A few extra clubs here and there present in a professional golfer’s bag to start the week isn’t an uncommon sight on the PGA Tour. Plenty of players look to build their perfect setup for the course conditions before tournament play starts on Thursday.
Twenty-six clubs in a single bag, however, is slightly out of the norm, and you start asking questions.
Marco Penge let our Tour Photographer Greg Moore capture his bag setup on Monday at the Rocket Classic, and it took slightly longer than expected.
Starting at the top of the bag, Penge is currently in the PXG Lightning Tour Mid driver head. According to PXG’s Tour Rep Justin Shepherd, Penge played the model to start the year, but after some time in the Max head, moved back to the Mid when he returned to Europe this summer.
With the rethink in driver head, Penge is looking to test two setups, the difference being a heavy lead-tape job. One of Penge’s drivers features three strips of lead tape on the rear of the driver to likely pull the CG (center of gravity) more rearward and, with that, try to launch the ball higher.
Moving into Penge’s mini-driver setup, he’s testing out the yet-to-be-released PXG Secret Weapon 2, along with his gamer TaylorMade BRNR Mini Driver Copper. The updated Secret Weapon has a slightly different sole design from its predecessor, but otherwise it’s hard to tell what else has changed.
Along with the changes in driver and mini driver, the Englishman is also testing out the yet-to-be-released, next-generation PXG 0317 cavity irons, having started the season in the blade 0317 ST heads. Continuing the theme of doubling up, Penge was carrying two different sets of the new irons, one featuring a custom leading-edge grind. The reason is that Penge is actually testing two different head sizes in the new 0317 cavity irons, according to Shepherd, and the slightly larger P head, compared with the smaller T model, required some leading-edge work to help with turf interaction. The tour is slightly shorter heel-to-toe and has a thinner sole, which is what Penge was using on the DP World Tour for the last few months.
Rounding out the double-duty, Penge also had with him two different putters, which, if you have followed him before making the PGA Tour, isn’t the biggest surprise. Having earned his Tour card from the DP World Tour, with three wins last season, each of his victories came with a different Scotty Cameron putter. The first was at the Hainan Classic with a Super Rat I, the next at the Danish Golf Championship with a T5.2 and then finally the Open de España with a Tour GoLo 6.2.
So with him in Detroit, Penge has both a Newport style Scotty Cameron and a custom center-shafted PXG Torpedo. It isn’t common for players to travel with a blade-style putter to train with, but in Penge’s case, he putted with the Newport while across the pond, so there’s potential it stays in the bag. But at the moment, there are plenty of decisions to be made for what ends up in the bag come Thursday.
Check out Penge’s full What’s in the Bag here.
