Welcome to Fully Equipped’s weekly Tour equipment report. Every Friday of PGA Tour weeks (plus other times, if news warrants), GOLF equipment editor Jack Hirsh runs you through some of the biggest news surrounding golf clubs on Tour, including changes, tweaks and launches.
CROMWELL, Conn. — Matt Fitzpatrick put on a driving clinic Thursday in Round 1 at the Travelers Championship.
The World No. 4 missed just one fairway and gained more than a shot off the tee around TPC River Highlands, using a new Ping G430 LST driver for the first time.
It’s just one round, but Fitzpatrick’s mid-season search for a new gamer might be finally be over, and after his round, he dove into what that process was like.
“It’s not as straightforward as everyone thinks,” he said Thursday.
Two months ago, Fitzpatrick was the hottest golfer on the PGA Tour, having won three tournaments in just over a month and helped his brother earn PGA Tour membership while doing it.
Then his driver, a Titleist GT3, cracked just before the start of his next event at the Truist Championship.
Entering that week, Fitzpatrick was 12th on the PGA Tour in SG: Off-the-Tee. He lost more than a stroke off-the-tee that week at Quail Hollow and lost strokes in the category in two of his next four events, falling to 46th. After winning three of four starts from March to the end of April, Fitzpatrick’s results since his driver broke were T52, T14, T36, 2nd and 22nd.
“If you look at my off the tee from then, it’s quite telling that obviously there was something in that driver that was helping me out and I struggled to find one since,” he said Thursday.
Fitzpatrick tried a new GT3 head and then later an updated Titleist GTS2 at the Memorial, but nothing seemed to replicate what he had with his gamer.
“Through unbelievable effort from the staff at Titleist,” Fitzpatrick, a gear-free agent aside from his putter deal with Bettinardi, added. “You know, it’s nothing against those guys, but just for whatever reason, there hasn’t been one that’s kind of managed to suit my eye, I guess, and kind of match my swing intentions.”
This week at Travelers, Fitzpatrick tried a number of new drivers from other manufacturers and didn’t seem to make a decision on the new 430 LST until late on Wednesday afternoon.
At TPC River Highlands, the 2022 U.S. Open winner tested both Ping’s G430 LST and the newer G440 LST drivers, Ping’s Kenton Oates told GOLF.
“Right away the 430 provided the launch and spin Matt was looking for,” Oates said. “We then focused on getting the right setting to maximize center contact. We found this in the neutral dot setting.”
Once contact was set, the next piece of the puzzle was the crucial one for Fitzpatrick.
“When you fit a golf club, everyone has tendencies, and not to bore everyone, but my tendency is like I like clubs or a driver with the CG closer to the heel,” he explained Thursday, certainly not boring any passionate gearheads. “That’s kind of where I’ve lived for basically my whole career. And certain golf clubs are, like, made without that. Just the box one, the one you buy off the rack might have it on the toe side, which if you gave that to me I would hit it 500 yards right or whatever it is.”
Fitzpatrick hits a pull-draw off the tee and hates to see the golf ball go right. To help that, almost all of his drivers throughout his career have been heel-weighted to allow the club face to close more easily.
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Getting the weight just right and in the right spot is crucial. Too much weight or too close to the heel, and Fitzpatrick might hit it too far left or overcompensate. Not enough and he’ll start missing right.
“The detail is really important and it’s important to try and get that right as best as you can,” Fitzpatrick explained. “Everyone is different, their habits, how they move the club, how they react to different clubs. I tried one in Canada where it was literally exactly that, like neutral, neutral, neutral and I hit it 50 yards right, and that’s just the way I react. So I think people think that guys just get driver and it’s just going to go straight and away you go and there’s obviously a lot more to it than that.”
To dial it in just right, the 17g CG shifter on the 430 LST was moved to the heel position and then added another 3g of hot melt to the heel. He also tried a head with 6 g of hot melt, but that proved to be too much.
Every gram matters at that level.
Matt Fitzpatrick’s new driver specs
Ping G430 LST 9.0
Actual Loft: 8.2
Trajectory 2.0 hosel: DOT (Std)
CG Shifter: Heel (17g)
Hot melt: 3g heel
Shaft: Mitsubishi Tensei CK Orange 65TX
Length 45.75″
Tipping: 1″
Swingweight: D7+
The practice green at TPC River Highlands was busy early in the week as several big-name pros considered flatstick changes.
Perhaps the most notable was the one that never happened: Jordan Spieth spent all of Tuesday and most of Wednesday working with a L.A.B. Golf VZN.1i mallet and a Scotty Cameron Phantom 5 OC prototype, but ended up sticking with his T.P. Mills Trad Forged II blade.
Spieth spent lots of hours working with the L.A.B. Golf mallet on Tuesday under the watchful eye of Cameron McCormick, with the Mills blade nowhere in sight. Spieth revealed earlier this month to Golf on CBS’s Patrick McDonald that he had been fit for L.A.B. putters over the offseason, but said that the MOI benefit of a mallet wasn’t worth it in putting.
