Jordan Spieth doesn’t make equipment changes casually. So when the three-time major winner showed up to the Cadillac Championship with a new Titleist driver, 3-wood and golf ball, three consequential part of his bag, it’s worth paying attention to what got him there.
The short version: His shots have been spinning too much, and he had the data to prove it. That’s not a problem most golfers have. But for a tour player whose iron game is built on precision distance control, it’s a real one.
“I just thought it was a driving range thing. And I’ve been taking my monitor onto the golf course and trying to see,” Spieth said on Thursday after the opening round at Doral. “Then I had, I don’t know, maybe a dozen shots I could tell you in the last year or so that came off just odd for an iron, spinny, ended up short.”
The breakthrough came two weeks ago at Harbour Town. Spieth brought a monitor onto the course during a practice round, hit what felt like a perfect iron and watched it come up short. Then it happened again.
“It was enough of a sample size to say let me explore other options,” he said.
Spieth filed it away and finished T-33 at RBC Heritage. Once he returned home, he got to work trying to find a solution for the excess spin. Testing led him to give Titleist’s Pro V1x Left Dash a look to see if it could shed spin. The result was a drop in spin between 300 and 500 rpm depending on the club.
While Spieth also put Titleist’s GTS2 driver and 3-wood in the bag, the ball change is the headline. Spieth swapped the 2025 Pro V1x for the Pro V1x Left Dash after noticing the same height with less spin. His reasoning is the kind of self-aware adjustment a lot of players never make.
“I’ve always played the highest spinning ball because I thought I needed it in the long irons. Now with this, whatever my makeup is and then just kind of added speed, my spin rates have been fine if not too high. So it’s actually kind of nice to be able to drop it down a little bit.”
The 190-ball range session Spieth went through this week in Miami wasn’t a guy tinkering. It was a guy validating a decision he had already made.
“A ball change would be extremely rare,” Spieth said. “I did a ball change in Palm Beach last year, but I did it to a ball that was a little more similar. This is a little bit bigger jump. But I hit enough shots to feel confident that it was better for me than what I was playing.”
The 3-wood, in his words, is still on the clock: “I’m not sure if that’s a winner yet. It’s kind of a trial run.” The driver has on a longer leash: “When the new driver came out, I just kind of hit it some at home, and then I did a lot once we had a week off and I was like, man, this thing’s awesome.”
For the record, it’s a 10-degree GTS2 driver in a D1 SureFit hosel setting, and a 15-degree GTS2 3-wood. After the ball change, Spieth swapped the Mitsubishi Tensei AV Raw Blue 75TX shaft in the 3-wood for a Fujikura Ventus Black Velocore+ 7X—the same shaft in the driver.
Even with two new metalwoods and a different golf ball in play for the first time, Spieth looked more than comfortable with the setup, posting an opening-round 65 to match his lowest first-round score on the PGA Tour in more than a year.
Spieth swapped the 2025 Pro V1x for the Pro V1x Left Dash after noticing the same height with less spin.
Orlando Ramirez
Spieth got fit into his current setup at one point in his career, and his swing kept evolving underneath it. More speed, different delivery, different spin profiles. But things change.
For recreational golfers who got fit several years ago and haven’t been back since, it’s possible your specs aren’t your specs anymore. Bodies change. Swings change. Specs change with excessive use. The launch numbers that put a ball in your ideal window in 2021 might be putting it somewhere else now.
Spieth needed a launch monitor on the course and a dozen odd iron shots to prove it to himself. A recreational golfer can probably figure it out in an afternoon with a local fitter.
Spieth just got around to it. Most weekend players never do.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com