Why’s It In The Bag: Rory McIlroy 2025 Masters

Have you recovered yet? In one of the most gut wrenching and volatile rounds of golf on a Sunday we’ve ever seen at Augusta, Rory finally has the career grand slam. While the last 11 years have still been a wildly successful spell for anyone not chasing golfing immortality, Rory’s bag looks quite different to 2014 when he last conquered a major. So let’s have a look at the clubs that finally brought him a green jacket:

Driver: Taylormade QI10 ‘dot’ 9* (adjusted to 8.25*)

Shaft: Ventus Black 6X 45” (tipped 1”)

Fairway Woods: Taylormade QI10 3 wood & 5 wood

Shaft: Ventus Black 8X & 9X

Irons: Taylormade P760 4i, Taylormade Rors Proto 5-9

Shaft: Project X Rifle 7.0

Wedges: Taylormade MG4 46 9 SB, 50 9 SB, 54 11 SB, 60 8 LB

Shafts: Project X Rifle 6.5 (46/50) & Project X 6.5 Wedge (54/60)

Putter: Taylormade Spider Tour X slant neck 34.5”

Ball: Taylormade TP5

Key Points

‘Dot’ driver

To Taylormade’s inevitable chagrin, Rory’s actually in an old driver, preferring the more traditional look of the QI10 as opposed to the obvious carbon finish on the current QI35 offering. Now this in itself is probably a story for Taylormade’s flagship player, however look a little closer and you’ll see a little bit of the tour magic. This is no ordinary QI10. If you look by the loft marking there is a small dot, representing that this is a tour only head with different characteristics to the normal QI10 (this is also a head that Scottie Scheffler is using too).  The ‘dot’ head is not one that you or I can buy in a shop and is designed to perform somewhere between the QI10 core head and the LS model, spinning less than the core yet offering more stability than the LS. The driver is set at 8.25* down from 9*, while this takes the height of Rory’s towering drives down to optimise his ball flight, it also opens the face up as Rory doesn’t like to see big left misses off the tee.

Beastly Iron Build

I’m not even sure I could lift Rory’s irons off of the ground, let alone hit them. Rory has played the Project X Rifle 7.0 shafts in his irons for a very long time now and these are up there with the stiffest iron shafts in existence, at 130g they are very heavy but the profile is what sets this shaft apart. For context 6.0 is considered stiff and the 7.0 is 2 flexes stiffer than this. Even amongst the most powerful golfers on the planet, this shaft is beefy. Then consider that the clubheads on the end of these shafts are blades, prototype irons made specifically for Rory so again a tour special, it shows what kind of an athlete Rory is.

Ball Switch

This is a relatively new one for McIlory. Prior to his win at Pebble Beach earlier this year, Rory switched to the softer and spinnier TP5 ball from the TP5x. While this maybe isn’t a headline maker, this is a significant change in approach. We all know that Rory has been one of the premier big hitters in the upper echelons of golf and his ball selection has always leaned into that. Using the TP5x he gained a higher, lower spinning ball flight which is the best way to maximise yardage, especially off the tee. However, switching to the TP5 offers a lower and higher spinning trajectory which often provides more control, especially on partial wedge shots which is one of the major improvements he has claimed to have found since the switch.

As an unabashed fan of Rory it’s great to see him finally climb the mountain that only a handful of the most influential figures in our sport have climbed before him. And while his clubs are always an interesting topic, he actually isn’t a major tinkerer which is probably something to be respected in this sport, even if us club junkies do love the equipment stories! The question now is this:

How much more history will this man make?

Jim Mitchell

Custom Fitting Specialist