Why Tour usage isn’t indicative of a great driver

Tommy Fleetwood’s breakthrough victory at the Tour Championship was huge for TaylorMade in more ways than one.

For starters, it was the 13th win of the season for TaylorMade’s Spider putters, which were the winningest putters on the PGA Tour in 2025. But also, it was the second win of the year for the company’s Qi35 driver and the first that wasn’t an opposite-field event.

While Fleetwood has played the Qi35 all season, TaylorMade’s most famous athletes, World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and No. 2 Rory McIlroy, who have combined for eight wins and three major titles this season, have largely stuck with last year’s Qi10 drivers.

Despite that, the Qi35 has been one of the more popular drivers of the year at retail, which is why, on this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, co-host Jake Morrow pointed out how Tour usage doesn’t really say anything about how good a driver is or isn’t.

“Like having heads that you can pull better levers on with Qi35 than you could with Qi10, I’ve heard from a bunch of fitters, has made the amateur game and the weekend guy fit better into a Qi35 product than a Qi10 product,” Morrow said. “Just because two guys on Tour that are very, very, very good are playing an old special model, let’s keep in mind, does not mean that that Qi35 failed because it’s killing it in retail and in fitting bays.”

Fellow co-host Johnny Wunder pointed out that McIlroy and Scheffler aren’t the only players who are playing older driver heads, and in fact, it’s a bit of a trend on the Tour given how good 2024 product was.

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By:

Jack Hirsh

Wunder recalled that Scheffler has a Qi35 driver he likes as much as his Qi10.

“It’s as good or maybe even slightly better,” Wunder said. “The opportunity that he had to switch was when his driver failed at the PGA Championship. So he had a Qi10 and a Qi35 in his locker, right? But the psychology was like, ‘I don’t want to change looks at a major. So I’m just going to grab the Qi10 because that one I know, even though I hit this Qi35 great, but during a major, I don’t want to look at a different crown. I want to look at the same one I’ve been looking at forever.’

“That’s why it’s still in the bag.”

This week’s guest, Ian Fraser, also pointed out that Scheffler was limited in his ability to thoroughly test the Qi35 at the beginning of the season because of his hand injury. McIlroy had some limitations as well.

“He wasn’t in great form at the start of the season, and you’re never going to switch drivers into anything new when you’re not in great form, and you’re trying to kind of find it,” Fraser said. “So that kind of testing window where he would normally get into a new driver, he missed that because of the injury to his hand.