It’s the early running for the gear story of the year, but Rory McIlroy switching from his RORS PROTO blades to P7CB cavity-back irons could mean more for TaylorMade.
On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, co-hosts Johnny Wunder and Jake Morrow discussed McIlroy’s switch and what it might mean for the brand’s iron line moving forward.
In case you haven’t heard, McIlroy made a months-long switch official when he played a 5-9 iron set of TaylorMade P7CB irons this past week in Dubai to open his season with a T3. The move began in Australia last month, where McIlroy inserted P7CB long irons before adding the rest of the set by the weekend.
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“If there’s help to be had, I’ll definitely take it,” McIlroy said last Thursday after an opening round 66 at the Dubai Invitational. “And even in Dubai at the end of last year, I hit a couple of 5-irons that I mis-struck slightly, and instead of it maybe coming up five or seven yards short, it was coming up more like 10 to 15 yards short.”
McIlroy’s set has a pre-worn leading grind similar to that of his P760 long irons, but Wunder said more work is coming.
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“And they are working on a set— a very Rory-specific cavity back set,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s a prototype set or whatever, but they are working on a set. It’s ongoing.
They’ve been doing it for a few months. It’s not ready, but he wants to play these ones to get used to the idea of playing cavity back irons.”
The P7CB irons came out in the summer of 2024, which means this summer would be two years from their release. Could they be due for a refresh already? And is the “Rory-specific” cavity back what’s going to replace them?.
“My guess is that that’s probably the set that they’re screwing around with right now,” Wunder said of a potential P7CB replacement. “So I think it helps if you are a TaylorMade or Callaway and you’re launching, you have designs on launching a new cavity back or new tour iron, it behooves you to make your premier player that would play that iron, get them in the bag sooner than later. So if I were TaylorMade, I’d be trying to push to get those in the bag for the summer. So by the time that the cavity backs hit the market, he’s already in them, he’s already made them famous, and everybody wants them.”
What’s really interesting, Morrow points out, is that if you consider the P7CB the successor to the P760, which was a slightly larger platform, it took six years for that product cycle.
TaylorMade did release two iterations of the more compact P7MC in that time frame as well, but the P7CB has proved more popular.
It also gave a clear player’s option in the cavity-back market that seemed to be getting a little blurry.
“Mizuno is purposely calling their new iron a speed cavity, not a cavity back for that exact reason because it’s caused — The category is just so wide,” Morrow said. “But the Cobra, the TaylorMade specifically, and then the PXG are like true CB irons, and they’re all like, they’re beautiful.
“But the P7CB is so nice because we didn’t have it for the longest time.”
Is a new P7CB on the horizon? We’ll just have to wait and find out.
For more from Wunder and Morrow, listen to the full episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped here, or watch it below.
Want to find the best irons for your game in 2026? Find a club-fitting location near you at True Spec Golf.
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