Rory McIlroy’s bag looks like Rory McIlroy’s bag too.
After trying a set of TaylorMade P7CB holes two months ago and talking about it, McIlroy made the shocking decision to return to RORS PROTO blades this week in his first PGA Tour season at Pebble Beach.
“That test is over, I’m going back to the trusty instrument that I’ve played basically my whole career,” McIlroy said.
McIlroy began making the switch in early December by installing P7CB long irons at the Australian Open. He liked the turf interaction and forgiveness so much that he went and installed a full set, in a 9-iron, of P7CBs over the weekend. He kept them in the bag during his January TGL appearance and two official season starts in Dubai on the DP World Tour.
“If there’s any help, I’ll definitely take it,” McIlroy said at the Dubai Invitational. “And in Dubai at the end of last year, I hit a couple of irons that I hit a little slower, and instead of them coming up five or seven yards, they were 10 to 15 yards short.”
But when he arrived at Pebble Beach this week for his first PGA Tour season, the RORS PROTOs he’s used almost exclusively since signing with TaylorMade are back in the bag.
For McIlroy, the decision has nothing to do with the circumstances of the presentation of the hole’s justification, but the pattern of dispersion. McIlroy said he began to notice a fair bias.
“So no matter what the weight of the head was or the length of the blade,” said McIlroy, this week’s defending champion, “I can make the swings that I feel like I’m going to make with my blades that are going to be a neutral plane and then after the gap they’re going to want to start right.”
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That’s not a bad thing for McIlroy, who doesn’t like to see the ball go left. Although the PC7CB is a compact back iron designed to give a blade player like McIlroy a more forgiving option without compromising on looks or performance, it has a longer blade length than the RORS PROTO.
While it may not be the cause of McIlroy’s perceived bias, the longer blade length will reduce the rate of closure at impact, making it easier to leave the club slightly open.
McIlroy initially liked the right bias in practice, but when he started playing more in tournaments, he realized it felt unnatural to him.
Why Rory McIlroy is so excited about his 2026 gear change | Visit Report
By:
Jack Hirsh
“It made me feel like I could release fully like my iron shots, which is good in theory and good in practice, but when you get to the course with the card in your hand, for many years I used to feel that like holding back because of the impact and then from that I try to release it, it was just a different feeling, especially under pressure or the heat of the competition,” he said. “I didn’t feel as familiar as I wanted.”
Does this really mean the end of McIlroy exploring the back holes? Probably not.
In fact, this was perhaps the most useful experiment for McIlroy and TaylorMade. Both sides know McIlroy wants more forgiveness, but now they know he needs a head that doesn’t require him to change his swing, even if he thought he would.
Getting the right slight bias on the P7CB shouldn’t be too difficult, whether it’s shortening the length of the blade or moving some weight around the pipe. Perhaps that will be the goal of TaylorMade’s next iron now that they know McIlroy is open to change.
If McIlroy’s test shows us anything, it’s that his blades can still find their way out of the bag at the right time.
The author welcomes your comments at Jack.Hirsh@golf.com.
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