Two weeks ago, I was on the range at the Memorial late Monday afternoon as Adam Scott was going through a practice session.
There were maybe half a dozen others around the range at Muirfield Village that afternoon as the first day was wrapping up, but those who stayed got to witness one of the best swings in golf over the last quarter-century.
And as Scott got toward the top end of his bag, he started showing his inner gear nerd. He was seemingly gawking as he pulled headcovers off his woods and plastic wrap off new clubs, and he was giddy to show them off to his caddie and other members of his entourage. It was like a little boy showing you his latest race car or toy truck.
He pulled the plastic off a brand-new Titleist T250U driving iron and took a swing.
“Wow!” he exclaimed. He remarked how he expected a low driving shot and instead hit a powerful moonball over 100 feet in the air.
Scott’s endless pursuit of gear perfection
For us equipment junkies, Scott represents the pinnacle of gear nerdom. Ever since Scott became an equipment free agent in 2022, his bag has been a rotating treasure trove of goodies from not one, but two custom, built-for-him sets of irons, to helping lead the barrage of mini drivers, 9-woods and broomstick putters on the PGA Tour, it’s been fun to watch.
So it should come as no surprise that as Scott enters the final round of this week’s U.S. Open within one of the lead and in search of his second major title, 12 years after his first, a pretty major gear tweak preceded his fine play.
Scott drew some eyebrow raises last month when, after three years out of the bag, he re-inserted his custom Titleist 681.AS Prototype irons into the bag in Philadelphia. Those clubs were built to be copies of the 680 blades Scott used when he first came out on Tour in the early 2000s, with some subtle tweaks to Scott’s preferences.
The hidden change this week
However, this week, Scott is back to his other custom set, the Miura AS-1 blades he helped design with the legendary Japanese forging house in 2023, which he had been using intermittently for the better part of the last two years.
But Scott made a key change to the irons. Since switching to the AS-1s for a period last spring and summer, Scott’s shaft of choice has been the Project X LZ 6.5, switching from the Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100. It was a shaft he used before, winning the 2016 Honda Classic with a Tour-only prototype version.
“[The Project X LZ is] a different profile and slightly different weight,” Scott told GOLF last summer after the change. “What they encourage or promote in the swing is a little different. If my tendency is to go to the right, and if the shaft is promoting more right, then you’re in a bit of a fight. You’re going right. After a while you start fighting that, and it can throw your swing off a little bit. So it’s kind of balancing it all out.”
But this week, in reinserting the AS-1s (with a Miura TC-202 4-iron), Scott hard-stepped the shafts, which means he uses the 5-iron shaft in his 4-iron, the 6-iron shaft in the 5-iron, and so on. This makes the clubs play slightly firmer.
Miura TC-202 Custom Irons
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There are probably a couple of reasons why Scott could have decided to hard-step the shafts, but three main ones. He either wanted to stabilize the face of the iron with the stouter profile, lower ball flight and spin, or he was simply looking for a stiffer feel.
More gear changes
In addition to adding the TC-202 for his 4-iron, Scott also replaced his 9-wood with the new Titleist T250U he first tried at the Memorial. He’s one of the few players using a driving iron this week in place of a high-lofted fairway wood.
In his prime, Scott was one of the premier ball strikers on the PGA Tour, leading the category of strokes gained: approach in 2010 and 2016. But this season, after a resurgent end to 2024 which saw him finish 4th at the Tour Championship, he’s losing strokes on approach and hasn’t had a top-10 all season.
He’s been worlds better at Oakmont this week, gaining more than 5.5 strokes on the field on approach and ranking sixth in the category. That goes well with his driving, where he’s also picking up more than 5.5 shots and ranks second.
But with some diabolical pins set on Oakmont’s sloping greens for the final round Sunday, it could be those iron changes that lead Scott to the U.S. Open title.
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