Xander Schauffele’s driver switch mirrors this fellow major winner | Tour Report

Xander Schauffele put Callaway’s new Quantum Triple Diamond driver in play at the TGL, but for his PGA Tour season debut, he’s making a not-so-subtle tweak.

While Schauffele is sticking with the new Quantum TD, he’s making a switch from the Mitsubishi Diamana PD 70 TX shaft he’s played for three seasons — winning his first two majors in 2024 — to a newer Diamana Whiteboard (WB) 73 TX. It’s a move very similar to what Callaway stablemate Jon Rahm did just over a year ago.

As Callaway Tour Content Manager Johnny Thompson told GOLF this week, with the work Schauffele has been doing to gain speed, he “outgrew” the PD shaft and actually had been working on the change for several months.

Schauffele initially reached out to Callaway Tour Rep Kellen Watson about wanting to test new shafts in September, before the Ryder Cup and his later win at the Zozo Championship.

“He felt like he was getting a little faster, a little stronger and he was starting to feel like the PD had a little bit of looseness to it that he wanted to address,” Thompson said.

Watson built up some shafts with stiffer handle sections, but he never ended up doing much testing with them. His schedule got busy with the Ryder Cup and trip to Japan and he and his wife Maya welcomed their first child in October.

Then it was November and Watson and Schuaffele started to test the new Quantum drivers with new shafts and they started to narrow it down to the Whiteboard and a Ventus Black 7-TX.

“He played both at home and he had some matches with some pretty good players and he just found that WB kind of lined up for him on shot shape,” Thompson said. “It had the right feel. He said that it definitely felt tighter — not in a bad way — but he could feel the difference that he wanted to feel.”

View Product

ALSO AVAILABLE AT: PGA Tour Superstore, Callaway

But strangely, that wasn’t the driver Schauffele put in play at the TGL in late December. It was the new Quantum TD head, but with the old PD shaft. It confused Callaway, too.

“Kellen was kind of surprised that he did that as well,” Thompson said. “And I don’t know if in Xander’s mind it was, ‘Okay, I know, like what PD feels like, and I got this new head, if it kind of took one step back to go too forward.’ But it seems like the feels were reconfirmed.”

The reason the WB worked for Schauffele comes down to the difference in profile. Compared to the PD, the WB is stiffer in the handle, slightly stiffer in the mid section and a touch softer at the tip. The handle stiffness took away the “looseness” Schauffele was describing while the slightly softer tip allowed him to retain a little feel as the shaft loads in the downswing, Thompson said.

Schauffele’s new Driver Specs:

Callaway Quantum Triple Diamond
Loft: 10.5
OptiFit Setting: D/-1
Weights: Fade
Shaft: Mitsubishi WB 73 TX
Length: 45 7/16″ EOG
Swingweight: D1.7
Grip: Golf Pride MCC Align (1 + two RH wraps)

What’s really interesting about this move is that it mirrors work Watson did last in late 2024 with another Callaway superstar, Rahm. Rahm had used the Aldila Tour Green 75TX shaft in his driver dating back to his college days, but finally made the move to a Fujikura Ventus Black.

“For a long time, Jon’s Aldila Tour Green worked well for his timing and swing tempo, but as he’s gotten stronger and faster he was finding it more difficult to time up his delivery into the ball and find his feels,” GOLF’s Johnny Wunder, then Callaway’s Tour content manager, told GOLF at the time. “The Ventus Black profile helped Jon feel the clubhead better and allowed him to swing with his natural tempo without manipulation. This has led to a much better dispersion off the tee and helped to eliminate the left miss. It was never about raising Jon’s ceiling or adding distance since he is already such a good driver of the ball, but instead, lifting his floor.”

Schauffele made one other change to begin his season, switching to the new 2025 version of Callaway’s popular Apex Utility Wood.

Mitsubishi Chemical Diamana WB Wood Shaft

 
The board is back. After a few years away, the vintage surfboard always associated with Diamana™ makes its return with Diamana WB. Built on an extraordinarily popular and tour-proven platform, WB brings classic low-low performance and the legendary stability and control you’ve come to expect after two decades.
The first in the 6th Generation Diamana™ family, WB is designed with all the traditional branding that made Diamana™ so beloved, including flowers in the handle section, a surfboard behind the Diamana logo, and return to the original 53/63/73/83 weight class designations. But rest assured, the only thing throwback about Diamana™ WB is its appearance. Indeed, super high-modulus 80-ton Dialead Pitch Fiber is used in the butt section to deliver maximum stability and increased energy transfer and high modulus 46-ton fiber is used in the shaft’s angle plies to reduce torque without increasing weight for improved control and stability. Carbon fiber orientation at the tip section is optimized to further lower torque.
The classic feel of this Diamana™ profile is achieved through the use of our proprietary Xlink Tech™ Resin System and MR70 technologies. Our Xlink Tech™ Resin System increases the strength and durability of the shaft while driving carbon fiber volume up for better feel. Feel and strength is further increased through the use of our aerospace-grade MR70 fiber – our strongest fiber to date.

View Product

Uncompensated praise

In a world where contracts and money make up so much of what goes in players’ bags week in and week out, it’s extraordinarily rare to hear a player talk about a piece of gear they aren’t paid to play.

