The PGA Tour’s minimal off-season makes switching into the latest golf equipment a little harder for the professionals. This week, we spotted Scottie Scheffler working with TaylorMade’s new Qi35 drivers on the range, and Rory McIlroy looks to also be adding some new gear to his bag as well. McIlroy had the TaylorMade Qi35 driver, fairway woods, and a new Milled Grind 4 wedge in the bag ahead of the 2025 Arnold Palmer Invitational.

TaylorMade Qi35 driver

Rory looks to be adding a TaylorMade Qi35 “Dot” driver to his bag this week. If you look at the loft on the head you can see a small dot on the upper right that isn’t just the symbol for degrees. Retail Qi35 drivers don’t have this little detail. Rory played a Qi10 “Dot” all of last year, as did many other pros, which was a lower spinning head. This Qi35 “Dot” looks to have a shape that looks more like the Qi35 LS head from address. The new Qi35 model has a larger and more rounded shaped to it where this Dot head tapers more down near the heel. Not sure if there are any performance changes but the shape might take a bit of stability out of the head. Rory has also made the switch to the new 2024 Fujikura Ventus Black with VeloCore+ 6 X shaft. Performance should be very similar to the previous 2019 Ventus Black with maybe a little added ball speed and stability.

TaylorMade Qi35 3, 5-woods

Club junkies jumped for joy when TaylorMade added its Loft Sleeve to their fairway wood line this year. We can now dial in the fairway woods with loft and lie adjustments to make them fit our swings and shots shapes even better. But out on tour, Rory has some Qi35 prototypes with a simple bonded hosel like last year’s Qi10 fairways. Bonded fairways typically let club engineers move some extra weight around to increase launch and forgiveness. The 3-wood is 15 degrees and the 5-wood is 18 degrees, but we are not sure if they are bent to any specific loft or lie. My guess is that these bonded models are designed to play just like the Qi10 as they were some of the most popular fairways on tour last year, used by Rory and others over the titanium Tour model. The 3-wood is shafted with a Fujikura Ventus Black 8 X and the 5-wood has the Fujikura Ventus Black 9 X shaft.

At Bay Hill, McIlroy told our Andrew Tursky the following about setting up the top end of his bag:

“Then I sort of had to look at the top end of the bag then of how I was going to configure it. For a while I’ve been looking for a club that sort of carries 300 in the air. I feel like there’s a lot of golf courses we go to that really pinch in at like 310, 320. I would hit a 3-wood — I can’t hit driver because it’s just too narrow, but then I would hit my 3-wood that’s going like 285, 290. Still, guys that are shorter than me are hitting driver sort of 300 or 310, so I’m actually, I feel like I was at a disadvantage in some ways, even to like people that hit it shorter than me, depending upon the course setup. So I sort of, and I messed around with that the mini driver last year, but I just couldn’t quite get comfortable with it. So I’ve sort of been playing around with like stronger 3-woods.

“So this 3-wood that I have carries like 300, 305 in the air, which is a really, it’s a really good club for me to have. And then I’ve went from a 5-wood to a 4-wood. And that 4-wood sort of bridges that gap. And then I’ve got the 3-iron that sort of replaces the 5-wood. So I’ve got a club that sort of flies 260, a club that flies 280, a club that flies 300, and then the driver. So that was sort of the reasoning behind ’em. It just sort of gives me more options off the tee. Especially with being so comfortable at the other end of the bag with the wedges and hitting those three-quarter shots that it’s nice to have those options up at the top end of the bag.”

TaylorMade Milled Grind 4 Wedge

While the MG4 wedges aren’t really new, Rory has a new one in the bag this week. The head is a 46-degree SB sole with nine degrees of bounce that is available through custom order on TaylorMade’s website or any authorized dealer. The team at TaylorMade then bent the wedge two degrees weaker to 48 degrees. I am not sure if this wedge is going to replace his 46 or 50-degree that he was carrying previously, but it must have been built for a specific need. Bending a wedge two degrees weaker will increase the bounce by the same amount, now making this an 11-degree SB sole. Some of the offset is also removed when bending weak, and I do see that from address, the straight leading edge and zero offset look great. The wedge is shafted up with a Project X 6.5, the same as he uses in his other wedges.

Check out the rest of our photos from the 2025 Arnold Palmer Invitational here.