In Scottie Scheffler’s four-year rise to the top of the golf world, one constant has been his irons.
Scheffler has arguably become one of the greatest ball strikers of the generation, and his win this past weekend at the American Express secures his 20th PGA Tour victory. That joins him with Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus as the only players to earn 20 PGA Tour wins before the age of 30.
Saying Scheffler’s equipment has changed dramatically since his first win at the WM Phoenix Open would be an overstatement, despite the fact that he signed with TaylorMade just prior to winning the 2022 Masters, after his first two PGA Tour victories.
But there have been a few major constants in Scheffler’s bag across all 20 of his PGA Tour victories and the biggest ones are his TaylorMade P7TW irons.
Scheffler was playing TaylorMade’s P730 irons in 2020 when he was paired with the P7TW’s namesake, Tiger Woods, in the final round of the 2020 Masters. After witnessing Woods’ ballstriking first-hand, Scheffler wanted to test the P7TWs himself.
TaylorMade P7TW Custom Irons
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“What I noticed when I hit them at home was, I was able to hit different windows, so when I flighted it down, I could pitch it lower than I could the P730,” Scheffler said. “When I wanted to hit it up, I could hit it higher and I saw more variability in the shots and then the distance control was basically the exact same. I saw the benefits of being able to flight it down and keep it flatter and not have that overspin with a little bit more variety.”
At the time, Scheffler also worked through a major change to his specs with coach Randy Smith. Scheffler had previously played his clubs 1 inch long and that meant they weighed in at a robust D6 swingweight.
Smith’s idea was to shorten his set by 3/4 inches and make the irons one degree upright to counteract the loss in length. This brought the irons to a much more typical D3 swingweight and armed with the new spec and a new iron, Scheffler has since become the PGA Tour’s best ball striker — and by a wide margin.
Scheffler finished fourth in Strokes Gained: Approach in 2022 and has led the category the past two seasons. While two of his rounds this week didn’t have Strokes Gained data, he did hit 82 percent of his greens, good for T6 in the field and on Sunday, just in the first 14 holes, he stuffed approaches to 4 fee 13 inches, 2 feet, 2 feet and 4 feet on his way to pulling away for a four-shot win.
