ORLANDO, Fla. – Pinned to a bulletin board in the locker room at last week’s Cognizant Classic was a notice titled, “2026 Competitions Reminders,” that included five bullet points. One particularly interesting item applied to an adjustment to the rule regarding “broken or damaged clubs.”
Model Local Rule G-9 began this year and allows for a player to replace a damaged club with a “component” that has been “carried by a player or another person.” The primary application of the rule allows players to replace a driver head that has been cracked with another head that’s been carried in a golf bag. Players have been allowed to replace damaged clubs, but this adjustment allows for a more immediate replacement instead the traditional scramble to the locker room to retrieve the player’s backup.
Ludvig Åberg was the first PGA Tour player to take advantage of the model local rule while playing last month’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, as first reported by the Associated Press on March 17.
“It was [No.] 18 at Pebble on the third day, and my tee shot sailed into the parking lot [out of bounds]. It was so far right,” said Åberg, who was allowed to hit his third shot after a one-stroke penalty with his rebuilt driver. “I knew that wasn’t right, and I looked at the face and I could feel the crack going across the clubface. We had the backup in the bag, so we changed it.”
Åberg was mindful of carrying a replacement driver head in his golf bag following a similar incident a few years ago at the Texas Open.
“I had an incident where my clubface fell off at impact, I hit a shot and the clubface went like 30 yards [forward],” Åberg explained. “So ever since we’ve been really particular with backup heads, and we saw that the rule had changed ahead of this year, so we put it in the bag in Palm Springs.”
According to multiple equipment representatives, many players are following Åberg’s lead and keeping a backup driver head in their golf bags just to be safe – and even those who aren’t said they are considering it.
“Normally I have one in the locker but I probably should start carrying an extra one,” Ryan Fox said. “It’s kind of hard, you have to prove that it’s broken. I feel like now that doesn’t happen that much. The ones I tend to break just get little flat spots, you know the club’s not right but it’s not like an obvious one. It doesn’t spin as much and it goes a little crooked. Trying to argue that point to a rules official is kind of hard, so you just suck it up.”
According to the model local rule, the component must be “significantly damaged,” and it doesn’t allow for the replacement of clubs in “cases of abuse.” The rule could also apply to other adjustable clubs, like fairway woods, or a shaft as long as the components are not assembled.
“I don’t hit 3-wood enough times a round to warrant it, whereas driver is the one where you can hit it 10 times a round, maybe more,” Fox said. “If I break a 3-wood you’re kind of like, I can make that up chipping a driver or hitting 2-iron. You can gap that one, but driver is probably more important.”
Any replacement components, either clubhead or shaft, must “fill the gap created when the player took the broken or damaged club out of play,” which means players can only replace a damaged driver head with the same specs.