it’s very hard to change into something else. It ebbs and flows. Some years it’s easier than others.”

Reverting back to his old woods clearly worked, as McIlroy shot rounds of 67-68-73-68 to finish tied atop the leaderboard at The Players Championship, leading to a Monday playoff.

Will McIlroy switch to TaylorMade Qi35 again?

McIlroy confirmed he would stick with his current bag setup – including the Qi10 woods – through the Masters.

But I’d bet good money that McIlroy will switch into the TaylorMade Qi35 range at some point this year and have great results with it. The issue isn’t that the TaylorMade Qi35 family is no good or that the Qi10 range is better; it’s more an “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” situation.

With a busy playing schedule, there isn’t much time to get used to new equipment outside of tournaments. It’s a problem that affects golfers other than McIlroy and brands other than TaylorMade. Shane Lowry recently revealed that he had “no idea” what model of driver he had in the bag during the Arnold Palmer Invitational, having tested 15 different ones on the Tuesday before the tournament.

The problem with switching golf clubs

Getting new golf clubs is always an exciting experience, but as McIlroy, Lowry, and many others have shown, it’s not always a seamless transition. It’s great if your first round with a new club goes like a dream, but adjusting to new equipment can take time.

If you’re an amateur golfer playing once a week or less, it could take six weeks or more to fully adapt to the different look, feel, and performance of a club. To make the process smoother, here are my top tips for switching clubs and getting used to them:

• Get a proper custom fitting. This ensures your new club is tailored to your game and gives you full confidence in your choice
• Don’t expect instant results on the course or give up on a club if your first one or two rounds with it aren’t fantastic
• Don’t chop and change your clubs too often. It can be tempting to stick a new putter in the bag every time you have a bad round on the greens, but that will likely do more harm than good in the long run

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