Testing RORY MCILROY’S IRONS! | TaylorMade Rors Proto

Rory McIlroy has enjoyed a spectacular 2025 year. He won the Pebble Beach Pro-Am early on in the season, and followed that up quickly with a victory at The Players Championship. Then, Rory McIlroy achieved something only five golfers have by winning the final leg of the career grand slam at The Masters. Most recently, Rory McIlroy served as a key chess piece to Team Europe’s victory at the 2025 Ryder Cup. He’s accomplished all of this with his unique set of TaylorMade Rors Proto irons.

0:00 Intro – Rory McIlroy’s TaylorMade Rors Proto Irons
2:30 Testing – Jake
7:42 Testing – Drew
11:56 Data & Conclusions

In this video, 2nd Swing’s Drew Mahowald is joined by master club fitter Jake Montgomery to test Rory McIlroy’s custom TaylorMade Rors Proto irons, built to Rory McIlroy’s specs.

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Today we have irons built exactly to Rory Maroyy’s specs here in the Bay and Jake and I are going to do some testing on them. So Jake Montgomery, master club fitter and fitting manager out of Minneapolis store is with me. Um, of course it’s been a huge year for Rory. Uh, he won the players. He won the Masters for his career grand slam and he’s been playing this set of irons for a while now. It’s kind of a It’s sort of based on the P730 from several years ago, but of course to his own specs with probably some visual things and some spec things to his preferences. But um I guess your first thoughts, Jake, on these specs and on this build that you see here. Yeah. So I mean his specifications as far as Langon Loft go aren’t too crazy. 34° 7 iron. It’s 62 and a half Y. So it’s about half degree upright from a standard 7 iron there. Uh the thing that really sticks out to me is the project X7.0. 0 shafts in the irons. Uh I have never hit these before. So I am uh I am eager to see how boardy they feel. I think it’s going to feel very boardy. Um but yeah, I mean he creates so much power. He just needs something that’s extremely stiff, stable, and it’s going to launch the ball low. Um as far as the head goes, first thing that sticks out to me, and you’ll see kind of when we do a down the line shot, the toe portion of the club is very small. Um as someone that misses out in the toe, this is a pretty scary looking iron set. Um, but I think that he just likes a little bit more compact shape there. Um, I also noticed that the toe portion is also very high. Um, I don’t know if that’s to pull center of gravity a little bit out more into that toe section. Or it could even be to pull it up higher too. Maybe penetrate ball flight a little bit. That’s what that’s what all these manufacturers are doing with their wedges. Maybe he wanted that designers a little bit. Yeah. Um, but I mean I mean really excited to hit these. Uh, they even have this nice little touch here where they’ve got a a dot for each major that he had won. Um, I know the green ones for the Masters. I’m curious as to which ones correlate to the other ones there, but no, I I’m really excited to try these irons out and just kind of see how we differ from Rory M. Yeah, I mean, obviously Rory Maroyy’s swing is going to hit these the best. We do not have Rory Maroyy’s golf swing, but I think it’s just it’s just fun to get a a look at these. We’ve had some of these throughout the year. We’ve had, you know, Scotty Sheffller’s uh we have actually Rory’s driver. We had his seven or Scotty Sheffller’s sevenwood. Um, we’ve had a bunch of these that we’ve been able to test. And so, here’s another one. Um, the Roars Proto officially is what it says on the iron. Um, do you want to go first or should I go first? I’ll give it a shot. Okay, let’s see it. So, first crack with the Rory Maroy Proto Irons. Looks pretty solid. It was very towy. Yeah. Okay. Um, which like I said in the intro, there’s not a whole lot of room to miss on the toe. The grooves are basically the width of the golf ball. So, I’m very happy with the direction of that, but 161 and 117 ball is a little low. Yeah. Okay. Also, the shaft just feels like a telephone ball. There’s just no kick at all. Yeah. It’s very different. Yeah. I mean, Rory, I don’t know how what his swing speed is with a seven iron, but it’s got to be, you’d think close to what, like 100? Probably close to 100. Yeah. Another toe one. The direction. Curious on the impact location of those two. Oh, I’m clicking buttons all over the place here. I mean, hey, look at that dispersion. It’s pretty good. Yeah. I mean, that goes to show you though how good these guys are. Yeah, that’s 7 mm on the toe. And like with this iron, that feels horrible. Yeah. I feel like very rarely is Rory hitting it seven off the center. No. thinned one, but it was less towy. Okay. All right. I think your SP version’s good. Yeah. Look at that. That’s how these guys hit all the greens. Yeah. Just get a tour club. You can’t miss. All right. So, these are your three shots. And again, I know you didn’t hit them perfectly every time. No. Ball speed’s not