“The mallet, the increased MOI is just so minimal on putting,” Spieth said. “It’s making almost no difference unless you really hit it off-center with putts. Which for pros, they don’t. I mean, you’re talking about a difference of 5 mm toe or heel for the most part and it’s not going to make that much of a difference.”
He specifically left the door open to trying something else down the road, which he did this week. He ended up using the L.A.B. during Wednesday’s Pro-Am, but walked off the course with at least three L.A.B. headcovers in his bag. By the end of Wednesday, the Mills had reappeared and he played it in Thursday’s round of 71.
Meanwhile, Justin Rose, Rickie Fowler and J.J. Spaun all went through with putter changes.
For Rose, he spent lots of time on Wednesday testing different putters on a Grasp Technology putting gate, before narrowing it down to his gamer Scotty Cameron Phantom 5, an updated version with a softer Studio Carbon Steel insert and standard top rail alignment aid, a Spider Tour F single-bend and an Axis1 SP Series-Axiom.
After some more work on the green, the Axis1 got the nod. Rose consulted on the design of the “zero-torque” putter, which has no shaft lean, minimal onset and adjustability weighting to help fit a player’s stroke profile.
Rose gained more than 2.3 strokes putting in an opening-round 65.
Fowler’s move was perhaps the most surprising of the bunch, setting aside his Scotty Cameron GoLo 7 S1 prototype for a new Xperimental tour prototype Phantom mallet. The shape resembles an oversized Phantom 11 and Fowler told GOLF the putter is an entirely aluminum construction.
While aluminum typically makes the sound a little brighter and feel firmer, Fowler said this one actually feels soft to him, possibly owing to the extreme MOI created by the entirely aluminum construction.
Notably, it’s the same traditional center-shaft design from his GoLo that he said he’s really become fond of over the offseason. After Fowler started using it, the center-shafted GoLo had a bit of a resurgence this season, with both Gary Woodland and Bud Cauley earning victories after switching to the model. Fowler was 34th in SG: Putting entering the week, his best standing since 2019, using the GoLo.
And lastly, Spaun tested numerous putters this week before leaving the L.A.B. Golf catalog entirely for a highly custom bronze-finished Phantom 9.5R with a flow neck. It also has an aluminium face, which is something Cameron has been doing more and more of recently.
Spaun made a mid-tournament switch at the U.S. Open to a VZN.1i after starting his title defense with an OZ.1i HS. He’s been testing putters each week since benching his U.S. Open-winning DF3, which he won again with earlier this year in San Antonio.
Srixon’s successor to the ZXi drivers surfaced at the Travelers Championship and three staffers put new ZXi RKT (pronounced “Rocket”) drivers in play immediately.
In total, there were seven new heads posted to the USGA conforming list on Monday with five of them showing up in Cromwell.
Hideki Matsuayama immediately put into play the new ZXi RKT LS T262, which carries over the same prototype silver face he played on his current ZXi LS T252 gamer.
Ryan Fox added the ZXi RKT LS+ after some thorough testing on the range and Lucas Glover added the standard LS model late on Wednesday.
At Hazeltine for the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, Jenny Shin and Nasa Hataoka also gamed the new Srixon drivers.
This section is dedicated to cool photos we’ve snapped recently on Tour, but haven’t had a reason to share yet. This week, check out U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark’s driver setup. Before winning at Shinnecock, Clark dropped from a 10.5˚ to a 9˚ head.
Some other gear changes and notes we’re tracking this week.
Odyssey officially launched its TRTL Prototype putter on the PGA Tour this week. Nicolai Hojgaard put one in play and Min Woo Lee switched from a short slant to a double bend … Daniel Berger added the Titleist GTS Prototype 15.0 3-wood … Denny McCarthy added Titleist GTS2 driver … Jacob Bridgeman added a 9-wood to the bag in place of his 4-iron … Brandt Snedeker added a Spider Tour V Double Bend after winning with a Spider Tour X Double Bend earlier this year … Shane Lowry was spotted with two prototype Srixon 3-irons … Corey Conners went back to a Ping PLD Milled Ally Blue Onset after using the Ally Blue H recently … Fowler tested new prototype UST Recoil Dart XDC 120x iron shafts in his Cobra 3DP RF irons, but didn’t put them in play … Si Woo Kim added a 11.5˚ Callaway Quantum Mini Driver
A selection of GOLF content from the past week that may interest you.
What Scottie Scheffler’s under-the-radar wedge change says about him – Scottie Scheffler has changed lob wedges three times over the past four years, but not because of the course or conditions. He explained why this week.
The best Titleist ball for you may not be the Pro V1 – Johnny Wunder puts Titleist’s Tour Soft golf ball through its paces and explains why it could fit you better than the Pro V1.
Wyndham Clark’s Ping putter deal couldn’t have been timed any better – Wyndham Clark signed a putter-only endorsement contract with Ping on the eve of the U.S. Open. Safe to say it paid off.
The author welcomes your comments at Jack.Hirsh@golf.com.
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