Rory McIlroy’s Golf Equipment: Then & Now

Rory McIlroy’s golf equipment through the years has changed, shifting from Titleist woods and irons to Nike gear and now TaylorMade clubs. See rare old photos of Rory McIlroy’s golf equipment, learn why he plays specific clubs and more.

*Sorry for the cut-off at the end. YouTube froze the original upload, so I had to trim it to save everyone from a frozen screen for two minutes at the end. Thankfully, all the old stuff that most people came to see was uneffected. – DD

00:00 Introduction
00:16 Titleist
06:10 Nike
10:39 Callaway
11:47 TaylorMade

Roy maroy recently put a tailor made qi1 LS driver into his golf bag and it got me thinking about all the really cool stuff over the years that Roy maroy has used so in this video we’re going to go in the Wayback machine and I’m going to

Show you some of the coolest lesser known equipment that Roy maore has used in competition let’s go okay so the very first picture I want to show you this one here was taken in 2006 Roy mroy is still an amateur at this point he is not a professional player but he is playing

Essentially a bag full of tidalist equipment this driver is only 400 CC’s today we’re using 4 60 this is 400 and it also only has 72° of Loft this is a Titus Pro titanium 905s driver very small uh obviously to hit at the distance is Rory needed you needed a lot

Of Club head speed you needed to be able to really Square it up and hit it just right elite players love the 905 Series this is one of the clubs that players when they see it they just have fond remembrances of it along with the Fairway Woods the old 975 series um this

Was really sort of the golden age if you will lot of players just really love this Rory was one of them now a year later we go into this Photograph here Rory is starting to break out 2007 is his big year he um really is he’s the

Low amateur at uh the 2007 British Open at Carusi that was padrick Harrington if you remember beating Sergio Garcia um but Rory as you’ll notice is using a different driver we’re now in the 907 Series this is a D2 slightly more stable um than the d3s sort of like what we see

With the twos and the threes in the TSR series still to this day but Rory is staying in the new drivers if we go into the putters what gets interesting and this is something that I going to want you to really pay close attention to throughout this video Rory uses a whole

Bunch of different Putters but at this point in his career 2007 he is using a Scotty Cameron Newport style putter a classic heel toe weighted blade putter it has a plumber’s neck which means that it has about one shafts width of offset that means that the blade itself is

About one shaft width behind where the shaft comes down um that helps you square it up a little bit but it’s a very classic shape as we continue through though let’s get into some of the irons now that Rory has in his bag in 2007 now in 2007 Rory is playing the

Titleist 606 MBS this is a much lesser known uh not a lot of fanfare around this but the 606 MB was a classic muscle back blade what made it sort of unique is that it had a bore through hosle meaning that the um hosle basically bored right through and there was a hole

That was covered by a cap section in the very back of the heel if we fast forward down into 200 um8 and then into 2009 you see that Roy starts playing this tidalist ZM muscle back blade this again was a little bit of an offshoot the

Muscle sort of had this z uh shape in the back of it so that there was a little bit more mass out in the toe section it got a little bit narrow in the middle and then a little bit more mass again in the heel area and Rory

Played these along with vogi design wedges for about one season um because then once we get into this picture which I took at the 2010 extension match play Championship but was played in Arizona then Rory is now into the 710 MB and this is going to start to again have a

Much more familiar look um to many of the irons that we’re going to see throughout the rest of this video this is a little bit closer look at that 710 MB you can see again not a lot of Frills not a lot of meat on the bone here you

Need to have a very powerful repeatable swing an extremely compact blade length this was the shortest blade length most control oriented iron in the title stable back in 2010 now this Photograph I absolutely love because remember we saw a couple years ago Roy M using a classic heel toe weighted blade putter

With that um plumbers neck hosle this is a center shafted putter that he is using at Celtic matter in the 2010 Ryder Cup Rory has a huge rer cup obviously team Europe runs away with this thing Rory M using a center shafted putter now he’s us used some small compact mallets that

Had Center shafts early in the 2010s um this version again still staying with Scotty Cameron he’s still a titles player at this point as we transition here you can see that he has now gone into um the 910 D2 driver a very traditional shape kind of got to

Love the hair this is the frosted tips version of Roy maroy that we’re getting here he’s also got the 910f series 3-wood and he would keep that 910f in the bag for a long time he loved that club got tremendous performance from it um it’s around for quite a while Roy

Maroy fans just by the shirt in this video in this uh image right here you’re going to know that we are at Congressional and this is where Rory really goes into full flight and just blitzes the field the Congressional wins his first major the 2011 Us open again

