Why Srixon Irons are DOMINATING the PGA Tour

On this week’s episode of Fully Equipped, GOLF’s Johnny Wunder breaks down Tommy Fleetwood’s shaft tweak ahead of the Travelers Championship, Keegan Bradley’s winning bag and what’s led to the recent string of success by Srixon irons on the PGA Tour. 
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1:00 Finish at Travelers – Fleetwood’s let down
5:10 Fleetwood going from Blue to Red Ventus Shaft at the beginning of the year – Explaining the Red Profile differences
9:00 Changes in Fleetwood’s driver/mini performance leading to another shaft switch at Travelers
16:15 What the average player can learn from what Tommy worked on with TaylorMade shaft wise
20:50 Srixon irons’ recent run of winners and overall great 2025
22:30 The reason why Srixon’s V-Sole works so well for steep players
27:45 Why you should try Srixon irons when getting fit and why pros look at them in split sets
38:50 Johnny previews his WITB content coming
43:45 Keegan’s Winning WITB from Travelers
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they go to the range i think monday rained um so it was kind of a hard day to test but adrian had brought out you know i think two options with the red i think one it was like a 9 degree head and then a 105 with different tipping so the way that they tip those shafts the ventus red shafts that tommy has been playing is they actually tip them an inch and a half because the tip is so soft that they try to make them soft but slightly stiffer than you would normally feel and that’s just to feel that get that feel of stability for tommy at the bottom i know this is super heavy stuff but gearheads like to know this stuff i’m just giving you the full scoop okay welcome to episode 291 of the fully equipped podcast uh you got me han solo this week uh kudos to kmac and jack hersh for uh taking the baton last week and uh doing a great job on the show um we are in dallas this week for live dallas over at merido golf club as you can see on my hat uh we were there yesterday today is uh what’s today today’s wednesday uh so we got a pretty big day of content planned for today um but uh the show must go on as you know uh big big big big last few weeks uh in golf with uh the us open and jj spawn winning and then obviously you had ryan fox the week before and then this week at uh i guess last sunday at travelers with uh with keegan bradley winning as you can tell it’s a uh from an equipment standpoint is big three weeks for shrixon unbelievable three weeks for shrixon uh and we’re going to get into that uh some of the nuances of of keegan bradley’s bag and some of the fun stuff uh that’s going on there but uh got to say got to say it out loud um nothing against keegan bradley nothing against keegan bradley uh it was pretty gutted that fleetwood uh who i’ve come to know over the last few years is just a beautiful human being unbelievable human being uh and his caddy ian finnis um i was gutted for those guys um i just i know how hard all these guys work but uh being close to that the fleetwood camp and getting to know them uh fairly well um i really really wanted to see him break through cuz i think he’s one of those guys that if he learns how to win on the us that he’s going to win a bunch of times uh he’s just got that caliber of game um super gutted to see i mean obviously the pot it’s been shown 5,000 times it hit a ball mark or spike mark or whatever it hit and it kicked the dead off line i don’t know if that was i don’t know that sucked the whole thing sucked um but you know congrats to keegan obviously there’s this discussion about uh you know the ryder cup now if he’s going to be a player captain if they’re going to allow him to do that if that’s even an option you know where i sit is if the guy’s playing good you put the 12 best players out there it’s you know challenging to captain and play at the same time if anybody can pull it off i think keegan’s kind of got the vibe to do it but uh that’ll be an interesting discussion going forward it gives us all something to talk about as we uh get closer and closer to beth paige back for beth beth paige black jeez i need more coffee um for the ryder cup this year which is going to be insane it’s going to be insane um so anyway bummed bummed for tommy bummed for finnis he’ll be back uh his press conference afterwards true professional get in there with with some humility and grace and uh anyway tommy will be there uh and i root for tommy obviously because of the way he the human being that he is but also from an equipment standpoint he’s just a fascinating creature to follow has been forever if you guys followed me back at wrx you know i wrote two or three big articles on tommy and his bag when he signed with tailor made all that stuff i’ve already done a pretty deep dive he won forgolf.com he’s just a really interesting guy and he’s one of those players that he kind of reminds me like a like charles how a little bit where he he doesn’t want to leave any stone unturned and and he really wants to know if there’s a a distinct advantage for him to get better every week uh it’s not year in year out it’s literally week to week um that he’s uh always working with adrien reedfeld trying to find out you know what’s going on case in point last week um he switched uh driver and mini driver shafts uh which is an interesting story um you know you don’t uh look this is where i sit on shafts and i get this question a lot in my friday amas um shafts are a timing mechanism like full stop they are a timing mechanism so when you see them marketed as uh 2x x you know this one’s low spin low launch this one’s high spin whatever whatever whatever the whatever the whatever the profile of the shaft is ultimately it’s going to come down to the player and how you deliver the golf club so for all you people out there listening that kind of want to know what shaft i should try that’s why i always recommend you got to go to a fitter and you got to buy try a bunch of them most important thing for a shaft in my opinion is strike point if you can find a shaft that you can time up that gets the center of the club face on the back of the ball that’s where you should start going because at that point especially when it comes to like driver mini driver 3woods all that stuff you know you can move the head around to get the spin and the launch and you can move weights around to get center of gravity in a good spot but ultimately like center face contact based on your delivery and based on timing is kind of what you want