The Equipment Debrief: Rory McIlroy Puts New Driver, 3-Wood And 5-Wood In Play.... But What Models?

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’t disappoint, giving us several interesting talking points.

Let’s waste no time in addressing the most discussed gear topic of the weekend… Aaron Rai’s pink castle tees.

Welcome to another edition of the Equipment Debrief.

Rai's Old Favorite

The newly-crowned Abu Dhabi champ is known for doing things his own way - and with the gear he trusts the most, regardless of how old it is.

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 model that was released way back in 2019.

This is a player who currently sits second in driving accuracy on the PGA Tour, so we don’t expect to see him changing the big stick any time soon.

What about those tees, though?

Pink castle tees are a favorite with senior golfers, who sometimes struggle to put regular wooden tees into hard ground.

Due to how easy they are to spot and their durability, they’re also popular with golfers who - how shall we put this? - are not fond of spending money.

Rai, who’s 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), 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.

New TaylorMade Qi4D Woods

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

McIlroy’s St Bernard headcover and Ryder Cup headcovers (very nice) were keeping his latest TaylorMade Qi4D woods 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).

Both McIlroy and his Ryder Cup teammate Tommy Fleetwood, 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.

The latest range, which we haven’t tested ourselves at this stage, has yet to hit the shelves, but we do know that, as with the current TaylorMade Qi35 range, there are three heads: Standard, LS and Max.

A statement from the equipment manufacturer, sent to Golf Monthly, read: “Following 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.”

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.

New Ping G440 K driver (plus S259 wedges)

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 ‘new driver season’.

Not a lot is known about the new Ping G440 K at this stage, although we’re expecting it to replace the G430 Max 10K as the most forgiving driver in the brand’s line-up.

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.

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

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.

Griffin Finds Joy With TaylorMade Mallet

One of the biggest trends we’ve seen recently is tour players moving away from using blade putters - and Griffin appears to be among the latest to have made a switch.

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

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

As reported by Matt Cradock last week, Golf Pride was used by 100% of the field.

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.