A new club entering a star PGA Tour player’s bag usually gets plenty of attention. There is pomp and circumstance among gearheads with plenty of speculation around how the latest weapon will perform.
But every now and then, that same club gets quietly replaced after barely any action.
Sometimes the replacement performs well in practice but never feels comfortable in competition. Sometimes a player gets encouraging results and goes back to the drawing board anyway. And sometimes the search ends with the club that was already working just fine before the experiment began (pros love to tinker, even after success … I’m looking at you, Viktor Hovland).
This year offered several examples from Rory McIlroy’s brief move into cavity-back irons to Collin Morikawa hitting for the zero torque-blade-mallet cycle early in the year.
Let’s dig into some of the notable club experiments that didn’t last and what recreational golfers can learn from them.
Rory McIlroy: TaylorMade P7CB irons
McIlroy’s cavity-back experiment began at the Australian Open in December 2025 and continued through his two Dubai appearances in January.
But by February’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, he had returned to his TaylorMade RORS Proto blades.
“That experiment’s over,” McIlroy said.
His explanation was more interesting than the announcement. McIlroy felt the P7CBs produced a slight right bias with swings that generated a neutral flight with his blades. That encouraged him to release the club more fully, an adjustment he could reasonably make during practice.
In competition, however, his familiar movement was harder to leave behind. After years of feeling a held-off position through impact, the new irons asked him to trust a new feel.
A key takeaway here is that when you get under pressure, your body tends to go back to its deepest instinct. What works in practice may not be as repeatable when a scorecard and pencil are in your hand.
That doesn’t erase the P7CB’s performance in our testing. In our 2025 player’s iron test (the club wasn’t tested this year), it earned an overall score of 8.8 with 9.1 scores for both accuracy and forgiveness. Although its distance score was only 7.7, the accuracy and forgiveness metrics gave it a respectable overall grade. It finished 10th out of 22 models tested.
Cavity-back irons are becoming more of a trend on the PGA Tour so this wasn’t a case of McIlroy switching back to blades out of ego. The clubs just forced him to make an adjustment that worked well in theory but not in reality.
For recreational golfers, the question is whether the new club improves your results with a swing you can repeat on the course.
Scottie Scheffler: TaylorMade Qi4D driver
Scheffler’s March driver experiment lasted even less time than McIlroy’s iron switch.
However, there was a happy ending to this one.
He put TaylorMade’s Qi4D in play at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, citing more consistent spin numbers as a reason for switching. But the following week at the Players Championship, his familiar Qi10 was back in the bag.
The issue was how the new driver responded to his preferred shots. Scheffler said that when he tried to hit his controlled fade, the Qi4D sometimes produced a draw, even when he struck the middle of the face.
“I have seen some improvements in the new driver; it’s just I haven’t been able to trust it,” Scheffler said.
That uncertainty carried into the Players where he struggled with misses to the right after returning to the Qi10. Changing back didn’t immediately restore his confidence.
Later in the year, Scheffler discovered his Qi10 was approaching the USGA’s limit for face springiness so he revisited the Qi4D at the FedEx St. Jude Championship in August and kept the driver through the Presidents Cup.
Scheffler explained at the BMW Championship that the Qi4D had already been tested extensively as his backup so he made the change before potentially being forced to replace the Qi10 following a conformity test.
His August setup had 13 grams in the front toe weight versus 10 grams in the front heel. It took Scheffler some time to find the right weight balance to make sure he could hit his fade off the tee.
You will probably remember that the Qi4D finished first overall among 42 drivers in this year’s driver testing, earning a 9.2 MGS Score. It ranked sixth for distance and fourth for both accuracy and forgiveness, winning through its combination of strengths.
The lesson here? Don’t give up on a club just because it doesn’t immediately provide the results you want. Sometimes a few small adjustments can be the difference.
Matt Fitzpatrick: Bettinardi BB48 mid-mallet
Fitzpatrick’s experiment accomplished something many abandoned clubs never achieve: a tournament victory.
He switched to a Bettinardi BB48 mid-mallet in the latter part of 2025 and won the DP World Tour Championship with it. He then used it for his first four PGA Tour starts of 2026.
But Fitzpatrick lost strokes putting in all four Tour appearances. At the Players Championship, he returned to his Bettinardi BB1 Flow prototype blade.
“Make rates with my blade were significantly better but strokes gained in general was pretty equal,” Fitzpatrick said before the Valspar Championship.
The difference showed up specifically between five and 15 feet. Fitzpatrick said his better conversion rate in that range convinced him to return to the blade after giving the mallet enough time to evaluate it.
He finished second at the Players, won the following week at the Valspar and later added a RBC Heritage title. Through those four starts with the blade, including the Masters, he gained strokes putting in every event.
Hey, blades aren’t dead for everyone!
