{"id":274533,"date":"2025-11-10T16:33:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T16:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/274533\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T16:33:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T16:33:16","slug":"the-equipment-debrief-rory-mcilroy-puts-new-woods-in-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/274533\/","title":{"rendered":"The Equipment Debrief: Rory McIlroy Puts New Woods In Play"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each Monday we look back at some of the biggest and most intriguing gear stories from the previous seven days on Tour – and the action over the weekend didn\u2019t disappoint, giving us several interesting talking points.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s waste no time in addressing the most discussed gear topic of the weekend\u2026 Aaron Rai<\/a>\u2019s pink castle tees.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Welcome to another edition of the Equipment Debrief<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Rai’s Old Favorite<\/p>\n

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\"Aaron\n<\/p>\n

Aaron Rai with his old TaylorMade M6 driver<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The newly-crowned Abu Dhabi champ<\/a> is known for doing things his own way – and with the gear he trusts the most, regardless of how old it is.<\/p>\n

Many of you will have spotted the Englishman sticking to an old favorite at the top end of the bag – his TaylorMade M6 driver<\/a>, a model that was released way back in 2019.<\/p>\n

This is a player who currently sits second in driving accuracy on the PGA Tour, so we don\u2019t expect to see him changing the big stick any time soon.<\/p>\n

What about those tees, though?<\/p>\n

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Pink castle tees are a favorite with senior golfers, who sometimes struggle to put regular wooden tees into hard ground.<\/p>\n

Due to how easy they are to spot and their durability, they\u2019re also popular with golfers who – how shall we put this? – are not fond of spending money.<\/p>\n

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\"Aaron\n<\/p>\n

Rai prepares to unleash a drive with his ball teed up on a pink castle tee <\/p>\n

(Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Rai, who\u2019s also known for using iron headcovers, we would suggest, opts to play with pink castle tees not because he likes to keep the purse strings tight (Rai just won $1.5 million<\/a>), but to ensure his ball is teed up to the perfect height every time in order for him to optimize his performance off the tee.<\/p>\n

New TaylorMade Qi4D Woods<\/p>\n

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\"Rory\n<\/p>\n

Rory McIlroy examines his new TaylorMade Qi4D driver at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship <\/p>\n

(Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

From one player still using a six-year old driver, to the Masters champion and World No.2, Rory McIlroy<\/a>, who was spotted playing with brand-new TaylorMade equipment at Yas Links Golf Club.<\/p>\n

McIlroy\u2019s St Bernard headcover<\/a> and Ryder Cup headcovers (very nice) were keeping his latest TaylorMade Qi4D woods<\/a> in top condition, and the early signs are positive for the Northern Irishman, who ranked second in strokes gained off the tee in the desert (+1.79).<\/p>\n

Both McIlroy and his Ryder Cup teammate Tommy Fleetwood<\/a>, who Rai beat to the title in a playoff, were seen playing with the new TaylorMade Qi4D drivers, the former with the standard version and the Englishman with the LS version.<\/p>\n

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\"Tommy\n<\/p>\n

Tommy Fleetwood with the new TaylorMade Qi4D LS driver in Abu Dhabi<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The latest range, which we haven\u2019t tested ourselves at this stage, has yet to hit the shelves, but we do know that, as with the current TaylorMade Qi35 range<\/a>, there are three heads: Standard, LS and Max.<\/p>\n

A statement from the equipment manufacturer, sent to Golf Monthly, read: \u201cFollowing ongoing testing, our athletes have expressed a strong desire to play these products. In order for them to use these in tournament play, we have added them to the USGA conforming list.\u201d<\/p>\n

McIlroy, who charged up the leaderboard on Sunday with a faultless 62 (-10), has previously had a TaylorMade Qi10 in the bag, whilst Fleetwood, a winner in India last month, had been playing with a TaylorMade Qi35 Dot, the more recent model of the two.<\/p>\n

New Ping G440 K driver (plus S259 wedges)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a new Ping driver was also spotted at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship. As reported last week, it looks like the latest iteration of the popular G440 will soon be available – after all, we are approaching \u2018new driver season\u2019.<\/p>\n

Not a lot is known about the new Ping G440 K<\/a> at this stage, although we\u2019re expecting it to replace the G430 Max 10K<\/a> as the most forgiving driver in the brand\u2019s line-up.<\/p>\n

New Ping wedges also appear to be imminent, which come in the form of the S259, another club that has recently found its way onto the conforming list.<\/p>\n

Given the two-year product cycle (the Ping S159 wedges<\/a> were released in January 2024), it will come as no surprise to see these beautiful-looking wedges arrive in January.<\/p>\n

A couple of other equipment stories are also worthy of a mention, firstly a putter change made by Ben Griffin, who won the World Wide Technology Championship in Mexico.<\/p>\n

Griffin Finds Joy With TaylorMade Mallet<\/p>\n

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\"Ben\n<\/p>\n

Ben Griffin won in Mexico using a TaylorMade Spider Tour X putter<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

One of the biggest trends we\u2019ve seen recently is tour players moving away from using blade putters<\/a> – and Griffin appears to be among the latest to have made a switch.<\/p>\n

The Ryder Cupper had been using a Scotty Cameron blade, but we wouldn\u2019t expect to see this reappear any time soon, not after his victory at the weekend, where he was spotted using a TaylorMade mallet putter.<\/p>\n

And finally, how about this for a statistic? Every player in Abu Dhabi shared one thing in common in terms of their equipment.<\/p>\n

As reported by Matt Cradock last week, Golf Pride was used by 100% of the field<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We’ll be heading to the PGA Show in Orlando in January, so stay tuned for all the latest equipment news – it’s going to get very busy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Each Monday we look back at some of the biggest and most intriguing gear stories from the previous…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-274533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}