In our forums, one user has come forth with an interesting chicken-or-egg style question, namely, whether they should invest in a club fitting and properly fitting clubs now to avoid bad habits, or if they should get better before being fit.

User @Stylez777 wrote:

“Hello WRXers…I am a very green, inconsistent golfer looking to finally commit to practicing and taking regular lessons with a PGA pro. I want to make sure my equipment isn’t actively hindering my ability to learn properly.

My Profile & Data:
Physical Fit: Taller golfer 6’2″ 290lbs. Recently assessed by a tech who measured my wrist-to-floor at 39″ and recommended +1″ length and 2° upright lie angle Irons.

Current Irons: JPX EZ 2016 Hand-me-down standard length/lie irons with 60g graphite senior-flex shafts.

Current 7-Iron Stats: Carry distance on that sim averaged around 125 yards. Club speed was around 67 mph.

Tested 7-Iron Stats (+1″ Stiff Steel Callaway XR 26): Distance jumped to 145–150 yards with a 1.3 smash factor.

The tech told me that swinging my lightweight senior flex at my size is killing my ability to develop a proper, repeatable swing. He was pushing an all-in-one Callaway XR 26 box set, but I know I can custom-order current game-improvement heads (like Srixon ZXiR, Callaway Ai Smoke, or Mizuno JPX 925) in my exact specs online. I also already have a driver and just bought a new Cleveland HB Soft 2 putter.

My Questions for the Forum:
Change now or wait? For where I am in my journey, should I replace my current irons for proper +1″ and 2° upright clubs immediately, or is it better to stick with the standard senior flex Irons I have now until my swing develops more? I’m most concerned with fighting ill-fitting equipment and if it truly is going to hinder my ability to develop a better swing.

Custom GI Set vs. Box Set: If I do pull the trigger, am I better off piecing together a custom-spec game-improvement set (like a 6–PW) or buying an off-the-shelf “long” package set? (Selling my current Iron and Driver)

I don’t want to needlessly spend money thinking a club will magically make me better, I just want the correct baseline tools to learn the game properly. I appreciate any insights!

Members in the forum chimed in with their own philosophies, with some encouraging a proper fitting and others suggesting lessons before a financial gear investment. Here are a few posts from the thread, but make sure to check out the entire discussion and have your say at the link below.

• Lord Helmet: “I dont know the answer. But as with any sport golf has fundamentals (grip, posture, alignment, etc) that you can work on regardless of what club you have in your hand. If it were me I would find an instructor who will work with what you bring to the table and not try to pigeonhole you into a book illustration of positions in the swing. I would discuss with them your situation with clubs, etc. and get their advice and opinion. Your current setup wont hinder you IMHO but after developing a repeatable motion you could then look at what might serve you better. Im a reformed golfer in that I fully embrace the fact that the equipment should work for your swing and how you deliver the club to the ball (Used to just buy stuff and do whatever I could to make it work). Once I started doing this I became a better golfer and can score in the mid 70s now when playing well. I dont hit 300yd bombs and I dont hit my PW 160 yards either. Based on your height and weight, you should be hitting a 7i further unless you have a physical limitation so my guess on paper is that you have some swing stuff to sort out. Even with the new stick, the smash of 1.3 is IMHO low, further leading me to believe that if you sort the swing first you will be off and running and can then decide which clubs work the best for you. G luck!”
• BowMain42: “The tech was full of crap. To echo Helmet, get some lessons with your current clubs (great call on that HB, btw… fantastic putters) to get a swing grooved before you go get new ones. Fixing the swing will increase swing speed just due to the better mechanics (i.e. a better swing) and setup improvements will also impact the specs. Getting new clubs first and then taking good lessons is like getting fitted for a suit and then going on a bulk. And your pro could probably give you a general idea what kinds of things to look for when you DO go club shopping after a few lessons.”
• Jraallen: “Without going too deep, if it were me I’d look for a cheap used set of regular flex irons on eBay for like 2-250. If your current irons are too whippy and wobbly and you’re feeling that in the swing then yea it can be messing with you. You can of course adjust your swing to fit them, but it might make life and learning a lot easier to be able to swing a bit more naturally. But at this stage I think you’d be wasting money on a fitted set. Then I’d look into getting fitted down the line once you’ve practiced more and have a more repeatable swing. But that’s just me.”

