With Xander Schauffele’s victory at the Baycurrent Classic, it’s another win for Callaway’s popular Apex TCB iron platform, the company’s most popular on Tour.
Including Schauffele’s two major titles in 2024, and Jon Rahm’s 2023 Masters and 2021 U.S. Open victories, the TCB platform has won the grand slam in the last five years.
Schauffele has been in the Apex TCB ’24 and the previous edition TCB ’21, since their release in 2021, but the current model is a good bit larger in chassis size than the TaylorMade P750s he used as a rookie. While TCB stands for “Tour Cavity Back,” the Apex TCB 24s have slightly more offset than other irons in the category.
And there are other players who have switched from pure blades like this week’s guest on GOLF’s Fully Equipped podcast, Erik van Rooyen. Van Rooyen switched from the 2018 Apex MB blades about a year ago.
“It was a forgiveness thing. And curiosity, more than anything,” van Rooyen said of the switch. “I’ve played a blade-style club since high school. And I mean, eventually, technology is probably going to have some effect on it and an improvement on things.
“It was met from a place of curiosity. What I found was, I switched into the TCB the week before Sony and just tighter dispersion. That was it, tighter dispersion.”
The performance benefits were obvious, but the TCBs and MBs are very different-looking clubs from address. Fully Equipped co-host Johnny Wunder asked van Rooyen if that made the transition difficult at all.
“I think aesthetically, it has to fit my eye,” he said. “I feel like I’m quite sensitive in that aspect. The minute something looks quite off, it’s hard for me to go, oh, just kind of close your eyes and hit. Like, I see it and I get a feel for it.
“But I think the transition was so, it was way easier than I thought it would be, which I was impressed by. So, yeah, playing a blade for so long, I thought, ‘Jeez, dude, I might have to try this for like two weeks.'”
View Product
