It appears Rory Mcilroy has decided to make an iron change on the eve of the 2020 Memorial Tournament.
The world’s No. 1 player used TaylorMade’s P-730 irons since he signed an endorsement deal with the company in May 2017, often blending in a P-750 3-iron and 4-iron. However, images provided to Golfweek show McIlroy’s bag inside TaylorMade’s PGA Tour van with a set of the company’s prototype P-7MB irons. It appears McIlroy has a P-7MB 3-iron through pitching wedge in the bag.
The P-7MB irons first appeared in the bag of Charley Hull, who put them into play at the Clutch Pro Tour event two weeks ago in England.
While TaylorMade has not released any official word on the new irons or details about when they might be made available to the public, we can tell a few things about them from the photos.
1. They’re forged. This is a no-brainer. The word FORGED is clearly shown on the hosel and nearly all better-player muscleback blades are forged.
2. They have a different sole than Tiger Woods’ irons. It is also hard to tell from the photos whether the clubs are larger or have a longer blade length than McIlroy’s old P-730 irons. The P-730 is currently the most compact iron in the TaylorMade stable. Woods’ P-7TW iron has a longer blade length than the P-730, and the soles of Woods’ irons are milled. There are no milling marks on the bottom of McIlroy’s P-7MB.
3. They look different but probably feel and perform similarly to the P-730. The P-730 irons had a milled line that went across the back of the head, creating an upper and lower section on the back of the club. It was designed to remove weight and lower the center of gravity slightly.
The P-7MB does not have the milled section, but elite ballstrikers such as McIlroy, Dustin Johnson and Collin Morikawa, all of whom play the P-730 and are among the leaders in strokes gained approach the green on the PGA Tour, would not want to make radical changes to their irons. The fact McIlroy appears willing to make the change indicates that he found switching to be fairly easy.