Rory McIlroy makes his first start on the PGA Tour since winning his sixth major championship, going back-to-back at the Masters Tournament, and he does so with new clubs in the bag. 

As one of the favorites at Quail Hollow Club for the Truist Championship, a tournament that he’s won on four occasions, McIlroy switched out his double-Masters-winning TaylorMade Qi10 3-wood for the newer Qi4D model that he had been playing up until his tee time at Augusta National this past April. 

“I had been using the (Qi)4D 3-wood at the start of the season,” McIlroy said Wednesday ahead of the Truist Championship. “I noticed that it just had a little bit of a left bias in it. So I went back to an old Qi10 for a while. But that wasn’t, it really wasn’t spinning enough. It’s more like a mini driver than a 3-wood. It sort of spins like 2,700, it’s pretty fast. It could be a good club for like Memorial, for example. But I felt like I needed a 3-wood that just spun a little bit more.”

After a week of testing with the TaylorMade team in Florida leading up to the Truist Championship, a discovery was made as to why the Qi4D head was performing the way it was. 

“What was interesting is he was hitting it right out the center, but the club was kind of acting like he was toeing it,” said Keith Sbarbaro, TaylorMade’s VP of Tour Operations. “So he was getting a little bit of a left gear effect. It wasn’t drastic like a closed face, but it was just a slight overdraw.”

The fix: moving the center of gravity towards the toe and a little bit higher to help with the spin rates. 

“The first hit came right out the middle, 3,200 spin, didn’t overdraw,” Sbarbaro added. “He had eight balls in a row. The spin rates were all 31 to 3,300, where he went back to his Qi10 and he hit some that were 32(00). Then he would get one at like 28(00). So it really matched up well, and he was still hitting it out of the center and seeing the flight he wanted. So it is just a much more playable 3-wood, and I think he’s pretty excited having the bag this week.”

Along with the 3-wood, McIlroy also acknowledged that he has a fresh set of irons in the bag this week in Charlotte. It was actually the original reason for the TaylorMade trip to Florida for the team to dial in the heads, lofts and lies to that of his previous gamer set. Don’t worry, blade fans; he’s not back into the cavity-back irons –  just a shinier version of his RORS Protos. 

Titleist launches new mini driver 

Shortly after launching the GTS drivers and woods on the Tour, Titleist gifted gear heads with another option in the newly added lineup with the GTS300 mini driver. While no official information on the latest mini driver to hit the circuit, one could believe that the 300 could relate to the sizing of the head. The previous GT280 played at you guessed it – 280cc head – so it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that the latest head is a touch larger at 300cc. 

Ryan Gerard gave his initial thoughts on the club.

“Mini drivers are a weird club; some guys really like them, I’ve been trying to be one of those guys,” Gerard said. “… I like the fact that this one’s a little bit bigger.

“Jason Day and I were talking about mini drivers and some of the new ones they have more of a round edge here (the bottom of the face) so they’re harder to get off the ground. I really like this kind of flush to the ground, so I can go down and get it a little bit easier.

“Going to tinker around a little … but my initial thoughts are there’s possibilities here.”

Take into account that the metalwood team at Titleist designed the original GT280, so consider this option more of a larger 3-wood than a smaller driver like other equipment manufacturers.

Tony Finau’s putting 

Tony Finau has had a resurgent year on the greens in 2026. He switched into a Ping Scottsdale Tec Ally Blue putter earlier in the spring and, since then, has climbed to 18th on the PGA Tour in putting average, and is gaining strokes on the greens for the first time since 2022. 

So it may surprise some to see him potentially switching putters at Quail Hollow Club ahead of the 2026 Truist Championship, and he’s doing it in a very unconventional way. Finau, a six-time winner on Tour, was spotted using a broomhandle putter, a less-than-traditional length putter. 

“Putter’s felt good and bad, kind of inconsistent,” Finau said Monday at the Truist. “So I’m like, it’s (a long putter) something that I’ve thought about. It’s something never really fully gave a chance. So off week, I didn’t play last week, so I was like, maybe this is the time to give full chance.”

The way Finau was spotted gripping the club may be a more surprising aspect to the switch, with his hold on the club even less-than-traditional. Instead of the standard top-arm elbow pointed towards the hole and anchored into the chest, Finau has elected to externally rotate his forearm, having his thumb pointing down the grip of the club, towards the ball. 

Find out more about Finau’s reasoning for the unique grip and setup with the long putter here.

Webb Simpson’s irons 

Quail Hollow member Webb Simpson has decided to step up his iron game ahead of the 2026 Truist Championship hosted at his home course. He’s not one to make changes often. He’s first to admit it, and “if something works,” he tends to run it out for “as long as possible.”

So when a shiny new set of Titleist T100 irons are in the bag of the Charlotte native, it’s a pretty big change. The clubs, in fact, came “right off the rack,” according to Simpson, and it’s a considerable move from a man who’s played muscle-back clubs for a long period of his career. So much so, Titleist even created a one-of-one prototype for the former U.S. Open champion. But they were a combination of what worked best for Simpson, including the sole shaping and grooves from a 2019 T100. 

The real story about the irons isn’t to do with how new they are, or even the fact that they’re off the rack, but instead, what Simpson has done with them since he received the set. 

Read more on the reasoning behind Simpson’s special iron set.  

Quick Hits

Away from the Turist Championship, newly announced equipment-free agent Brooks Koepka didn’t take long to mix up his setup. He added four Vokey wedges to the bag: the SM11 48.10F, 52.12F, 56.10 and then a WedgeWorks 60B. The B grind is created for golfers who love the versatility of the M grind but would prefer a lower bounce option.

Club of the week 

It would be easy to pick a Scotty Cameron every time Hideki Matsuyama is teeing it up on Tour. But the custom Cameron that was made for him at Truist is extra special. Usually, V soles are saved for irons, but the custom blade uses a unique sole design, along with some mint stampings.