Entire Thread: “Am I fighting my gear and do I need new clubs?”

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Two big names made significant changes to their driver setups ahead of the 2026 Memorial Tournament. Rory McIlroy and Cameron Young both decided to make changes before taking on Jack Nicklaus’ Muirfield Village Golf Club, just a couple of weeks before the U.S. Open.

McIlroy’s tweaks weren’t major, but he did move into the slightly heavier Fujikura Ventus Black 7X shaft. McIlroy had been using the 6X for most of the year, including during his Masters victory.

For that victory, McIlroy used two 4-gram weights in the front and two 11-gram weights in the back. This has also changed with McIlroy now going heavier with to rear 13-gram weights.

The switch in weighting is all about stability for McIlroy, with the shaft weighing around 12 grams more than the original build.

Young, who has already won twice this year at The Players and Cadillac Champion, made a more significant alteration to his bag. He’s transitioned into Titleist’s GTS driver lineup. Originally in an 11-degree Titleist GT3 (set at D1 on the SureFit Hosel), he’s gone with one degree less loft on the GTS3 head.

“Cameron’s one of those players that’s always looking for opportunities to get better,” said JJ Van Wezenbeeck, Titleist’s senior director of player promotions. “He had been one of the early testers of GTS. Finally had some time at home after having such a great run to spend a little time with it, and we were able to kind of find a GTS3 in a 10 degree as opposed to the GT3 11 degree in D1. Able to get really good spin stability, really good ball speeds and kind of find the sweet spot he’s looking for as we move in the summer months and his speeds start to creep up as the temperatures rise.”

With effectively a quarter of a degree less loft and the help of GTS’s dual weighting on the 3 model, Van Wezenbeeck was able to get the same launch as the previously higher-lofter GT head but remove around 150 RPMs of spin, “which was really the sweet spot to match up with his golf ball.”

Along with Young’s driver change, he’s also adjusted his iron shafts, but soft-stepping them to help with the more controlled short selection he has in his arsenal.

“Yeah, really was finding that his shafts in golf ball were matching up really well, but he really likes to hit some off-speed shots and was finding as we were moving into the firmer greens in the summer that his golf ball’s flying very great through the wind, but he wants to move back into hitting some of these softer shots,” Van Wezenbeeck said. “So we were kind of experimenting with some options, X1, X 7, soft stepped versus his X7 and found that the X7 soft step gave him a really nice combination where it’s not that much higher. It just allows him when he hits that off-speed shot to have a little bit more control and feel like he can hit those shots with more confidence.”

Soft stepping is the term used when club builders change the stiffness of a set of irons by putting the lower-numbered iron shaft throughout the set and changing the distance from the first step in the shaft to the hosel. (ie. The 8-iron shaft is put in the 9-iron and so forth.) Essentially, it makes the shaft slightly weaker by cutting more off the butt end of the club.

Lucas Glover plays two putters

Yes, Lucas Glover really did play two putters during the final round of the Charles Schwab Challenge. His usual L.A.B. Mez broomstick along with a normal length TaylorMade Spider Tour X. He removed his gap wedge from his bag, which, according to his caddie Tom Lamb, they had the number for at least three times. So maybe don’t expect the same setup this week at the Memorial.

What you could see is a new broomhandle option in the bag. Glover was spotted testing both a double-bend Spider Tour X long putter, along with an Odyssey TRTL also in a double-bend broomstick configuration. It was a zookeeper’s nightmare with both the Spider and TRTL popping out the top of Glover’s bag on Wednesday morning. This comes after a Jailbird was also tested earlier in the week, but that option didn’t make the cut.

Glover also tested a custom regular-length Spider option featuring a custom insert that is firmer than the traditional Pure Roll version found on the normal Spider.