so uh beginning of the year tommy fleetwood switches uh you know goes from ventus blue tr that he had in his qi10 and his mini into these ventus red vo plus products um you know tom mckibben did it as well there was kind of like a weird trend at the beginning of the year with a lot of players trying the red profiles and a lot of that has to do with the fact that um you’re going to hear this term a lot um you know staying on top of the ball which essentially means like you know you’re rotating your chest is on top of the ball and you’re kind of covering it and you hear tiger talk about that a lot um and from a fitting aspect and when you’re out on a tour driving range or you’re working with players theoretically i say most of the time what that means is that the players are trying to sort of battle that big angle of attack that’s like way up five or six up with a driver so in in simple terms they’re trying to swing their driver and their mini drivers closer to how they would swing an iron versus having a driver swing which you would see with like bryson or rory maroy or somebody like that that tends to hit up way up on the driver you know four five six degrees angle of attack up uh to get the launch um you know then you’re you’re living in a world closer to xander or another player that really covers the ball and wants their angle of attack to be a little bit more zeroed out the reason why players like to do that is because although you can really gain distance uh and you can get launch and and launch up and spin down when you start to hit up on it it’s kind of like the modern driver golf swing it can get a little unruly and as tour golf um the golf courses the way that they’re making it in some of these rough lines that they’re starting to cut out at 320 330 control is at a premium um and it’s a lot easier to control the golf ball if your angle of attacks in a in a more neutral spot it just is um so what ventus red does or any red profile uh essentially allows you to make that you know angle of attack swing at zero or one or two or whatever the angle of attack is i mean you know just i guess a a less angle of attack um how do you say that uh i don’t know more zeroed out angle of attack what these red products will do because the tip of those shafts are is typically whippy usually the the profile of one of a red shaft is like a really stiff handle and a really whippy tip so if you look at a shaft and it’s like you know it’s handle stiff and then it gets progressively whippier as you get down to the tip of the shaft what it allows you to do is stay on top of the ball the ball still wants to launch and the spin wants still wants to stay down so you kind of get the best of both worlds um so he went to those shafts in the beginning of the year and he’s had a great year i think he’s had five or six top 10s this year um i don’t have the the stats in front of me but he’s had a tommy’s had a great year um and uh he’s been driving the ball really really well the problem was um the driver so the qi35 driver which he really likes he loves um and he has learned that he needs loft for control so he’s i mean i remember when he started with uh i mean hell five six seven years back i mean his driver loft went down to like seven six and a half seven degrees i mean he got way down there um so now he’s in a a 10.5 head that’s opened up like a degree um and i think i’ve mentioned this before but the way that tour heads work is they’re not you know just because it says 10 10.5 at minus1 or whatever the number is it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s exactly at 9° or 9.5 degrees it could be 9.8 9.9 it depends on the head that adrian pulls out of the drawer so he’s playing with more loft and the reason why he needs more loft is because it’s control it just it ensures that the spin’s going to be in a in a good spot but what he was finding was that the driver the driver wasn’t i don’t want to say it wasn’t going as far but from a distance standpoint it wasn’t as efficient and the mini driver was kind of the same way so the mini driver was starting to creep up and get pretty close to the driver so i think the way that it works is that he wasn’t hitting the mini driver as straight he was hitting it further but not as straight and he was hitting the driver wasn’t getting out as far so like call it you know two yards shorter with one and you know maybe a yard or yard and a half longer with the other one but not as with not as much control the mini driver for tommy has to be his go-to i can know i can hit this in the fairway club and as the year has gone on it hasn’t been as guaranteed as it was maybe last year so they get to travelers and uh you know they start you know after us open and he i think you know he missed the cut at the us open i don’t know i don’t looked at the stats but i probably should but you know he didn’t didn’t feel as he was driving the ball with both those clubs as well so they started kind of looking at shafts so what adrian did was adrien brought out options in red and then going back to his old shaft in this tr blue so the story with the red also was that he plays a kuracogi in his fivewood and his 9inewood which is a similar profile the red it’s got a stiff handle and gets progressively kind of softer as you go down not to the extremes that the red does but it’s the same kind of feel um that was another bonus of going to that shaft earlier in the year was the fact that it was you know it’s a similar feel so the shafts kind of marry up from driver to 9inewood um but at some point if it’s not working exactly how you want it to work you have to make some adjustments so they go to the range i think monday rained um so it was kind of a hard day to test but adrian had brought out you know i think two options with the red i think one it was like a 9 degree head and then a 105 with different tipping so the way that they tip those shafts the ventus red shafts that tommy has been playing is they actually tip them an inch and a half because the tip is so soft that they try to make them soft but slightly stiffer than you would normally feel and that’s just to feel that get that feel of stability for tommy at the bottom i know this is super heavy stuff but gearheads like to know this stuff i’m just giving you the full scoop um so what they do is so what adrian did was adrian went and got the ventus red vo plus tx part which has got a low it’s a lower torque part um and i always say that those tx parts and those vent in the ventus they’re kind of pre-tiped they’re already