It’s the early running for the gear story of the year, but Rory McIlroy switching from his RORS PROTO blades to P7CB cavity-back irons could mean more for TaylorMade.
On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, co-hosts Johnny Wunder and Jake Morrow discussed McIlroy’s switch and what it might mean for the brand’s iron line moving forward.
In case you haven’t heard, McIlroy made a months-long switch official when he played a 5-9 iron set of TaylorMade P7CB irons this past week in Dubai to open his season with a T3. The move began in Australia last month, where McIlroy inserted P7CB long irons before adding the rest of the set by the weekend.
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“If there’s help to be had, I’ll definitely take it,” McIlroy said last Thursday after an opening round 66 at the Dubai Invitational. “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 five or seven yards short, it was coming up more like 10 to 15 yards short.”
McIlroy’s set has a pre-worn leading grind similar to that of his P760 long irons, but Wunder said more work is coming.
; "What Rory McIlroy's new irons mean for TaylorMade | Fully Equipped 1")
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“And they are working on a set— a very Rory-specific cavity back set,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s a prototype set or whatever, but they are working on a set. It’s ongoing.
They’ve been doing it for a few months. It’s not ready, but he wants to play these ones to get used to the idea of playing cavity back irons.”
The P7CB irons came out in the summer of 2024, which means this summer would be two years from their release. Could they be due for a refresh already? And is the “Rory-specific” cavity back what’s going to replace them?.
“My guess is that that’s probably the set that they’re screwing around with right now,” Wunder said of a potential P7CB replacement. “So I think it helps if you are a TaylorMade or Callaway and you’re launching, you have designs on launching a new cavity back or new tour iron, it behooves you to make your premier player that would play that iron, get them in the bag sooner than later. So if I were TaylorMade, I’d be trying to push to get those in the bag for the summer. So by the time that the cavity backs hit the market, he’s already in them, he’s already made them famous, and everybody wants them.”
