Cameron Young is the highest-ranked player to add GTS.
Jason Mowry/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images and Jack Hirsh/GOLF
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.
DUBLIN, Ohio — Cameron Young has made his move to golf’s hottest new driver.
Young became the latest player to switch to one of Titleist’s new GTS drivers, opting for a 10-degree GTS3, moving from the 11-degree GT3 he switched to earlier this year before winning the Players and Cadillac Championships.
Young is the first player ranked inside the top 10 of the Official World Golf Ranking to add the new driver. Previously, the highest-ranked player was No. 16 Justin Thomas. The add makes Young the 65th player currently gaming a GTS driver, while over 70 players have played one.
Young has had a unique driver build since his switch at Bay Hill, where he went back to his Mitsubishi Diamana PD 60TX shaft and changed to the 11-degree GT3, lofted down in the D1 setting, to help get more launch to match his prototype Pro V1x Double Dot golf ball.
While that switch put his spin in a great window, around 2,500 with an extra two degrees of launch at 11 degrees, his spin started creeping up as the season went on. Titleist rep J.J. Van Wezenbeeck told GOLF he was climbing into the upper 2,000s.
Big change for Cameron Young this week as he's made the move to the Titleist GTS3 driver.
Down in loft to 10˚ from the 11.0 GT3 he was playing since Bay Hill.
“His spins have been kind of creeping up a little bit. So the spins have been getting a little bit closer to 28, 29,” he said. “At times when he’s swinging really fast, the 11-degree head is bordering on a little too high, and a 10 is bordering a little bit on the too low.”
This is where the GTS’s dual weighting system really came in handy.
“Being able to utilize the dual weighting just lets us kind of get into a really nice in-between spot in terms of launch and spin for him,” Van Wezenbeeck said.
Because the GTS has both an adjustable front track weight and an adjustable rear flat weight, Titleist was able to put an extra two grams in the rear of Young’s new GTS3, which was just enough to give him the extra launch he needed, while staying at the 10-degree loft.
Young has been testing GTS3 since the prototype stage back in December, so he already knew the GTS3 was potentially going to be the right fit for him. Once he finally had some time off between this week’s Memorial and last month’s PGA Championship, he made the switch at home.
The new driver brings Young’s spin window into the 2,600 to 2,700 range and keeps it there thanks to the GTS platform’s improved spin consistency. While that’s a bit higher than it was at the beginning of the year, that extra spin helps Young manage his mishits and keeps them from falling out of the sky.
“He kind of knew the spin stability that he gets with this driver,” Van Wezenbeeck said. “So that was kind of a big one, it’s really how well it manages his mishits. And so that was kind of a big one to have in play for him.”
Young also made a tweak to his iron set, soft-stepping his Dynamic Gold X7 shafts to give him back the ability to hit off-speed shots more effectively.
Similar to his driver setup, soft-stepping the X7 as opposed to going back to the X100s gave him a nice middle ground of control and feel, Van Wezenbeeck said.
But don’t get too excited. McLaren doesn’t have any immediate plans to offer their new irons unfinished. Instead, the absence of the plating and polishing serves a functional purpose, McLaren Golf Senior Design Manager for Irons and Wedges JP Herrington told GOLF, as Rose works to tweak his new clubs.
“Right now we want to be able to move fast and get everything dialed in,” Herrington said. “It allows that flexibility to make some of those adjustments versus having to send them out and get them plated and then get them back.”
The change Rose and Herrington made at the Memorial this week? Moving toward less offset in the mid-irons.
At Rose’s request, the initial Series 1s had a unique progressive offset package with jumps between the short and mid-irons and the mid- to the long irons. With this new raw set Rose saw for the first time at Muirfield Village, the offset on the mid-irons was reduced by half a millimeter. That’s enough to make a difference to someone like Rose, who Herrington said has one of the most discerning eyes on Tour.
A Tour blade with the feel you expect and the forgiveness you don’t. Series1 is a modern Tour blade, engineered through Metal Injection Molding. It delivers a level of forgiveness traditional forging can’t achieve, while maintaining the feel and workability often lost in cast designs. The result is performance without compromise – a blade for elite players who demand more from their irons.
“Having something that really feels comfortable looking down at it — and we’re talking those little minute changes, whether it’s a half or a quarter of a millimeter — make a difference, especially to someone like Justin,” Herrington said. “A lot of it, he talks about just that visual at address, how it meets his eye, and then that translates to confidence into the golf swing.”
Herrington wasn’t sure Rose would end up gaming the raw set this week, but it looked like from watching Rose’s first testing session on Tuesday that a lightbulb went off on the first swing. He immediately noted that he was reaching apex heights of more than 130 feet with the raw irons, something he said he hadn’t seen in a long time.
The ball also seemed to be holding his line better, Herrington said.
That probably had more to do with visual comfort than any performance difference with the clubs.
