Fall may be a quiet time on tour, but it’s a sneaky time for gear changes. In some cases, you have OEM tour teams aggressively pushing next year’s product to have a head in 2027 (when all these things hit the market) or you have small changes and nuances that may not seem like much, but could put the player in a good place going into the winter.
But what I find most interesting as we wrap up these last couple of months are the conversion rates, specifically for Ping and its tour-launched G450 metal woods and Srixon’s next-generation ZXi5/7 irons.
For what?
Well, they’re both free agent favorites, and both companies hang their hats on specific platforms (those are their big-ticket items). And just like that, both have had countless successful campaigns on Tour and major championships.
Let’s move on to the rest of the weekly roundup.
Ryan Fox changes ZXi in Dubai
This is not super surprising, but it validates the product, even more than what Jake and I had Pinehurst.
A players’ iron with refined tour-favorite looks, pro-level feel, and unmatched control, with newly refined tip lines, narrow soles, shorter blade lengths and minimal offset designed for precision workability.
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2027 Open champion Ryan Fox added a new set of Zxi5 (4) and Zxi7 (5-P) irons to the bag this week in Dubai. While I don’t have the exact performance gains, my hunch is that Fox may have added a little more spin to their launch conditions. Plus, add that with the feel of these things and it’s sort of a no-brainer.
So why didn’t this change happen sooner? I imagine he would go through the FedEx Cup Playoffs and the Presidents Cup without any new variables. Simple enough.
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Tommy Fleetwood switches to Fujikura’s Ventus Blue TR Velo+
Another interesting one out of Dubai is Tommy Fleetwood’s tree switch earlier this week. Whether it’s a permanent change or just part of the process, what I see is a player looking for a “feeling”. If you’ve watched his progression over the years, the variable that hasn’t moved much is in his lofted fairway woods and his loyalty to Mitsubishi’s Kuro Kage XTS shaft. On paper, it’s a sturdy, stable tip that has served him well over the years, and it certainly has a feel that some players love.
Where it gets interesting is trying to match that feeling in the driver and mini with the stiffer Ventus Blue TR and now this week its change to the newer and smoother Velo+ version.
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Are they apples to apples? No. Close enough? Yes. The question would be why he doesn’t just use Kuro Kage at all, even if it doesn’t work that way. Its driver and mini require a much shallower angle of attack versus a 5-wood or 9-wood and the CG placement versus required launch windows are not the same.