Scottie Scheffler Explains Latest Driver Switch At The Players Championship

Scottie Scheffler's return to the TaylorMade Qi4D driver lasted just a week as the World No.1 is now back into his beloved Qi10 at The Players Championship.

TaylorMade's new driver has seamlessly gone into the bags of Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, Collin Morikawa, Nelly Korda and Charley Hull among others, but Scheffler is finding it tough to switch out his usual gamer in the early part of the year.

The four-time Major champion ranked 19th in Strokes Gained: Off the tee at the Arnold Palmer Invitational with the Qi4D, gaining 1.28 strokes per round with it while hitting 53.57% of fairways.

He was full of praise for the new model after his opening round at TPC Sawgrass despite going back to his Qi10, where he explained that he was struggling to trust the new driver and admitted his old faithful has "done pretty good the last few years."

He actually lost strokes on Thursday with the Qi10, missing multiple drives to the right for a loss of -0.011 strokes off the tee to rank 68th - well below his average of +0.743 for the season so far.

"I've seen some improvements in the new driver; like my spin is much more consistent. It's actually a touch faster than my driver," Scheffler said after his opening 72.

"But the way I play, I always hit so many different types of shots and the one last week felt like it was going a little left on me, and when I want to hit my peeler a lot of times I would hit it out of the middle of the face it would start drawing on me.

"So I think that's a little bit today why the ball started going right. You look at a hole like 14, 7, 16, you can't really miss left.

"I don't think I had enough trust in what the driver head was doing compared to where I was last week. I think it can be tough sometimes to kind of block that stuff out.

"But I have seen some improvements in the new driver, it's just I haven't been able to trust it in all the different shots that I hit, especially off the tee.

"Yeah, it's done pretty good the last few years. I don't know what you think my results have been with the ball-striking, but it's a driver I've used since 2024 and 2025. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, it's a pretty good driver."

The two-time Players Champion was well below his best on Thursday but is only five back of the lead after 18 holes.