pretty tip stiff um so for the most part like sam burns plays that shaft in his driver and i don’t think i think they put it straight in i don’t think they need to tip it because it’s already pretty tip stiff but adrian still tipped this shaft this new one and i think he tipped at a/ inch or an inch again just to recreate that feel and see if that gave him the ball speed that he was looking for and and and kind of you know got him in a good place um but what happened was what tommy wanted to try the tr blue just to see because he had drove it so well last year um so they put the tr blue in there 6x tip it an inch um and it goes in the driver and right away the driver the ball speed started to go up a little bit and um carry starts to go out of there a little bit do the same experiment with the mini driver and dispersion starts to get a little tighter everything starts to kind of go back to where he was and you have to keep in mind that the heads that they’re playing that tommy’s playing um this qi35 actually lines up a lot better for him than the qi10 did the reason why the qi10 like wasn’t as as much of a seamless transition uh or easy to fit i should say is because of the weight configuration so if you look at these qi the qi 10 head that rory plays in sheffller and that tommy was playing last year it’s called a dot head but it’s got a weight in the heel so it’s got heelside cg um so what they’re having to do to those heads for the most part is internally weight them so move weight forward or move it out towards the toe or wherever it needs to go in these qi35 heads you have a weight in the back and a weight in front and it’s right down the middle of the driver so for somebody like adrian that’s fitting these guys it makes it really easy because the center of gravity starts off neutral um so it’s designed to just go straight which for tour fitters that’s pretty much what they want i mean you ask any tour fitter where do you want these drivers to start when you start testing drivers with these guys can you just make it go straight and then i can make it go left to right so qi35 that’s essentially what they did um so where he landed uh qi35 10.5 uh i think it’s at minus one i think the head’s actually like 9.7 or 9.8 um ventus blue tr 6x i think it’s tipped an inch uh and then the mini driver same drill i think it’s 43 1/2 in long um he is at 13 he’s at 13.5 but i think it’s at minus one and a half so i think it’s closer to 12° um i think he’s got three weights three two three gram weights in the back and he’s got a 15 g weight in the heel and a 10 g weight 10 g weight out towards the toe i think that’s how it’s configured um and uh obviously it worked because he drove the pist out of the ball um first three rounds at travelers and um so those they’re obviously working and you can’t use sunday as a as a marker for whether whether or not this combo works because pressure is up he’s nervous he’s trying to win his first tournament he’s got a lead adrenaline’s pumping he’s in his head whatever the circumstances are but obviously the performance of that setup is there so kudos to adrian and tommy for figuring that out so you know that’s that’s a situation where to normal people it wouldn’t feel like a huge switch but on a tour range what tommy did um was a pretty significant switch it’s not like switching out a ball or it’s not as that big but it’s one of those small changes that really kind of sparks some good play typically any change on tour and i’m a big advocate for this if it’s creating a feel for a player where they really feel like they can swing freely and and do what they want to do with the delivery those changes seem to carry if they really work they actually kind of create momentum um because a feel is something that you can kind of chase and you can kind of recreate um and it’s it feels good meaning it’s like a the data is not telling you what’s right your body’s telling you what’s right it’s like i i feel like if i do this the ball’s going to end up there and if i do this the ball’s going to go over there like that’s when the players can match up the feel of a golf club with a window that they’re looking for the ball to and to fly out of that’s big for them it’s kind of the same thing with rombo when he switched into ventus black like a year and a half ago um it just felt right like he felt like he could swing as hard as he wanted as hard left as he wanted and the ball was going to start left and start to cut back to the right and it didn’t matter what he did he just knew uh that it was going to work those are feels um you know that’s just not trackman or or quad telling you that that’s the player just going “no i i can trust this whip like if i snap it it’s going to do that.” uh so again the importance of getting fit is you know is huge does every player need that level of nuance no but what what i’m trying to convey to you guys and and and trying to make you understand is we all want to play good golf like everybody wants to play good golf you want to play your best golf one of the things that’s required to play the best golf that you have is to have a bag and have a system that’s efficient that really works for you so you know when i get questions in the amas about um what’s the best low launch you know combination and i’m spinning in at 3900 and i want to bring my spin down like these are all great questions like they’re what it shows me is that you guys are your head’s in the right spot like you’re trying to figure it out because you understand that the numbers need to do this or they need to look a certain way but ultimately like you need to find a fitter that’s going to help you answer those questions what i always try to stay away from and it happens in the forums a lot is people will say “have you guys ever tried this?” yeah try this because like if you’re looking for this this is your shaft it’s all it’s the point on shafts is that shafts work differently for everybody so i know guys that can i know players a ton of players i can give them a ventus black tipped an inch and a half 7x put it in a driver and they’ll spin the out of this thing like they’ll spin it like crazy and they’ll hit it straight up in the air then i’ll give them a ventus red and they’ll hit knee high fast balls all day long and vice versa for another player so there’s no rhyme or reason really to how these how all these components work um again with shafts the most important thing to for for you guys out there you find a shaft combination this is for irons and for woods find one that