Welcome to Wall-to-Wall Equipment, the Monday morning gear wrap-up in which GOLF equipment editor Jonathan Wall takes you through the latest trends, rumors and breaking news.
Sweeps week
Rory McIlroy was the lone winner on Sunday at the Tour Championship. On the equipment side, however, you could contend there were multiple winners. TaylorMade laid claim to McIlroy’s incredible season — Scheffler’s as well — and saw its carbon-fiber face Stealth take the top two spots in the FedEx Cup standings. TaylorMade was the obvious 1A equipment winner.
Along with TaylorMade, Titleist took the 1B spot by setting a gear record at the Tour Championship. For the first time in the event’s history, Titleist swept every major equipment count (drivers, fairway woods, hybrids, driving irons, irons, wedges, putters and golf balls) at East Lake and saw 24 players (83 percent) in the 29-man field tee it up with at least one piece of Titleist gear in the bag.
Some might contend that limited field events make it easier to sweep the gear counts, but it should be noted that coming out of top in every category is far from a sure thing. The Tour Championship marked the fourth time during the 2021-22 Tour season — and the 27th since the start of 2019 — that Titleist has swept the board at a Tour event.
Titleist remains the only brand to have ever accomplished the feat. It’s not as impressive as winning $26-plus million in one weekend, but it’s still impressive nonetheless.
New addition
Professional golfers can only take so many poor rounds with the putter before they make a change. For Billy Horschel, the change came on Saturday at the Tour Championship. Searching for a spark on the greens, Horschel switched to an Axis1 prototype putter that was first tested out by major winner Justin Rose at the Wyndham Championship.
The putter, which has a similar look to the Axis1 Rose, helped Horschel record two sub-70 rounds and record a positive SG: Putting number over the final 36 holes. At No. 15 in the Official World Golf Ranking, Horschel is the second highest ranked player — behind Justin Rose — to use an Axis1 putter on the PGA Tour.
Hideki Matsuyama was also spotted with an Axis1 putter in the bag during a practice session at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, but he’s yet to put it in play.
Spy pics
When the Tour returns to the course next month, there’s a good chance Mizuno will have something new to show pros after photos of their soon-to-be-released JPX923 irons were posted on social in Japan.
Brooks Koepka won multiple majors with Mizuno’s JPX Tour model, so expect the latest version to be well received when it does surface at a future Tour event.
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