Notice the putter now we’re back into a Scotty carer a Newport style blade putter at this point it has again that classic PL Plummer’s neck hosle to it Roy putted great on those soft wet greens we got a lot of rain um there this is now a close-up image of that

Putter and you can see that it’s got the really nice tight milled face this is before Cameron started getting into deeper Mills um and now these days with the Dual Milling this was pretty much the standard Milling that you would get on most of the Scotty Cameron Circle tea

Putters and as you can see it stamped Roars out into the toe I took this Photograph as we transition here at the PGA champ ship at kiaa uh Rory would go on to win this PJ Championship as well he’s now transitioned into the sm4 family of wedges and he has Roars

Stamped as you can see in yellow raw steel for Rory and all these because you get sometimes a little bit of a special grinding on there and the raw steel will oxidize over and sort of hide the scuff marks if you if you grind on a wedge

That has been chromed then that grinding Mark or wherever it’s been sort of sanded off that will oxidize because the chrome plating has been removed but everything else stay shiny so a lot of tour Pros prefer to go with raw steel wedges because you can grind them and

The look will be sort of more much more uniform the way that it rusts and oxidizes okay now moving on now we are in the Nike days this is 2013 as you can see that Rory is playing a Nike Covert driver he’s got a bag filled with Nike

Equipment at this point he has become one of the feature players for Nike golf alongside Tiger Woods and at this point also Michelle we there are several other players that have signed on with Nike but Rory coming over from tidalist to Nike was a huge huge deal if you’ve had

A chance to see one of the videos that I did very recent where I did the same Deep dive into Tiger Woods Equipment I’m I’m going to link to that up here you’ll remember that he put a Nike method putter into the bag that I told you had

Some sort of uniqueness to it well Rory does the same thing so this is Rory melroy’s Nike method putter but as we go and take a really close look at the face remember that Nike method putter stuff it had Cuts in and grooves that have been basically sawed into the hitting

Area and then Nike had a polymer sort of injected into the bottom that would come out of those grooves and they cut just a little bit of that polymer away so you get the benefit of the groove but the softness of the polymer well there are

No grooves uh that are going to be hitting that uh golf ball in Rory melroy’s putter because basically that Nike method putter right there that you can see um that is one uniform thing so like Tiger Woods putter Rory maroy was using a method putter it was definitely

Not like the method putter that you would find though at retail this is a very unique this is a prototype piece of equipment that was in Rory’s bag it was there for a little while um but definitely not something you were going to find off the shelf now I had a chance

To go to this event this was at Liberty national golf club during the Northern Trust um one year back in 2015 and Rory m is on stage with Jimmy Fon in Tiger Woods and they are introducing the Nike vaporfly Pro family of irons and uh at

This point Tiger Woods was not in the field he came up to do this appearance with Jimmy F and and Rory was up there with them and this was really when Rory is is now becoming the co-ace if you will of Nike golf with Tiger Woods and at this point what was really

Interesting is that the clubs that they were touting uh Roy didn’t put into the bag he didn’t really use those irons he played them in a couple of tour events but they never really stuck he did however use the Nike vaporfly drivers as well as the Fairway woods and as you can

S see here that that bright yellow Nike referred to as Vault coloring it was hard to miss um he played with those irons for a while and now we’re going to transition into these Nike uh VR Pro classic muscleback blade irons and this is what Rory was really using for quite

A while the VR forged wedges you can know that Rory throughout his career has been a four wedge player traditionally it’s something along the lines of 46 52 56 and 60 but the stated lofs and the real loss sometimes are two different things Rory has used traditionally uh

Three iron or four iron through nine iron in his irons but then goes with wedges as all of his wedges including the pitching wedge so he does not have a pitching wedge that matches his iron set and you can sort of see in the background there there’s a 46 Dee um

Nike VR forged wedge that’s in there what’s gets interesting is we sort of move now into 2016 this is now early 2016 uh he is using the engage wedges they have a totally different shape on the back very very angular um there were several different soul grinds and soul

Configurations that you could get into the engaged wedges but you’ll notice once again VR Pro irons are running through the bag for Rory four wedges um then some interesting things start to happen as you might recall Nike leaves the hard Goods scene they make the announcement in the summer of 2016 that

They no longer going to make uh golf clubs golf balls golf bags they’re going to be apparel Footwear only so like all the other players that Rory are Nike players Rory maroy is an equipment free agent and the way that it’s been explained to me is that Nike would

Continue to pay out guys contracts uh until they finished if they didn’t switch or sign with a new golf equipment company so players like Brooks Kea Tony Fina Rory mroy Franchesco Molinari um all those players could run through their Nike deal continue to get paid could use what they wanted but they