you hit out of the middle first because that shows me that you’re timing it up that means that your move and that golf club are in in in sequence then allow the fitter to go and do his thing or her thing or whatever like that’s that’s how this works that’s how they do it on tour and you know that’s why that’s why players tend to stick with a shaft for a long time because they find one that they hit out of the middle all the time so if you go to like somebody uh patrick can who’s in zf is it zf is that what it’s called gez i’m losing my mind he’s in that diamana product uh xander’s in pd um the because they create a feel and they know that head to head that shaft they’re going to hit out of the middle so what the fitters will do is they’ll say okay i have this variable it’s not going to change i’m going to mess with the cg of the head to make sure that it’s still times up with this shaft um as long as the shaft and that combo provide the numbers that we’re looking for and gives my player the the feedback the ball flight everything he’s looking for like they want to ensure that that’s that that’s still possible so like if you want to go back to um to like the rombo switch and i’m i’m sorry i’m going on a little bit tangent but this is like good information if you want to go back to the rombo switch and like tour green which was a shaft that he just loved it wasn’t working for him anymore the feel was there he hit it out of the middle but the ball flight wasn’t wasn’t doing it anymore cuz what’s happening with the heads is the heads progress and his golf swing progresses now at that point you have to kind of start from scratch and go like “okay i need to find a shaft that he trusts this much in the fields but now gives us the numbers that we’re looking for.” and that’s what ended up being ventus black um anyway sucks that tommy lost so i’m giving him 20 minutes on a shaft switch but there you go um you know if you want to know what the numbers were for tommy versus where he was uh he was trying to get the driver down into the 23 2400 rpms range like on his stock shots and with the mini driver he was trying to get it around 3,3100 rpms because if the spin came down then the carry distance and the everything else starts to level itself out and the two clubs separate themselves so the shaft switch achieved that bada bing bada boom uh he played great last week and i’m assuming he’s going to continue to for the for the rest of the year i have a feeling that tommy fleetwood’s going to make some noise at the playoffs that’s what i think i think um you know come august i think that’s where he’s really going to shine so he’s going to win this year i just don’t know when i think he’s going to win the open but tbd uh okay so let’s move on to this stricksson thing um i mean it’s it’s i mean how many wins they have hideki hideki won but with with a v soul but not actually i don’t even know if his yeah it’s not this it’s it’s close enough he won um seb straa won um obviously um novak won with ben griffin i mean they i think they’ve had seven wins this year they’ve had a great year here’s the thing with tricks on irons that i want to say it started in like 2018 or n i i don’t know the exact year but they’ve always made good irons and they were a smaller piece and then you know over the last four five six years they’ve just grown and a lot of the a lot of the momentum has taken place in the fitting base and i saw this firsthand i used to go to txg all the time uh living in toronto when ian and mikey and those guys were there and you know they’d be fitters it’d be uh you know john sawski and ian would be in a bay and um i mean hell mac boucher worked there and they’d be in a bay and they’d be doing their thing and when it came to irons these strixons just kept getting into bags so that’s what kind of piqued my curiosity um and then as as the years went on 2019 2020 2021 these iron launch was come out then you start to read the wrx forums and you start to kind of hear the buzzer there was so many players kind of um just losing it on um tricks on irons and a lot of it had to do with the soul so let me explain why this vsol works so well then i’ll get to keegan and the rest of the guys the reason why the vsol works so well is for steeper players and we’re going to talk specifically to the people that are the fitting bays we’re going to leave tour to the side for a second the reason why it works so well for players in a fitting bay and i’m talking like your plus fives to your 20 handicaps and if you’re going to talk about the zxi5 platform the zxi7 platform so if you’re going to go seven and five in the srixon lines whatever year it is they’ve kind of say the same the one thing that hasn’t changed in that line is the sole and they’ll never change it because that’s it’s they’d be idiotic if they changed out that sole for really steep players that sole is a cure all because of the way that the that the that the sole’s designed you have a lot of bounce up front and you have this nice rudder on the bottom and you have a little bit of relief on the back side that club is designed to get in and out of the turf quickly no matter how steep you are so if your angle of attack like if i mean if you’re if you’re a shallow player i would say it’s not as awesome as it is if you’re on the steeper side still works still amazing because of the feel the softness you know it’s just a great looking iron um but the steeper players which basically represents most of the market when you go into a fitting bay most you know most players are a little bit on the steeper side you don’t see a lot of like you know fathers of two going into txg that are all shallowed out like oshay batia most of them are steep because that’s just that’s more of the it’s just kind of where the club wants to go um they’re either huge pickers meaning they’re popping out of it or they’re pretty good athletes and they’re getting into the ball and the club’s coming in vertically and it’s you know the the it’s steep that’s just normal so you give a player that’s on the steeper side a stricks on iron whether you’re a five or a seven immediately they’re going to love it because of the way that the club is getting in and out of the turf even on mats it works it just works i don’t like it’s it’s a it’s a unicorn um and as you’re seeing in the marketplace right now i’m not going to say who but if you look at enough pictures on my ig or if you look enough pictures in wrx forums or any of the articles that jack writes about tourplay you’re going to start to