With the PGA Tour’s annual trip across the pond comes the usual bevy of changes to the top end of players’ bags.
Out with the high-lofted fairway woods, and in with a good old-fashioned driving iron to keep ball flights lower in the blustery conditions found on the shores of the United Kingdom.
Rory McIlroy, who opened the Genesis Scottish Open with a 5-under 65 at The Renaissance Club in North Berwick, Scotland, did just that, opting for his TaylorMade P760 3-iron instead of his Qi4D 5-wood, which has been in the bag most of the year. The P760 is the same model of iron McIlroy has regularly in play in his 4-iron, and actually what he used for his famous 18th-hole approach at The Renaissance, where he hit a 2-iron to just a few feet to win the tournament in 2023.
The addition of the driving iron wouldn’t have surprised many, but McIlroy’s change in lob wedge might have. After switching into the newly released MG5 lineup for his win at the Irish Open last year, he returned to the MG4 head for his trip to Scotland this week. With that also came a custom grind RM5.
It’s a grind, spotted before on Tour; McIlroy played it in an MG3 wedge in 2023, which McIlroy at the time said combined the best parts of previous Vokey and Nike wedges he had played.
The MG4 wedge this time around features less bounce than most at just 5 degrees, to help lower the sharp leading edge and pick the ball cleanly off the tight fescue grasses at this week’s Scottish Open and also The Open Championship next week, and what looks like plenty of heel and trailing-edge relief to help when opening the face.
Inside Tour Golf first spotted McIlroy’s wedge change.
Patrick Reed ditches the blade
One of golf’s longest-serving blademen decided to switch things up.
Patrick Reed, who has already won twice this year on the DP World Tour and has all but secured a PGA Tour card for next season, decided to join mallet mania.
Both his victories came with a Scotty Cameron Tour Rat 1.5 Proto, but for Scotland, Reed moved into a Phantom 12 with a welded slant neck.
According to the Golf Channel broadcast, Reed had played a mallet once before, but for most of his career has played either a Scotty Cameron or Odyssey blade.
During the two rounds in Scotland, Reed gained 3.7 shots on the greens.
For those worried about another blade putter taking a back seat, 3.7 is the same number of strokes gained by Jordan Smith during his second-round 63 that saw him vault to the top of the leaderboard. The Englishman did that with a new 009 center-shafted Scotty Cameron blade. According to Golf Digest’s Jamie Kennedy in over 1,000 rounds as a pro, it’s Smith’s fourth-best putting performance.
Fitzpatrick makes putter change … kind of
Another golfer who has won multiple times this season made a putter change in Scotland, although not as dramatic a swap as Reed’s.
Matt Fitzpatrick, a three-time winner on Tour in 2026, decided to put in play a customized Bettinardi BB1 Fitz Flow blade putter.
We first spotted the newer version of the flatstick at the Travelers Championship just a few weeks ago, featuring a honeycomb-milled sole.
With potential for baked-out greens on the links course over the next two weeks, Bettinardi told GolfWRX that Fitzpatrick wanted to have some texture on the sole to prevent it from sliding.
Titleist debuts Black Vapor
Titleist launched two new limited-edition lineups this summer with its “Black Vapor” T-Series irons and Vokey SM11 wedges, which bring a refreshing cosmetic update to the latest generation of Titleist iron and wedge technology in a durable, darker finish.
Starting with the T-Series irons, the “Titanium Carbide Vapor” finish will be available on the ’25 series T100, T150, T250 and T350 models. But what does this mean?
Titanium Carbide Vapor is a PVD (Physical Vapor Deposition) finish to the club head, where the material is vaporized in a vacuum and bonds to the club head to help with durability and smudge resistance.
It was spotted on-site at The Renaissance Club, with Justin Thomas testing a T250 2-iron in the finish. In a social post from Titleist, Tour rep JJ Van Wezenbeeck said that Thomas was looking to “try and bring the peak height on his 5-wood, which is around 120 feet, down to around 80 to 90 feet, which gives him a lot of control off the tee, but also allows just enough height for some of those downwind shots and into the longer holes.”
Spotted: First look at Srixon’s new ZXi RKT fairway woods and hybrids
Plenty was still happening Stateside at the ISCO Championship, with the first looks at Srixon’s new ZXi RKT fairway woods and hybrids.
Just a couple of weeks ago at the Travelers Championship, Srixon launched its new lineup of drivers on tour, with the ZXi RKT family taking full flight.
Plenty of changes came with the new drivers, including a new sole makeup along with the new-looking material labeled “Acousticore,” which could be a different design structure internally, stepping away from the Star Frame that Srixon has used in the past. At the Travelers, Srixon showed off four different models: A core head, LS, Max, and LS+.
Now at the ISCO, hosted at Hurstbourne Country Club in Louisville, Kentucky, we have a first look at the new RKT fairway and hybrid lineup. GolfWRX’s Tour Photographer Greg Moore was out earlier in the Bluegrass State to get first-hand images of the new clubs, which are posted here.
