What Rory McIlroy’s new irons mean for TaylorMade

It’s the start of the gear story of the year, but Rory McIlroy switching his RORS PROTO blades to P7CB rear irons could mean more for TaylorMade.
On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, co-hosts Johnny Wunder and Jake Morrow discussed McIlroy’s transition and what it could mean for the brand’s iron line moving forward.
In case you haven’t heard, McIlroy made a major change of months when he played a 5-9 iron TaylorMade P7CB set this past week in Dubai to open his season at T3. Movement started in Australia last month, where McIlroy installed the P7CB long irons before adding another set over the weekend.
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“If there’s going to be help, I’m definitely going to get it,” McIlroy said last Thursday after his opening round of 66 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.”
McIlroy’s set has a front-worn leading mill similar to his P760 long irons, but Wunder said more work is still to come.
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“And they’re working on the set – the back set for Rory,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s a prototype set or what, but they’re working on a set.
They have been doing it for several months. It’s not ready yet, but he wants to play these so he can get used to the idea of playing the instruments backwards.”
The P7CB instruments came out in the summer of 2024, which means that this summer will be two years since their release. Could it be that they should be renewed already? And is the “Rory-specific” dungeon back to replace them?
“My guess is that’s probably the set they’re busy with right now,” Wunder said of the P7CB replacement. “So I think it helps if you’re TaylorMade or Callaway and you launch it, you have plans to launch a new cavity back or a new tour iron, you have to make your top player who’s going to play that iron, put it in the bag sooner than later. So if I were TaylorMade, I’d try to push to get those in the bag during the market, so when it comes to the summer, they’re back. He’s already made them popular, and everybody he wants them.”
What’s really interesting, Morrow points out, is that if you consider the P7CB as a successor to the P760, which was a slightly larger platform, it took six years in that product cycle.
TaylorMade released two iterations of the compact P7MC during that time, but the P7CB proved to be the most popular.
It also provided a clear player option in a cavity-back market that seemed to be fading.
“Mizuno is deliberately calling their new iron speed, not hole back for that reason because it’s because – The category is very wide,” said Morrow. “But Cobra, TaylorMade specifically, and PXG are like real CB irons, and they’re all the same, they’re great.
“But the PC7CB is great because we haven’t had it for a long time.”
Is a new PC7CB near? We’ll have to wait and find out.
For more from Wunder and Morrow, listen to GOLF’s full episode Fully Equipped here, or watch it below.
Do you want to get the best tools for your game in 2026? Find a club fit near you at True Spec Golf.
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