see most of the soles across most of the oems are starting to get a little bit of front edge relief some of the soles are starting to get to this shape um if you saw those really cool blades that minwi has in the bag and um go look at those soles that’s that’s no accident that’s happening because that is a very very effective way to make an iron so what’s happened in the past is when you make an mb or a player’s cavity back the the idea is is that better players want less bounce they want a thinner sole um yada yada yada the problem is is that those get really really diggy they just do across the board i remember uh when we launched we meaning callaway when i was working there um in 2023 we launched the apex pro series and there was an mb a cb and you know they should have just launched tcb i don’t know why they didn’t they should have just made that the one iron and it would have killed anyway that’s neither here nor there um mb cb and the apex pro um the moment that a lot of the players on our staff got the mb and tried them there was no bounce on those irons and the leading edge was like a razor blade it looked amazing it looked cool make no mistake it like on the shelf it looked beautiful the issue is is it had no bounce it had no bounce to the point where if you bent it weak it still didn’t have enough bounce and if you bent it strong and had even less bounce so the first reaction i remember i was out in the driving range with adam spencson and he’s an mb player he plays 2018 mbs he hit it and the 2018 mbs is where if if you looked at eric van run’s bag from back in the day sveny’s bag a lot of our blade players all went to that 18 blade why because it had bounce it had a wider sole it had bounce the new ones the 21s and the 23s had a sole that was like that big it had very very little bounce and you couldn’t wiggle it around like you either played them at the design loft and went with god or you’re kind of foca and immediately started the divots just started to get really thick and he’s kind of looking at me and he’s like “well these are beautiful but like these clubs are getting these guys are you know i’m digging holes here.” so you know obviously our tour guys the callaway tour r&d people like they take that that feedback and go “okay maybe it’s time we start to pivot.” and then you see this new one coming out that’s being linked i have no idea if it’s coming out or when it’s coming out but you’re starting to see the soul bounce you start to see the x forge soul if you look at it like the ones that phil are playing and the hoygards are playing if you set it like this you see the soul it’s like this that’s on purpose that is i don’t want to say it’s directly to mimic stricks like i don’t want to say that but it’s living in that ballpark now because that’s what most players good high handicaps and on tour want they want bounce bounce gives you option and bounce allows you to get the club through the turf turf interaction is so important with an iron so to somebody like i mean hell ryan fox is your prototype stricks player absolute prototype he’s steep hits a big hold off cut strong grip like he’s prototype stricks on uh seven player so is keegan bradley keegan bradley not shallow by any stretch you know especially when he gets into six seven eight nine wedge he gets very steep he beats down the ball stricks on irons are absolutely amazing for a player like like um like keegan bradley um so you know interesting stuff so if you guys are in the fitting bay um you know you should at least try stricks on irons they’re they should always be in the conversation because the fives are great irons they have a really really good soul but they’re fast and they get up in the air that’s why you see in every single every single set that you see out on tour will always have a four and a five iron in the zxi5 and then the rest of the irons will be um the sevens like a banser does that a banser has a four hybrid he’s got a five and a six in the five series and then he plays mirror mirror irons on the way down you’re going to see a lot of that even yesterday um i was out in the driving range with sam horsefield today sam horsefield is trying some stricks on four and five irons for that very reason he loves how they get through the turf and they launch high and they they get out there um and every player on tour four and five iron before look and all that other stuff you know what they want they all want the ball to go up in the air that’s what they want because those are becoming the longer these players are getting fivewood’s becoming a key club for par fives and four and five irons are becoming a key club for five uh for par fives they just are um because they’re hitting it further like you know on tour five iron is your 215 to 225 club now 4 iron is your 220 to 240 club now so that’s living closer to like a 5wood and you’re going to have that yardage into a lot of par fives on the pga tour and anything longer than that if it’s 250 255 260 these guys are hitting their fivewoods or their sevenwoods or whatever the hell it is um so what they want is they want to be able to hit that club and they want it to go straight in the air so they’re not worried about maneuverability and this and that they just want to hit big high nukes up there um that aren’t going to under spin that are going to land and they’re going to land like this straight down so the ball stops um so that’s why you’re seeing so many of those irons go into play um but if you go across the line of the players that have won with stricks on irons this year novak straa keegan bradley ryan fox jj spawn another perfect perfect stricks player steep um you know hits a cut um there’s a reason why they’re in that iron because it’s it’s the it’s the perfect iron like if i was going to pick a player that’s not on the stricks staff that probably actually this would be kind of a fun experiment um i’m gonna i’ll i’ll tell you three players that i think would respond well to stricks on irons with a soul i think xander would be a great v soul player um i think nico hoygard would be a great uh zole player i think windham clark would be a great zole player um or vold not zol vole um which i something i always think about like what players would like hit what irons that’s the kind of player that you’re looking for somebody that really like stays on top of it comes down like really interacts with the turf i mean hell tiger in some cases like fully tiger would have been an optimal like vo player um he would have been amazing um like you’re even