The raw finished irons could remain in the bag, but Herrington said it’s unlikely. Rose even asked if the specific set he had could eventually be polished and plated.
After a rough start with the new irons at the Cadillac Championship, Rose seemed to find a groove at the PGA Championship with a T10 finish. This week, he opened with a 69 on Thursday and led the field with 15 greens in regulation.
Maybe he continues with the raw irons if he keeps hitting the ball like that.
Fleetwood sees ‘shadows’
Tommy Fleetwood is looking for a “shadow” on the greens this week and it might have finally jump-started his putting slump to begin the season.
The reigning FedEx Cup champion made his fourth putter switch this season and perhaps the most significant one yet. After playing with TaylorMade’s larger Spider Tour since moving to the mallet platform at the RBC Heritage last year, Fleetwood is gaming a new, smaller Spider Tour X this week at the Memorial.
Tommy Fleetwood is testing a new Spider Tour X Black putter this week.
He's had this putter for a few months now and it has the same pilot's eye alignment that he switched to on his Spider Tour in March.
Despite earning five top-10s already this season, Fleetwood has struggled on the greens, losing .064 strokes a round and ranking 93rd on the PGA Tour. Last season he gained more than four-tenths of a stroke and ranked 20th.
At the Valero Texas Open, Fleetwood changed his alignment aid on the Spider Tour Black from the custom Sharpie lines hand-drawn on the top by TaylorMade putter rep James Holley to a “pilot’s eye” aid. He then used a similar model in the new 2026 Torched finish at the RBC Heritage before returning to the black finish for his next start at the Cadillac Championship.
But this week, he’s gone to a different head entirely with the Spider Tour Black X with the same “pilot’s eye” alignment aid and short slant hosel.
BLACK PVD FINISH The durable PVD coating creates a beautiful high-quality finish with sole plate, back badge and copper accents. TRUE PATH™ ALIGNMENT The patented alignment system provides visual clarity and helps golfers better envision the line to the hole. WHITE TPU PURE ROLL™ INSERTMade from a combination of Surlyn and aluminum, the white TPU Pure Roll™ insert creates a softer feel. Grooves are angled at 45° to encourage optimal forward roll as well as better sound, feel and overall roll characteristics. The white insert also creates better symmetry with the white True Path alignment. THIN WALL UNDERCUT CONSTRUCTION We’ve engineered a super stable structure by removing excess weight to create high MOI and legendary Spider performance. HYBRAR ECHO®DAMPENER HYBRAR is behind the face to dampen unwanted vibrations, delivering premium sound and feel on every putt with the best possible sensation. TSS WEIGHTING TSS weights provide balanced weighting and help optimize performance for all various putter lengths. STEEL WIREFRAME Allows engineers to better control weight distribution and CG location.
“The main reason Tommy switched to the X was the slightly more forward CG and the alignment benefits of the true path,” Holley told GOLF. “He started lining up the Clear Path on his TP5 pix more often and although the TruePath is blacked out, the ‘shadow’ of the true path matched up nicely to that.”
While Fleetwood’s new Spider Tour X is still all black with no TruePath aid like his previous putters, the Spider Tour X has the outline of the True Path built into the top, while a Spider Tour without TruePath is smooth.
That outline of the TruePath turned out to really help Fleetwood with his alignment on the greens. Fleetwood has actually had the putter for a few months leading up to the change.
In Round 1 at Jack’s place, that paid off as Fleetwood was third in the field in SG: Putting, picking up nearly two and a half shots as he fired a 67 to co-lead going into Friday.
Fleetwood also got two new replica putters this week to celebrate his FedEx Cup victory last year. Holley had the original Sharpie lines scanned and then laser-etched them into the toplines of the putter. The replicas also came with custom Winston Collection headcovers with the same design embroidered on top.
TaylorMade gave Tommy Fleetwood a replica of the Spider Tour Black putter he used to win the FedEx Cup with last summer.
Instead of rep James Holley drawing the sharpie lines on the top alignment aid, this version has been lasered on to exactly mimic the imperfections of the… pic.twitter.com/WzhbSWKCbo
Rory McIlroy leads the PGA Tour in SG: Off-the-Tee this season, but he’s still finding the fairway just 55 percent of the time.
McIlroy is switching this week to the Fujikura Ventus Black 7-X shaft, up in weight from the 6-X he has played for the past several years. McIlroy also added weight to the head of his TaylorMade Qi4D driver, going up to two 13g weights in the rear instead of the 11s he had to begin the year.
Rory McIlroy is making a slight tweak to his driver setup, going to a heavier Fujikura Ventus Black OG 7-X shaft, up from the 6-X he's used this year.
Caddie Harry Diamond told me he was seeing a bit extra stability out of the heavier build.
Explaining Project X’s Titan Yellow wood shaft – Clark earned his win the week he switched to Project X’s new counterbalanced Titan yellow wood shaft. Jake Morrow explains how the new shaft works.
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.
