Tiger Woods, acknowledging his struggles off the tee at the Farmers Insurance Open, has made a couple tweaks to his driver setup as he returns to action at this week’s Genesis Open.
“I felt we could all see how bad I was driving it,” Woods said at his Tuesday press conference, referencing the tournament-worst 17 of 56 fairways that he hit over four days at Torrey Pines.
The fix? A return to an older, stiffer shaft.
“Now that my swing speed’s up again, I went back to a shaft I used in 2015 when I played Wyndham,” he said. He called the Matrix Ozik TP7HDe X-flex shaft “more stout” than the Tensei CK Pro White 70TX he used in his previous two events.
Woods is also adding loft to the TaylorMade M3 driver he debuted at the Farmers. “It’s three-quarters [of a] degree more loft than what I used at Torrey, but it’s spinning the correct amount now,” he said.
Woods is hoping the changes will lead to steadier play off the tee.
“It’s a shaft that I knew from years past, but I still knew how it felt, so when I picked it up again, ‘Hey, you know what, this is something that’s familiar,’ and I know how it feels and now how it performs,” he said. “I drove it great at Wyndham that year.”
Woods tees off at 7:22 a.m. Tuesday alongside Justin Thomas and Rory McIlroy.
