People actually used to believe that Tiger Woods wouldn’t win the U.S. Open because he was too wild off the tee.
Then 2000 happened.
Woods put together one of the greatest statistical seasons of all time, winning nine times, including the year’s last three majors. Part of his statistical prowess was ranking first on Tour in Total Driving.
Not only did Woods put together one of the great seasons of all time, but he also possibly had the greatest bag of 14 clubs ever assembled, largely through the work of then-Titleist Tour rep Larry Bobka.
Bobka joined host Johnny Wunder on the final episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped of 2025 to recap the journey that led to putting together Woods’ clubs for the 2000 season.
That includes detailing how Woods switched into his first Titleist driver from the Cobra driver he used when he won the 1997 Masters.
The final build was a Titleist 975D 7.5-degree head with a 43.5″ Dynamic Gold X100 steel shaft, but how Bobka and Woods landed on the specific head and shaft took some time.
This Tiger Woods gear explainer is fascinating. Here are 5 things we learned
“So when the drivers would come in, you know, we get 25 of them in a box,” Bobka said. “I mean, I literally would sit there and put a shaft in every driver in that box that was 7.5-degrees and I’d pull out, you know, three to six of them that I thought would be perfect for his eye. That would just be just slightly up in the toe, looked like it wasn’t going to go left. So most of those drivers, if you measured them, came out to seven degrees.
“Most of them were around D3 to D4, right in that range,” he continued. “I mean, he wasn’t overly picky that, you know, if it was D3.5 versus D3 or D4, if he hit it good, he liked it. And again, then the magic happened with the guy swinging the golf club.”
While revolutionary for its time, the 975D driver isn’t a much bigger head than a modern-day 3-wood, and the shaft is the same length too. Not to mention the shaft was the same 130 g weight as his irons, unlike the 70 g graphite shaft he plays in his 3-wood today.
Launch monitor technology was in its early days in the 1990s, but Bobka estimated that even with that setup, Woods was surpassing 180 mph in ball speed.
TaylorMade P7TW Custom Irons
View Product
“I can only remember three people that ever really made the sound that he made hitting a golf ball,” Bobka said. “Working with Tiger, you start hearing it and it’s like, ‘Man, that’s the sound.’ I mean, it sounds like two cars crash every time he hit the golf ball.”
