For essentially his entire career, Webb Simpson has been an old-school blade iron user.

Well, not anymore.

Simpson switched from Titleist’s 620 MB irons into the company’s new T100 irons this week. He spoke to the media on Thursday following his first-round 69 regarding the switch:

“I’ve had a couple of short stints with non-blades in my career but not many.”

“I haven’t been hitting my irons great. Approach to the green is typically a strength for me; this year it’s been a weakness, and I’ve struggled out of the rough. I keep getting told that these the irons I’m playing are better out of the rough, better with distance control, better with mis-hits, and so I guess I was being stubborn but finally listened and I really like them.”

“They’re not a whole lot different than mine the way they look, but we’ve had good results with them so far.”

According to Simpson, his caddie Paul Tesori played a role in Simpson’s intrigue in the new T100 irons.

“Yeah, honestly I hadn’t considered it that much at all. Paul  mentioned it at Wells Fargo after that first round or maybe after I missed the cut on Friday. Then he came to Charlotte last Wednesday and we were doing some testing, and we were seeing some crazy numbers out of the rough with my blades.”

“Thankfully I live on the golf course, so we drove to my garage, picked up this other set — honestly I didn’t know if I had this other set still. I don’t know if Titleist will like this or not, but if I don’t use a set I give it to a friend. I’m trying to spread the word for Titleist, you know. So I might have given to a friend, but I see them in there, we bring them out, and all the numbers we tested were way better.”

“So I still wasn’t certain that I was going to put them in this week so I have both, but yeah, the biggest thing for me is when I look down I want to make sure it looks good, and then after that all I care about is the numbers and how it’s going to perform out of the rough, and so far they’ve passed the test.”

The lesson here for amateurs is to test a range of different irons to figure out exactly what suits your game best. Even the world’s best ball strikers sometimes opt for more forgiveness.

See more photos of Webb’s new Titleist T100 irons here