great, but but as in terms of distance, is this what you would have expected? Obviously, this is much I think this is much lower carry number than you’re used to. Yeah. I mean, for how unforgiving this head is, yeah, I mean, 164 163 carry, not too shocking there. I’m not surprised at all to see as well that the numbers are really consistent because I mean, that’s really what these guys are chasing, right? Spin rate was 250, launch angle was half a degree, peak height was 3 feet. Like, they want the club to do the exact same thing every time that they’re putting the same swing on it. So, the actual ball flight of yours was this kind of little tiny draw every time. So, I mean, and from that perspective, there is some consistency there. No, 100%. just goes to show how small the margin of error is for a professional golfer where I was hitting those things I mean like that much on the toe and it felt like a total mishit. Yeah. Whereas with the T100s we were just hitting. I hit the exact same strike location and it went almost 15 yards further. Yeah. Right. These are very precision tools. Right. Yes. 200 and uh this one they’re both 34 degrees with a seven iron. Yep. Um, so what I’m going to do, four iron. Okay. So, yeah, give me your thoughts on that 4iron, how that looks first of all, and then I’m going to have you rip a few of those as well. Yeah, the uh first thought that comes to mind is butter knife. Sure. It is pretty thin topline. It is a little bit bigger topline than that seven iron, is it? Okay. Maybe they maybe there there’s a little bit of progression with the build there with, you know, making the longer irons maybe slightly larger or more helpful. I will say as well the the grooves maybe look a smidge wider. Yeah, I think they like the like the part of the face that’s the grooves you’re saying. Exactly. Yeah. Oh wow. Hey, you flushed that one. It was still a little towy, but definitely felt better off the face on those previous three. Oh, that was awful. Uh oh. Uh that was a toe chunk. Okay, there’s the uh Yep, there’s the not good. There’s the forgiveness or lack thereof maybe of a long iron like that. I cannot imagine gaming these shafts. I mean, I feels like I have to swing out of my shoes to feel anything. That’s why Rory Maroy does it. Correct. There was finally a good one. Okay, there’s ball speed. Yep. There we go. Look at that. But even still, okay, this is good. 143 is a good smash factor. That’s really good. That’s really efficient. 209 carry, 226.5, height only at 80. Yeah. So, this is something I think you would probably say I’m not going to play this in my No, that is way lower than I want it to be. Yeah. Again, he generates so much speed and spin that everything about this iron is designed to hit it lower, right? Um, I’m gonna take this. I’m gonna uncheck this. I am glad to say that I hit one good shot with Rory’s four iron. That’ll be a proud moment for me. But yeah, I mean, they’re just they’re not the easiest clubs in the world to hit. They like to stay low. They don’t over spin. Yeah, I think uh I mean, again, they’re built for someone like Rory who’s going to hit the center of their time and then also wants to, you know, hit those big draws around trees. needs to at Augusta. Like that’s what the these are built for rather than helping, you know, helping me out when I hit one blow in the face right now in a second. So, um, but yeah, that’s that’s fun. Yeah, that was good. All right, I think I’m going to take a crack at these. So, one thing we didn’t cover that I we just kind of noticed sort of as we were making this transition off camera, these grips, they’re technically the standard size, but there has to there’s some rip wraps under here. Absolutely. Because they’re definitely bigger than a standard, you know, multicompound uh grip here. So, um yeah, and that’s probably again a preference thing for Rory and the feel that he wants. And um but yeah, this is uh you’re right about that toe being pretty small. I also like I think like the top line’s it’s like sharp is the word I want to use to describe it. It’s kind of clean and sharp. That was so thin. I I manifested it when I said I’d hit it low in the face. Okay. Little left there. I mean, honestly, the smash factor for It sounded like that was maybe a little thin, too. Oh, it was. Yeah, it was very low. Very low on the face. I think I turned it over again. Hit it a little better. But there’s that. Hey, I’m hitting the Roy Mac where I draw, you know. Yep. How’s that shaft feel? that I it doesn’t Yeah, it’s uh I’m really working hard. Like I feel like Yeah, and that could be part of the reason I’m I’m missing that way with my with my swing. Oh, that hit that so good. Yeah, you did. Wow. Still turned over a little bit, but So, still I keep turning it over, but that one I hit as as center as I could. Yeah. I mean, I always say shaft is a timing device. If you’re working really hard at it, my guess is your hands are just getting a little quick in transition trying to get that shaft to load. Yeah, that’s