Couldn’t sign a new deal you got all these free agents out there Roy mroy in the late season of 2016 going to early 2017 starts using all kinds of different stuff including this so a lot of people may not be aware that for a little while Roy M was playing Callaway off contract

Um so Roy maroy this is him with an epic Subzero driver um and in this Photograph you can see here this was taken in early 2017 at the South African open that is again him using an epic Subzero Drive um and testing it out now what Rory

Explained to me and most of the Nike guys have told me is that once they became free agents every golf companies basically sent them everything they could possibly imagine they had a house filled with golf equipment with golf equipment companies trying to woo them to come on obviously Rory would have

Been one of the biggest fish to try and land he tried out the Callaway stuff in competition including some of the Epic 3 woods um and Fairway Woods he even as you can see in this image here went into an Odyssey Putter for a very very brief

Time at the beginning of 201 17 it’s a very similar shape to some of the Scotty Cameron stuff that we had seen him trying again if you remember that that um Center shafted putter very similar in shape compact Mallet a little bit extra perimeter waiting here but at the

Players Championship in 2017 Roy mare comes out with this golf bag right here having just announced that he has assigned a deal with tailor made and yes there are much more than 14 clubs in this golf bag you don’t even see his putter in here but Roy maroy is using M2

Woods through the bag driver a three-wood he had a couple of of higher lofted Fairway Woods there are some really strong uh irons a couple of which I’m going to show you that are really cool um and these Roars Proto irons he’s got the original M Grind wedges in here

Um this club is about as badass in my book as it gets this is a one iron that tailor made made for Rory Moy especially he wanted this driving iron he saw that Dustin Johnson had something like this Rory said that he thought that this

Might be a really good club to use uh in golf courses that are running fast had windy conditions he would take out the fivewood go with one iron and he had it fit with a Project X um it’s hazardous Black Shaft as I recall and I just remember watching him hit missiles on

The driving range at TPC Saw Grass absolutely obliterating the ball he had a three and a four iron um of these p750 irons um again now this is a perimeter weighted very compact blade length iron that Rory essentially used to get a little bit more lift a little bit more

Spin than he would get with a traditional muscleback blade iron most of his irons the 56 789 are going to be this roar’s Proto now this was at a time when tailor mate had just released or was about to release the p730 iron which is very very similar to this but many of

The tours staff the their tour staff players had their own prototype versions there was the the DJ Proto for Dustin Johnson obviously Tiger Woods had the um the Tiger Woods version which eventually became the p7tw there was the Roars Proto there was a Tommy Fleetwood version they all had

Slightly different blade lengths that was the biggest difference but they all had that same Milling part that went right through the back by removing that mass it allowed tailor me designers to put a little extra weight into the muscle portion of that golf club and that enhanced feel or that’s at least

Theoretically what they were telling players is by taking out a little bit of the mass up high it gave them the ability to drop the center of gravity put a little bit more mass at the bottom um it kept the swing weight about the same which is important for these

Players and they didn’t have to make the blade length any bigger or smaller so the the roar’s Proto um enters the bag in 2017 and it has really never left there’s one or two things I’m going to show you here but Rory maoy today is using the Roars Proto iron for Putters

Rory maoy as you can see here 2007 this is The Travelers Championship he has a red spider putter this will look very familiar to people who know that Jason day used this putter many tailor made players were using spider Putters by this time tremendously popular successful Rory getting into this um

Gets a little bit more consistency with the putting moving on to this one this is 2018 um and you can see the Roars Proto irons are still in the bag we still have um the M Grind wedges there is one 160° tailor made M Grind high toe wedge which

I thought was actually pretty interesting that had obviously a higher toe a different finish um it has significant um removal of material a lot of heel and toe um relief put into that so for more versatility and the higher toe uh that was kind of interesting and

Then when I saw this at the 2019 US Open Rory has gone into three high toe wedges you can see that he’s got um his standard pitching wedge there but then a 52 a 56 and a 60 at the US Open at Pebble Beach now Rory will still go

In and out of hi toe on course specific and I think that really what is going through his mind with this is that on golf courses where there is very very thick rough um that tend to be a little bit damp that can cause the ball to

Perch just a little bit and by having a high toe wedge it gives you a little bit more versatility and if you would otherwise potentially go underneath the golf ball just a little bit and hit it higher on the face with a traditional wedge a high toe wedge will have a

Little bit more mass up top and you might be able to get a little bit better performance on shots when you might otherwise just go underneath the ball that’s sitting in the rough sort of perched um but again the the irons really haven’t changed at this point now