But when it comes to gear-free agents, nothing is stopping them from heaping praise on their clubs.

That’s exactly what LPGA Hall-of-Famer Lydia Ko did this week in talking about two new pieces of gear she added to the bag this season.

Ko, who’s not sponsored by any equipment company this year after her last endorsement contract with Protoconcept expired at the end of 2025, is starting the season with a new Ping G440 K driver and brand new Vokey SM11 wedges.

Titleist Vokey SM11 Tour Chrome Custom Wedge

View Product

ALSO AVAILABLE AT: PGA Tour Superstore, Titleist

The three-time major winner has played Vokey wedges since 2022 and had no qualms calling the brand “the best” on Wednesday at the LPGA’s season-opening Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions.

“I have the new SM11 wedges, which I got last week,” Ko said. “I’m not endorsed. I truly believe the Vokey wedges are the best, so I just have those.”

She also lauded her new Ping G440 K driver, replacing the G430 Max 10K she used to to win her last major at the 2024 AIG Women’s Open. That change was a little tougher for her to make.

“Changed into my 440 K driver versus the 430 10k,” she said. “It was a big move, which this too I’m not endorsed. I have no club deals. The 430 10k my coach said I almost have like an emotional attachment to this driver, so it was hard decision to make, but the numbers and the shot shapes that I’ve been seeing on the golf course with my new 440K has been great. Those two are probably the biggest changes I made.”

PING G440 K Custom Driver

View Product

ALSO AVAILABLE AT: PGA Tour Superstore

Even some of the best players in the world get emotional about their golf clubs. Collin Morikawa did the same two weeks ago when he retired his TaylorMade SIM Ti 3-wood.

Clearly, the switches are paying off as Ko opened with a 69 in Round 1 at Lake Nona and moved into a share of the 36-hole lead at eight under with a 67 on Friday.

Same ole Brooks

In case you haven’t heard, Brooks Koepka is back on the PGA Tour this week, and so too are some of the oldest clubs in pro golf in his 2017 M2 3-wood and Nike Vapor Fly Pro 3-iron.

In his press conference this week at the Farmers Insurance Open, GOLF’s Jake Morrow asked Koepka if he was testing anything to replace those clubs and in classic Brooks form, he said he wasn’t.

“I haven’t really tested anything,” Koepka said. “I’m not a tinkerer. If something works, something works and I don’t really switch up. I like everything that I’ve got in the bag. I feel like I have a good understanding of the control, where the misses are. Yeah, I haven’t really tinkered with anything, man. I like my bag setup right now.”

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Koepka hangs onto those clubs specifically.

Most fitters would agree that 3-woods and long irons are the toughest clubs for players to switch simply because they’re probably two of the hardest clubs to hit. So when players find one that does exactly what they want it to do, they hang on until they break.

We saw the same with Henrik Stenson and his legendary Callaway Diablo Octane 3-wood. Koepka isn’t even the only owner of a Nike Vapor Fly Pro 3-iron on the PGA Tour as Tony Finau still uses one too.

1/2

2/2

Those clubs were also in Koepka’s bag when he became the Brooks Koepka we know today. Both clubs have been in the bag for all five of Koepka’s major titles and were released just before Koepka began of his run of dominance at the 2017 U.S. Open. The 3-iron was released in 2016, one of the last Nike golf club releases before the company exited the hard goods business later that year. The M2 3-wood is widely regarded as one of the greatest fairway woods of all time and was released the following year.

When you hit it as far as Brooks Koepka, what exactly are you looking for in a 3-wood? He doesn’t need more ball speed, it spins the way he wants it to and the ball always flies through the window he expects it to? Why would he want to try something else?

The same applies to the 3-iron.

Check this out

This section is dedicated to one cool photo we’ve snapped recently on Tour, but haven’t had a reason to share yet. For this week, check out Vokey Tour Rep Aaron Dill hard at work getting players into the new SM11 wedges.

Odds and Ends

Some other gear changes and notes we’re tracking this week.

Marco Penge debuted as a PXG staffer with the company’s Lightning Tour Mid driver, Secret Weapon Mini Driver, Gen8 0311 X Driving iron, 0317 CB 4-iron, 0317 ST 5-9 iron and a prototype PXG putter … Max Greyserman has been playing an Odyssey Prototype S2S Tri-Hot with a single-bend shaft … Cameron Young and Tom Kim added 20-degree GT1 hybrids to their bags with 80-gram fairway wood shafts … Young also moved into a full set of SM11 wedges along with Sami Valimaki … 165 SM11s were in play, 16 more than a week ago, and 234 of the gap, sand and lob wedges in the field were Vokeys … Wyndham Clark has a new Ping G440 K driver after starting the season with a G430 LST … Former TaylorMade staffers Jason Day and Justin Rose added new Qi4D fairway woods. Day added the 3-wood and Rose a 7-wood. Both were gaming the M6 from 2019 … TaylorMade had 110 fairways in play, including 33 Qi4Ds and 3 Qi4D Tours … Eric Cole added Project X’s new Titan shaft to his TaylorMade Qi4D 3-wood and PXG Lightning 7-wood … Alex Noren upgraded to the Quantum Max D driver … Hideki Matsuyama switched to a Graphite Design Tour AD-FI 8-X driver shaft … Gary Woodland added an OPTM-X 7-wood.