Rory McIlroy is going to "hit driver everywhere" this week.
Emilee Chinn/Getty Images, Jack Hirsh/GOLF
FLOURTOWN, Pa. — Nearly two months ago, at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill, Rory McIlroy was tinkering with the top of his golf bag so he could find a 3-wood to give him a little extra distance when the course took driver out of his hands.
Fast forward nine weeks (a stretch that included a dramatic Masters victory), and 3-wood is no longer a burning priority for McIlroy as he readies to take on one of the shortest courses on this year’s PGA Tour schedule.
McIlroy is the defending champion at this week’s Truist Championship, which is taking a one-year break from Quail Hollow Club to give Philadelphia Cricket Club’s Wissahickon course its PGA Tour debut. At just 7,119 yards, Cricket is the fourth-shortest course on Tour this year, with a bevy of well-placed fairway bunkers and doglegs to navigate.
That could pose a problem for a player like McIlroy, who made a high-profile switch for the first three rounds at Bay Hill to TaylorMade’s Qi35 metalwoods, before making a Sunday swap back into last year’s Qi10 models. Since then, he’s won two of his three individual starts, at the Players Championship and Masters.
While Cricket may seem like a course McIlroy would opt to search for a longer 3-wood, he thinks the opposite is true.
“Yeah, you can send it,” McIlroy said. “Every bunker seems to be about 300 to 310 to carry, which is thankfully fine. There’s one bunker on 9 (the 16th for members) that’s 331, but it’s down like 10, so it’s like 320 equivalent. That’s the longest one to try to get over. In good conditions, I can, if it’s calm or a little bit of help.
“Yeah, it’s basically open season.”
McIlroy compared playing Cricket, a 1922 A.W. Tillinghast design restored by Keith Foster in 2014, to Oak Hill, which Andrew Green restored in advance of the 2023 PGA Championship.
McIlroy said he tried to play strategically at that PGA the first couple of days before he realized that wasn’t the proper game plan.
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“I just realized that these new renovated old-school courses, like, the strategy is just hit driver everywhere and then figure it out from there,” he said, echoing DeChambeau’s approach during his winning week at the 2020 U.S. Open at Winged Foot. “That’s sort of the strategy of this place this week.”
While McIlroy doesn’t need a 300-yard carry club this week, he said he’d like to find one for a few venues coming up this summer, but he doesn’t want to have to alter the top end of his bag every week to make it work.
“I’ve always been apprehensive to just put a club in for a certain week,” he said. “I like to get used to clubs. I know the characteristics of my 3-wood. I’ve been using that for over a year. Then I know the characteristics of my 5-wood. I know that, if anything, I’ll miss my 3-wood a little bit to the right, and if anything, I’ll miss my 5-wood a little bit to the left.
“Every club has its own personality, and I think it takes time to learn what that personality is. So I’m pretty averse to changing a lot.”
While the venue for next week’s PGA Championship, Quail Hollow, where McIlroy has won four times, is a different golf course to Philly Cricket, McIlroy’s strategy will likely be the same: bombs away.
Given he’s leading the PGA Tour in strokes gained: off the tee, can you blame him?
Jack Hirsh is the Associate Equipment Editor at GOLF. A Pennsylvania native, Jack is a 2020 graduate of Penn State University, earning degrees in broadcast journalism and political science. He was captain of his high school golf team and recently returned to the program to serve as head coach. Jack also still *tries* to remain competitive in local amateurs. Before joining GOLF, Jack spent two years working at a TV station in Bend, Oregon, primarily as a Multimedia Journalist/reporter, but also producing, anchoring and even presenting the weather. He can be reached at jack.hirsh@golf.com.
