Rory McIlroy, one of us?
Not exactly, though McIlroy did open his new year with a leading, 5-under 66 Thursday at the DP World Tour’s Dubai Invitational while gaming almost a full set of cavity-back irons.
McIlroy kept his TaylorMade P760 4-iron in the bag but swapped in the P7CBs from 5-iron through 9-iron, just like he had done on the weekend last month at the Australia Open.
“If there’s help to be had, I’ll definitely take it,” McIlroy said. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it for a while. And even in Dubai at the end of last year, I hit a couple of 5-irons that I mis-struck slightly, and instead of it maybe coming up 5 or 7 yards short, it was coming up more like 10 to 15 yards short. So, I asked the guys at TaylorMade to build me up a set.”
Golf.com’s Jack Hirsch spoke with a TaylorMade rep, who explained McIlroy’s decision to make the change was about “more forgiveness” and “improved distance control.”
McIlroy took the new irons with him to Australia, though he only used the 5- and 6-irons for the first two days. He did, however, hit them for the entirety of last week’s TGL opener.
“With that firm turf down there [in Australia], I felt like those irons were going through the turf better than the blades,” McIlroy said. “And I practiced at home with them since. … I like what I’ve seen at home, and today was a good test for it, and I felt like everything was pretty good.”
McIlroy also put the 2026 version of the TP5 ball in play in Dubai, too.
Here’s a look at his bag setup for this week:
Driver: TaylorMade Qi4D (9 degrees)
Fairway woods: TaylorMade Qi4D (3, 15 degrees; 5, 18 degrees)
Irons: TaylorMade P760 (4), TaylorMade P7CB (5-9)
Wedges: TaylorMade MG5 (46, 50, 54 and 60 degrees)
Putter: TaylorMade Spider Tour X
Ball: TaylorMade TP5