Building the Bag is always better with a victory! So we’re back with Michael Thorbjornsen’s setup and how he and the TaylorMade team built a winning concoction, thanks to some mid-season moves, to get Thorbjornsen fully graduated from college golf to the PGA Tour.
Ahead of his victory in Detroit at the Rocket Classic, the PGA Tour University alum went through a bevy of switches to his bag setup over a period of 12 months. The changes included new irons and golf ball to better prepare him for golf on the toughest of stages, and more recently, a new (old) putter.
“Thor’s always been unique,” Cory Johnson, TaylorMade Tour Rep, told GolfWRX. Johnson has been key throughout Thorbjornsen’s career, dating way back before he was a young buck on the PGA Tour.
“We’ve been fortunate that we’ve taken care of him since early teens,” Johnson added. “And he’s always had, especially for out here, a ball flight that’s really suited to professional golf…He launches it super high, doesn’t spin it a ton…Rory (McIlroy) is kind of the prototypical person of that”
Despite the high flight, Johnson worked with Thorbjornsen to up the spin and help him gain more control with his approach play.
“We’ve seen kind of trends on tour, with one of them players going into that (2026) TP5 golf ball,” Johnson added. “And then really the change from the irons was we wanted to create more spin.”
After switching balls, it wasn’t long before the duo decided on matching the irons to go along with. Trading out the contemporary muscle-cavity design in the P7MCs for the more traditional bladed P7MBs, Thorbjornsen was able to reduce his curve in left-to-right shots, while also giving him more workability. According to Johnson, with less offset in the muscle-back heads, Thorbjornsen was better suited to change stock shots to draw more.
(Photo c/o TaylorMade)
“He kind of progressed into these different levels,” Johnson said.
Thorbjornsen’s most recent switch came with the flatstick, after he returned to what he said was “the putter that I basically used in college.”
“[I] needed something different,” he told media after his second round at the 2026 Charles Schwab Challenge when he made the change. “It’s a new grip, it’s a new kind of hosel, and it’s a new face as well.”
Since that change, Thorbjornsen has climbed 23 spots in Strokes Gained: Putting on Tour, and it’s another win to add to the TaylorMade Spider column.
“He was wanting to try something a little smaller and less toe hang,” TaylorMade putter rep James Holley shared with GolfWRX. “Specifically inside of 12 feet, he felt like he had a bit of a right bias. We worked through some putters and settled on Spider X double bend.”
With less rotation in his stroke, thanks to the double bend shaft, Thorbjornsen was able to roll the ball on better start lines.
“The more forward (center of gravity) CG and less toe hang gave him a better start line and more confidence inside 20 feet based on his putting stroke,” Holley added.
Thorbjornsen also opted for the TaylorMade Golf Pride white cap grip to allow for more of the grip in his fingers and less in the palm.
The final quirk to Thorbjornsen’s setup is the lack of fairway wood in the bag at Detroit Golf Club. His maiden victory came with four different iron models and a TaylorMade R7 Quad Mini Driver. It’s a club that he uses potentially more often than his actual big stick.
“He’s kind of adapted into that mini driver,” Johnson said. “And certainly as you’ve seen, we’ve had so much success with that mini driver in the last five-plus years. Guys are kind of getting into it and liking it and kind of figuring out where it fits in their bag.
“But he’s also a guy, that it’s not that huge of a deal going straight to 3-iron when he can launch it at the heights that he can and carry it as far as he can. He’s not as worried as much about that distance gap between those two.”
Thorbjornsen ranks 12th in Total Driving this season, a measurement that combines both driving distance and accuracy, something that the Stanford alum finds quite easy.
“Being a 180-plus ball speed guy, the mini driver is kind of a safety for that,” said TaylorMade Tour rep Adrian Rietveld. “When he doesn’t feel comfortable with driver, it becomes almost like a 300-yard club to get him in play.”
Easy, right?
Check out Thorbjornsen’s full bag details below:
Driver: TaylorMade Qi4D LS (9 degrees)
Shaft: Fujikura Ventus Black VeloCore+ 7 X
Mini driver: TaylorMade R7 Quad Mini Driver (13.5 degrees)
Shaft: Fujikura Ventus TR Blue 8 X
Irons: TaylorMade P770 (3), TaylorMade P7MC (4), TaylorMade P7MB (5-PW)
Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100
Wedges: TaylorMade MG5 (52-SB09, 56-SB12, 60-TW11)
Shafts: KBS Tour V 120 X
Putter: TaylorMade Spider Tour X
Grip: SuperStroke Zenergy Pistol Tour
Grips: Golf Pride MCC
Ball: TaylorMade TP5