seeing what phil did to his irons go look at phil’s irons i took pictures they’re on my ig this diesel and he carved it in himself like he it already kind of had it in there and he went in there and filled the out of it i was like that um very very cool stuff but congratulations to stricks on you know um robbie waters and and rodney and all those guys on that you know on that on that truck are they’re amazing guys and they work really really hard and will and um and jolly and they got a good crew over there um but you know the the the the other thing about this rickon thing is all the focus is on the irons and i remember i was out uh at the us open and i was talking to ryan fox and his caddy dean and i’d never really seen their ferrowoods before so i went up to them and said “hey can i get a video of your of your 3-wood that you hit to two feet in the canadian open?” he’s like “yeah look at i” and i set it down i’m like “this thing’s amazing.” like “do they sell these?” i had like you know when it comes to stricks on i pay attention to the cleveland wedges and i p pay attention to the irons i knew they sold woods like i obviously knew that they sold metal woods but i never really seen them like i never seen one like set one down because there’s they don’t push them they don’t talk about them they don’t like you don’t when was the last time you saw like a stxon driver commercial um but ryan fox had this like tour only diamond driver which i thought was a beautiful looking driver um and then he had this this 3-wood but the 3-wood looks amazing it’s a little bit larger it’s got kind of a deeper face it has a little bit of that rombo kind of camber in the sole um it’s a cool 3-wood and i was like you guys should like this is a like why don’t you start digging into these things you guys could be like a full a full bag company pretty quick you make great wedges great irons like these metalwoods are sick so i don’t know uh i don’t know if they don’t push them because the marketplace is just too competitive with the big the big companies in there um who knows but they make they make really really cool metal woods and to that point um and i get this question a lot i’m going to pivot i’m going to do a quick pivot here i have to because i got this question the other day um there is a lot of there is a lot of great like you take la golf for example and their driver the la golf thing is really really cool and they’re doing some very very very cool stuff with the mapping of the face of that driver and everything and the driver to me i have one i have one at home it looks really it’s a beautiful looking driver but people say well like you know does it compare to a callaway or does it compare to a tailor made this is where it starts to get tricky the one thing that these smaller companies have and i’ll say la golf smaller company or maybe i can even throw stricks on in there as like a smaller driver company you are up against you’re not up against marketing machines because people say well they just don’t market them like they just don’t have the marketing spend the awareness isn’t there you’re not up against the marketing machines you’re up against their r&d budgets and history and everything that they can do so when you’re competing against callaway and tailor made and ping and titus which are basically the big four in the driver category you are basically walking into you’re walking into a casino and you’re sitting down at a table with guys that have $50 million in chips and you have $5 million in chips so unless you get lucky or do something really clever like come up with you know like i always use vibranium like all of a sudden you’re making a driver out of vibranium and things just unbelievably fast you got no chance because you have years and years and years and billions of dollars of r&d research testing to break into the driver game and basically do what sam hans done at lab in the putter game putter is different totally different animal because it’s not a speed contest it’s it’s it’s different it’s not a speed and dispersion contest and moi and blah blah blah blah the driver thing is very very hard to break into because the competition and the people that you’re fighting against have so much muscle and so many smart people it’s impossible and i’ll say it out loud if you’re trying to if you’re a company and you’re trying to bust into the driver market with like your great idea i’m sure your idea is incredible probably the smartest idea out there but to make it global to make it compete day in day out year in year out it takes a ton of dough a ton of smart people um and you you have to be able to have a budget that allows you to make no concessions like i this driver can do this but it’s a little bit lacking here like when callaway and taylor made these guys are coming up with drivers when they sit there right before launch they go “yep it’s fastest we’ve done most forgiving we’ve done love the look tour testing was amazing blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.” that is a heavy lift for a small company i’ve seen it go down i’ve been involved in it i’ve been in the mix i’ve been right in the mud and with for years on that stuff i’m just telling you right now it’s hard doesn’t mean you can’t go out and buy a really awesome driver from a smaller company that’s not what i’m saying i’m saying i get the question how does this match up maybe on a day it might work out maybe for a month you might have it and be like i’m driving the hell out of this is the best drive i’ve ever had i’m talking about over time to break into the marketplace and really make a mark and be a contender in the marketplace takes a shitload of money and it takes a shitload of smart people more smart people and than it does even money like you have to have the talent to do that um and these are teams of people versus you know big teams of people versus small teams of people i i need to say that out loud so that that the consumer can understand how this works so again doesn’t mean you can’t go buy the la golf driver or even the stricksson driver or whatever and it won’t just hold up and be amazing it’s not what i’m saying at all i’m saying that if you want to understand how the market works like what these smaller companies are up against especially when it comes to drivers that’s what they’re up against um golf ball i can say the same thing it took callaway to compete with titalist which is just an absolute juggernaut in the golf and for good reason they make amazing golf balls their golf balls are