Our 2026 blade test included the standard Bettinardi BB-1 which finished 21st out of 24 models. That ranking belongs to the retail model, however, rather than Fitzpatrick’s custom BB1 Fitz Flow. His version features distinctive semicircular face grooves, also offered on the Fitzpatrick replica models released in May.
What everyday golfers should focus on is how Fitzpatrick evaluated the change. Similar overall numbers concealed a meaningful difference in a coveted scoring range. He looked closely enough to identify it and was willing to reverse a switch that had already helped him win (#neverstopimproving).
Fitzpatrick had already won with the mid-mallet but he still reconsidered when the broader performance pattern became disappointing.
For what it’s worth, Bettinardi finished first and second in our 2026 mallet test with the BB 6.0 and BB 7.0, respectively. It’s clear the average golfer usually benefits greatly from a mallet or zero-torque putter.
But while blade putters are becoming less prominent on Tour, that doesn’t mean every single Tour pro (or golfer in general) should ignore the stats and feedback that prove how they are putting.
Cameron Young: Scotty Cameron 10.5 Xperimental prototype
Young’s prototype putter produced a spectacular round but it wasn’t in the bag for his next appearance.
Entering the Tour Championship, Young was frustrated by several weeks of disappointing putting. He had lost strokes on the greens in five of his previous eight events and decided to replace his Scotty Cameron Phantom 9.5R with a 10.5 Xperimental prototype.
Young explained that the replacement offered a simpler appearance while retaining the same footprint and shape. The main difference was the 10.5 had an aluminum face insert rather than a Studio Carbon Steel insert.
His team had been working on it for a while but the decision to use it was fairly spontaneous.
“I just pulled it out of the bag on Monday, hit a few with it, and never put the other one back,” Young said.
He shot 62 on Friday of the Tour Championship, gaining nearly four strokes putting and finishing by holing a long eagle putt. That was an encouraging response to the change (although Young also hit 13 fairways and 14 greens during the round so it wasn’t purely the putting that helped him).
By the Presidents Cup roughly a month later, however, Young had replaced the 10.5 with a Phantom 5.5—a head shape he had previously used including when he shot 59 at the 2024 Travelers Championship.
Fascinatingly, the reasoning came down to alignment.
Young said he had been testing the new 5.5 at home and found he aligned it better than the 9.5 or 10.5. The shorter sightline on the top rail and the head’s centering features helped draw him back to that shape (his version also featured an aluminum face insert rather than the retail model’s Studio Carbon Steel insert).
This one wasn’t simply a failed experiment given how Young knew he could have success with the 10.5 in competition. It was the additional testing and confidence about alignment consistency that proved the difference.
Our 2026 testing offers another reason to look beyond a putter’s overall ranking. The Scotty Cameron Phantom 9.2R finished ninth overall among 29 mallets but led the field for long-putt performance. It wasn’t one of Young’s prototype models but that split illustrates why golfers should examine where a putter performs best rather than looking purely at the overall ranking.
Collin Morikawa: TaylorMade wide-body blade putter
Morikawa’s early-season putter search moved quickly.
He began 2026 with a TaylorMade Spider ZT Black, then switched to a TaylorMade wide-body blade after the Sony Open.
Before his next start at the Phoenix Open, that blade had already lost its place.
Its replacement came from a casual round in Las Vegas with Kurt Kitayama, Kitayama’s brother Daniel and Min Woo Lee.
Frustrated with the blade, Morikawa tried Daniel’s Spider Tour X flow-neck putter around the 13th hole. He liked it enough to use it for the remainder of the round and then put it into tournament play.
“It’s a comfort thing for me,” Morikawa explained.
If you’re keeping score at home, Morikawa went from zero-torque mallet → wide-body blade → conventional mallet.
The rear “T” alignment feature appealed to him while the flow neck helped provide the release sensation he wanted. He used the borrowed putter at Phoenix and then won the following week at Pebble Beach, earning his first victory since October 2023.
Even that victory wasn’t evidence of consistently brilliant putting: Morikawa lost roughly 0.05 strokes on the greens for the week despite gaining more than 1.6 in the final round.
The lesson? Sometimes the most useful comparison comes from trying something different when you’re on the course. Morikawa’s brief blade experiment ended when another putter immediately felt more comfortable.
What should recreational golfers take from this?
Our rankings can help identify equipment worth testing but that doesn’t automatically mean it’s going to be successful for you.
Always keep your previous equipment available for comparison and make sure to gather plenty of data. Evaluate several sessions and rounds rather than letting one great (or horrible) day settle the decision.
Does the iron tighten your carry distances? Does the putter help you aim and control speed? Does the ball provide the flight and stopping power you need?
That answer might lean one way on the practice range and another way on the course so you have to be open to changes based on the more evidence you gather.
Your own results should decide whether it stays. Don’t be afraid to switch more than once.
Top Photo Caption: Rory McIlroy during his cavity-back iron experiment. (GETTY IMAGES/Ross Kinnaird)
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