Collin Morikawa’s equipment changes helped him win the 2021 British Open

TaylorMade P-770 (4), P-7MC (5-9), P-730 (PW), with True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 shafts. (TaylorMade P-770 from $174.99 each at dickssportinggoods.com and carlsgolfland.com; P-7MC irons from $174.99 each at dickssportinggoods.com and golfgalaxy.com.) 

For over a decade, Tiger Woods held the mantle as the best iron payer in the world. Today, it’s Morikawa. He leads the PGA Tour in strokes gained approach the green (1.502). The spread between Morikawa and second-ranked player, Paul Casey, is 0.595, which is about the same as the difference between Casey and 56th-ranked Jason Kokrak.

Coming into the British Open, Morikawa used a blended set of irons. At Torrey Pines during the U.S. Open, he had a hollow-bodied TaylorMade P-770 4-iron, P-7MC irons in his 5- and 6-iron and TaylorMade’s muscleback P-7MB in his 7-iron through pitching wedge. But after completing the Scottish Open, Morikawa reached out to Rietveld and said that he was not hitting his mid- and short irons as well as he usually does. Things were fractionally off.

After giving different ideas some thought, Rietveld asked Morikawa how he was hitting his 6-iron. Morikawa replied that he felt that specific club was fine. 

“I said that maybe it was the sole geometry on the (6-iron) MC versus the blades in his mid- and short irons,” Rietveld said. “I told him that I thought the right thing to do was build up a 7-, 8-, 9- and pitching wedge in the P-7MC to match the rest of your set, test it and take it from there.”

The TaylorMade P-7MC worked through the links turf more effectively for Morikawa than the P-7MB. (Peter van den Berg-USA TODAY Sports)

The P-7MC has slightly less relief on the leading edge and slightly less bounce than the P-7MB, so Rietveld thought that Morikawa’s mid- and short-iron shots might not be working through the firm Scottish ground the way Morikawa likes, leading him to hit shots at touch thin.

During testing on Monday at Royal St. George’s, the MC irons hit the ball higher than their muscleback counterparts, which was expected, but they also made a noticeably different sound.

“With Collin, you pick that up pretty quickly, and he picks that up pretty quickly and how the club is going through the links turf,” Rietveld said. 

Morikawa hit the type of shots he wanted to hit more easily and more often with the MC irons, but his eyes and the TrackMan launch monitor did not see a difference in the performance between the P-7MC and the P-7MB pitch wedges.

“In Collin’s mind, if it ain’t better and it ain’t going to make an important, if it’s the same, he’s not switching it,” Rietveld said.