incredible um you have to spend to compete and again can you can people make balls that compete in a fitting bay and go “our balls just as good as yours you should buy ours.” sure 100% but you’re also up against the company then go “oh they did that well we’re going to go do this because we have the ability to just go “oh oh you did match us on that one cool we’re going to go with our $200 million r&d budget over here in the corner for two seconds and we’re going to come out with something that you’re going to have to chase again and again and again and again and you’re in.” and that’s how you hold market share is because you’ve done 50 60 years of work of r&d work and billions of dollars of investment that’s what it gets you so can somebody catch up to you on a one day sure but the next battle that big company’s coming with a nuke like and you still have your you still have like your ak different game so anyway if you guys want to like if you want to like how it works that’s that’s how it works um sorry i just i kind of want to want to rant there but like this is interesting stuff and you guys want to know like with the inside baseball stuff that’s kind of how that’s kind of how it is um we’re going to be doing our what’s in the bag this week and i’m not going to spoil it but i am gonna i’m gonna give you a couple of couple little nuggets um very very very very impressed with the titus product this year no they’re not sponsoring this podcast and they’re like like i i i went and i hit a bunch of stuff you guys know if you follow me on instagram you know i hit pink like and i loved it all if i’m being super honest i loved everything i hit loved there wasn’t anything i was like i liked it all and i’m i’m talking right now specifically to irons um the one thing that i did and it’s unfair but i did it because i had to um and i think i said this uh in a live or a podcast or something i think i i think it was i think i did a podcast a couple weeks ago um i had to put all my callaway stuff in the garage i had to forget it existed and for this for this year it’s unfair to callaway my previous employer i had to because i wasn’t giving anything else a fair shake like total honesty moment just wasn’t i’d hit stuff and then i’d go right back to my tcbs i’d hit a driver and go “yeah but this callaway one does this.” so i literally had to put it i mean that means golf ball too i had to put it all into the garage forget it existed and really start testing stuff with an open mind i am very very impressed with what tidalus is doing that gt2 driver is if you guys haven’t hit the gt2 yet my god man that driver is awesome like that that that driver answers every question and people will say “well yeah i hit it but it just spun too much.” you can make it non- spinny trust me you can there’s things you can do to that thing even with that one weight port in the back but there’s things that you can do to that driver to make it an absolute monster very very very impressed with that um super impressed with this r seven mini driver um of all the mini drivers i’ve hit what i’m always looking for is how easy is it this how easy is it for me to hit this thing off the ground that one’s really easy to hit off the ground it goes and i have it and with the weight ports on it what you can do like i have mine weighted to hit nothing but spinny draws and it’s amazing i love it i think i’ve hit it 10 times in the golf course and hit nine bangers like that’s a good golf club um really impressed with uh tailormaid’s fairwoods in general um really impressed with ping hybrids you’ll see some ping hybrids in there um these t100 irons i’m not going to go too far into it t100 irons are i thought the lost t100s were sick these ones are amazing um i’ll explain the differences you we’ll get to that when i when i explain what’s in the bag uh vokei wedges or vokei wedges very very hard to beat um what do i need to say there very impressed i was actually really impressed with the pxe wedges and i was super impressed with the ping wedges ping wedges are sick they don’t get they don’t they don’t get the love that they deserve the ping wedges are really really good um obviously cleveland wedges are amazing um and then putters i mean i i i think i explained uh the lab thing to you guys last time but of course right when i i don’t want to say gave up on lab for me sam launches this new putter on in detroit with that’s not center shafted like i was i’d already moved on i’m like “okay i can’t do the lab thing everybody else all the cool kids get to do the lab thing but i don’t cuz i can’t hit the hole from 10 feet.” um and then he comes out with this thing so now i’m like “okay now i guess i need this new lab putter i i got to go down that.” and i was again i had broken up with my jailbird for a month to try lab and i like rekindled that relationship and i might have to break up with it again to go try this lab again and those are the only two putters i’m really interested in right now is the putter that i have and this lab thing i think the tailor-made zt looks amazing i just can’t do the center shafted thing i just don’t like the one of the putters i’m curious to try at some point is the spider the the tour spider uh kind of the one that scotty uses that’s a cool looking putter i actually had one back when i was at wrx similar to it i think those are great putters but the ones that piqu my interest are this new lab that i saw uh on pictures of wrx and then the putter that i had um everything else to me i’ve tried like i’ve tried scotty cameron putters in the past i’ve had some bangers still do i have two of them i have the duvall the duvall one and i have the um the scottyale um from years back still have them um but those are collector’s items i just i’ve i’ve i think probably 20 years ago i got my hands on a um on a tryhot odyssey and putted with it forever and i just kind of been into the odyssey thing ever since then before i worked for him like that was that the white hot insert was like kind of my jam so uh i’m biased i apologize but i’m just telling you the truth when it comes to putters i’m always going to lean towards that white hot or micro hinge insert because i think it’s the greatest thing since uh stuffed crust pizza um okay let me go through uh let me go through keegan’s bag really quickly um some interesting things that you might want to that you may have not noticed so he’s in the um g430 i’m going to explain why guys keep going back to 430 here in a second so his g430 driver 10.5 he’s got a ventus black um i