Moving on to this image this is taken at the 2020 Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill and the significance of that obviously is that this is the last tournament on the PJ schedule that was completed before covid-19 uh basically shut down the world Prof professional

Golf everything else we I was able to go to this tournament work at that one and you can see that Rory is in Sim and he’s got the Sim driver at 10° of Loft um but it is actually been Del lofted just slightly um and it is opening up also

The face the the weight at the top you can see is still sort of in the neutral position but the the um hosle setting has opened the face just a little bit uh Del lofted it so it says 10° it’s really about 9° and it’s a little bit more open

Um you’ll also notice notic that Roy mroy is using uh the tailor made Sim uh titanium version of the 3-wood as well as the fivewood um what I also thought was really interesting is moving into this picture that is a two iron that is a p792 iron that Rory was checking out

Um in the practice rounds at Bay Hill again sticking with that longer iron and again the three and the four iron um p7 60s now at this point the 750 is gone the 760’s are are in there the three and the four iron Roy has always brought

Lots of golf clubs to tournaments and then based on the conditions and how he’s feeling and how he strategically wants to go around the golf course he will make the selection maybe it’s going to be driver 3w fivewood driver 3w 2 Iron uh maybe it’s going to be putting

In something what whatever combination he feels of 14 clubs is going to be the best he’s got a lot of Versatility at the top of his bag he’s bringing lots of different sticks the putter at Bay Hill um we’re now into the um spider X version he is playing Spider the X

Version a little bit more compact he’s going with a copper version with that white alignment Aid at the top you’ll notice that he’s playing number 22 golf ball he is playing a tp5 uh in this ver in this case he’s playing the standard

Tp5 instead of the X ball um the 22 is a number that is represented by power or it symbolizes power and strength and Independence and Rory wanted that 22 to be on his golf ball so for a long long time Roy played 22s now these irons are really interesting because they did not

Last in Roy maro’s bag that long this is the summer of 2020 uh this is at the US Open at Wingfoot again I had a chance because it was close to home uh I was one of the few members of the media that had a chance to go and work at Wingfoot

Um this is the tailor made p7 MB iron from 2020 it is very angular it has the very compact blade length very thin Topline and so Rory I think tried to make this work um but it just didn’t stick around for very long um because as

You can now see we’re into 2021 and the Roars protos are right back in there I think that Rory tried to make a good run at that but he just loves these irons there’s just something about this shape and this design that uh that really speaks to him you’ll notice now that

We’re in mil Grind 2 with the wedges he had been experimenting at this tournament where we were um and he had a 56 a 58 and a 60 a couple of in a couple of instances I’m fairly certain that Rory is delofting his wedges so that

That 56 probably is really closer to 54 and the 60 is closer to 58 now why would you do that um depending on exactly how the wedge grind is configured when you change the Loft on a wedge you’re also simultaneously changing the bounce so when you strengthen the Loft say go from

60 to 58 you’re going to also be taking down the bounce say from 12° to 10 or from 10 to 8 it’s a onetoone relationship if you add Loft to a wedge you’re also adding bounce now Rory is playing a 46° pitching wedge usually the gaps between these uh wedges in Loft are

Consistent so 46 50 54 58 would make a lot of sense um he’s had a 54 in the bag in many instances but he may at some points take a 52 and take it down to 50 and then a 56 to 54 you can sort of see

Where I’m going with this so judging because the mil Grind 2 at this point was new he may have been wanting to see what a 58 and what a 60 at standard loss we going to be in terms of turf interaction and how that balance is

Going to work out if you move now here this gets pretty wild this is Rory in the 2021 Northern Trust and the Scotty Cameron putter is back and people just lost their mind oh my God Rory is going back to Scotty Cameron he was really really frustrated at this point with his

Putting um Rory has told me on numerous occasions that when he’s having a really good putting day he feels that with a heel toe weighted blade he just putts even better but on a bad putting day a mallet like spider will save him and help him a lot more so he gets more

Consistency using Putters that are mallets and spiders the very best days are Amplified even more by something that’s a heel to weighted blade he played most of 2023 all of 23 that I’m aware of using a tail made spider because I think he’s looking for consistency and I think if you have the

Ball striking and the driving that Rory has just being a tour average putter is going to be enough so I I would think that he has learned his lesson and I wouldn’t think that spider is going to be in his bag but at the 2021 Northern Trust the Scotty Cameron came back out

Again the RoR protos at the 2022 Us open at um at Boston at the Country Club and then as we move into 2022 obviously he’s also gone to stealth and Rory was using a tailor made stealth plus driver it has the movable the sliding weight up in the front of that golf

Club holidays to one and all all the best in 2024 and I look forward to seeing you again real soon