why we’re hitting a little left. That’s probably exactly what it is. Um, but that one, I mean, I got to say when you hit when you hit these good. Feels pretty solid. It’s fun. That four iron I hit felt great. I mean, they feel really, really good out of the middle and really harsh anywhere else. Yeah, I will say that’s already I mean that’s as good and probably as far as I can hit this club because and my car my the carry number I play right now for my my gamer seven iron is 182. And so that’s again squeezing everything I can out of this. So I already know there this isn’t going to be for those looking for more distance. We already do. Absolutely not. So I’m going to grab the 400 here. All right, let’s do it. Oh goodness. Yeah, this is this is small. Do you notice anything different from kind of how the the hoszle transitions into the blade? I notice that the it has a little bit more offset to it. I can see that. Yeah, just a little bit. You have to kind of look to notice it, but I think it’s it’s like you notice something at a dress and it’s not like the offset jumps out of you, but then you look at it and it’s like, okay, it’s there. Toe. Yeah, that was one where like you know when you hit it off the toe and the club turns open. That’s what that was. That worked out. It’s actually a lot farther than I thought it would go, but it’s a little better. Little better. Little bit low in the face still. Whoa. But yeah, I like that. Yeah, that’s a good uh trajectory. I mean, even at your speed, you’re swinging this at a little over a 100. It’s still only peaking at 91 feet in the air. No, I think we were on to something with that that kind of like the shaping of it and the center of gravity being maybe higher. Yeah. Because I think both of us have hit it lower than we typically would by a comfortable margin. And neither of us really struggle with height out of an iron, right? Oh yeah. Oh yeah, you did. Interesting that the ball speed didn’t actually go up that much. But look at that. There’s the height. There’s the height. I’m fascinated by the fact that those last two shots were so close in ball speed. Yeah, because I really didn’t feel like I caught the last one that good. Let’s see where strike locationation is. I mean that’s is I mean that’s that felt exactly like that with this one. As close to the center as I’m going to I’m really going to be and I ripped at it and that one see that really didn’t feel like it felt like it was a little lower than that personally but you know but like again the shots are carry distance. Those two were very close. Yes, they were. I mean you got a lot more ball speed out of that. Your smash stretch is at 138 for you. It launched a little higher. We saw a little bit more spin, which makes sense. You’re swinging it faster. You got the the peak height there at about 97. I mean, you can see if you can get your club head speed up to where Rory’s is. Yeah. The irons are going to perform pretty well for you from a flight standpoint, right? But again, you know, like the shot and or two I missed, like there was definitely a drop off in the performance. And that’s that’s where I would never play an iron this small. No. um or with that the shaft for that matter. But I was good because again I was like this last swing I was like I’m gonna swing fast like Rory and then I happened to catch it in the middle and it was a good golf shot. But yeah, that’s fun. So kind of to wrap again, we we know club fitting is important. Rory Mroy knows it’s important, but obviously he has access to, you know, more specific builds for his entire clubs maybe than than than me or, you know, most people, but still fun to test it out. Again, we kind of our theory is that the club head is designed a little differently than those P730s where there might be a higher center of gravity, more penetrating ball flight for him because he clearly doesn’t need help getting the ball high. So he’s probably actually building the club to make it as low launching more most penetrating ball flight he can based on the shaft based on kind of the way the club head is designed as well. Um but this is fun. So this is uh and you know with the RDER Cup going on as we’re uh you know coming up as we’re filming this and again what he accomplished this year really cool to get an opportunity to do this for sure. Yeah. And it was a it was really cool to hit something that came straight out of basically a tour players bag. Uh you can really see the the tolerances they’re playing with out there where I mean for me 7 millimeters meant losing 15 yards. It just kind of kind of baffles me when they’re hitting under all that pressure. They’re just hitting the dead center of the club every time. Yeah. Um it amazes you how good those guys are and how detailed those guys are. So um golfers, thank you for watching this. We had a lot of fun with this one. If you enjoyed this, subscribe to the channel and stay tuned for more content coming in the future. Uh Jake, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.