think 6x shaft um then he goes to um qi10 16.5 hl3wood i think he’s got i think he had an aldola rogue shaft in his 3-wood um actually does uh and then he goes into the um the qi10 uh i believe it’s a is i think it’s a fivewood uh fivewood with a ventus black 8x um then he goes uh four iron in the zxi5 five iron in the zxi5 and then 7 through 9 and then he’s got the blade pitching wedge which is kind of cool um then he’s got the wedge he’s got the cleveland wedges and he’s got the jailbird ai1 uh putter um quick little nugget on his bag and people that ask a lot like why don’t the ping players that play the 430 play the 410 a lot of it’s look so and i can say that for havlin i can say that for neman i can say that for keegan bradley and it’s not a technology thing it’s a look thing so when you set down certain drivers so like the 430 if we’re going to use that as a as a just as an example because of the crown and because of the top line and how it looks what i’ve heard and what i’ve seen is the 440 because of how it looks to certain players doesn’t look like it has enough loft even though it does so he might hand them a driver that’s 10.5 and it lasers out at 10.5 exact same spec as the 430 but when you set it down it doesn’t appear to have as much loft to your eye a lot of these players out on the pj tour want to see loft that’s why you see so many 16.5 3woods this and that like you hand a player a club that doesn’t look like it has enough loft they’re not afraid to hit it right they’re afraid to hit it left because they’re going to overcorrect to get the ball up in the air instinctively like well i feel like i have to help this up and if i help it up i’m going to get flippy at the bottom and the ball’s going to go that way but if i have if i seal loft then i feel like i can cover it i can get the club into the ground i can you know get my angle of attack in a good spot good comfortable spot and i can hit it straight with a cut soft draw do whatever i want to do so seeing loft is important for a lot of players um so when you see guys that stay in the 430 or go to the 430 or whatever a lot of that’s because they that head the appearance of it shows more loft than the 440 does that’s that’s what i’ve heard that’s the feedback when i set them down the two of them down cuz i have both of them i don’t see the difference but i’m also not keegan bradley or or jaco neman i’m just like normal dude um i can see loft and tell the difference really a lot with fairwoods i can really understand when a player’s like i set it down i don’t see enough loft driver for me is a little tougher especially with ping drivers because to me when i set them down they kind of have a very distinct look you know and maybe it’s just the black face or or whatever um but you know when you see guys stay in a club like that like even vic havlin with 425 um you know some of that could be launch you know the 440 platforms just launch a little higher by nature um but a lot of this just the ability to see loft so you know jaco nean had the 440 in the bag and then went back to 430 a lot of it’s cuz when you set he sets the 430 down he can still see loft uh that’s why that happens um anyway they’re in detroit this week uh great event love the detroit event um love the people that run the detroit event the whole city comes together for that event i wish it was more i wish that was an elevated event and in a better time of the year um it would get a better feel that’s a great event detroit golf club’s amazing um and you know there’s certain events where the the neighborhood or the community really come together and take it seriously with some care and love detroit’s like that the rocket like they get really behind that tournament and um i would love to see it’s one of those tournaments like i would love to see get its due like get get you know make it a make it a uh an elevated event or something like it’s a it’s a great event um and i always liked it too cuz i could always drive there from toronto it’s like a three-hour drive from toronto um but obviously i’m in dallas this week so didn’t go to uh didn’t go to the rocket um but anyway coming up this week obviously we have live dallas so we’re going to be doing some fun stuff um on the range with charlie howell grant mcdow um trying to get bryson to do something for me which you guys will love if i can get him to do it um supposed to talk to him today i’m actually it’s actually like 8 in the morning here on wednesday so i’m going to sneak off and go get ready to go to the golf course but um we got that um doing a ton of filming with rombo and hatton and waco nean for the golf.com platform uh dylan desar’s got some fun stuff that he’s doing here um it’s going to be a great week it’s going to be a great week and obviously we got scottish in the open championship coming up i will not be on site this year for the first time in like five years but i’m actually quite happy to stay home uh because getting to ireland logistically is a pain in the ass um so that’s kind of it for uh for fully equipped uh for this episode 291 do you know what i want to know from you guys do you guys watch this on youtube in the comments what is your preferred format for this show do you like johnny wonder talking head just talking for an hour do you like the three amigos do you like you know wade chris and jack all in one shot do you like it when i bring guests on like i i’m like be now coming into this golf.com thing and you know having some control and and some vision about where i want this podcast and maybe another podcast to go um even trying to figure out my own podcast that i would like to do that’s that’s a little bit more personal to me uh i’m curious to see if you guys like the format like what format do you guys prefer um and what do you guys want to what do you guys want to hear do you want like current events or do you want to talk about some old like i want to know um you can find me at johnny wonder on instagram that’s my main social media platform um but hope you liked episode 291 of fully equipped um i hope you guys have a great week it’s going to be an awesome week in golf a lot of fun stuff happening um and obviously we have a big nice run coming up here in the next three weeks with the scottish in the uh the open championship so golf is going to be uh quite fun uh for the next well for like the next couple months we still got the playoffs and all that stuff coming up too so uh it’s johnny wonder from the airbnb in dallas uh you guys have a great rest of the week we’re out of