Keep an eye out for which one or ones make the bag this week at Jack’s Place. Check out the rest of Glover’s bag here.

Jason Day gets progressive 

Jason Day is back in his V3 Avoda prototype irons. That’s not new for him. He’s been switching between irons this year to help as he goes through phases of what shots he’s looking to hit. One set will shape the ball more naturally for the Australian, while the other helps straighten up his ball flight.

What is new this week at the 2026 Memorial Tournament, hosted at Jack Nicklaus’ Muirfield Village Golf Club, is the concept of progressive swing weighting through Day’s iron setup. Each head has now been weighted using lead tape through the longer irons to increase the swing weight.

“We’ve seen that the majority of players, as the ball moves forwards in their stance, fractionally increasing the swing weight just helps delay the release a little bit,” said Tom Bailey, Avoda Golf Founder, when GolfWRX caught up with him to talk about Day’s newest endeavor. ” It gives them more time to get to that forward ball position.”

It’s a pretty simple philosophy for a company that does some really in-depth club concepts. Basically, the further back the ball position is, the more a golfer will need to release the clubhead earlier to square it up. Then, as the ball gets further forward in the stance, the time to release the club extends, and the golfer will need to do it later in the sequence.

Bailey likes to think of it as Avoda’s own take on moment of inertia matching, where clubs are built to require the same amount of force.

“We just did some testing over the last couple of weeks and found that he (Day) does get along better with a progressively heavier swing weight,” Bailey added. “He gets fractionally heavier by about half a swing weight, so he gets a few swing weights through the set and then through to his woods; they continue progressing.”

Read more here on how Day’s irons sit on the swing weight scale and check out another unique club in his bag.

Tommy Fleetwood’s custom putter

Tommy Fleetwood has a growing collection of TaylorMade Spider putters. We shall wait to see if the newest options go into play, but they definitely has a fun twist to it.

Ahead of the 2026 Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club, the team at TaylorMade gifted the FedExCup champion with his very own custom Spider putter, featuring some nifty details from his winning gamers last year.

While from a distance, the putters may look like your standard blacked-out Spider Tour and also the new torched PVD version, the ones that found its way to Fleetwood in Dublin, Ohio, feature custom laser-etched alignment lines on the topline of each putter, which are an exact replica of the hand-drawn Sharpie marks that TaylorMade Tour putter Rep James Holley drew onto the putter with which Fleetwood won the FedExCup.

No mathematical equations were made to evenly distribute the alignment aid this time, either, and on closer inspection, it’s possible to see the imperfections of what the permanent marker lines looked like when the team scanned and then used a laser to etch onto the putter head.

What’s interesting about the custom putters is that the markings found on the heads are actually not the original version that Holley first drew onto Fleetwood’s flatstick. Over time, they had changed slightly since Holley had to reapply the Sharpie, and had changed technique to stop the ink from smudging.

However, there is a copy of the first attempt from Fleetwood’s special alignment aid, and it’s found on a custom Winston Collection headcover, which the team had made specifically for the Englishman.

On the sole plate of Fleetwood’s black Spider Tour putter is a laser-engraved logo of the FedExCup, an ode to Fleetwood’s biggest triumph in golf so far, using that style of flatstick.

Burying the lede slightly, but Fleetwood was also testing a Tour X version in Ohio, which went into play for the first round. The small slant model was one of the options Fleetwood received from the TaylorMade team when he first switched to the pilot’s eye alignment aid.

“The main reason Tommy switched to the X was the slightly more forward CG and the alignment benefits of the true path,” Holley told GolfWRX. “He started lining up the clear path on his TP5 Pix more often and although the True Path is blacked out, the ‘shadow’ of the true path matched up nicely to that.”

Orange gets an upgrade

Mitsubishi Chemical dropped an all-new version of the Tensei 1K Pro Orange shaft using its Rip+ tip technology. The counterbalanced option for drivers and woods was on the range at Muirfield Village, where players were able to test out it out. 

Check out the full gallery here.

Odds and Ends

J.J. Spaun fired an opening-round 67 at the Memorial with a new insert in his new Oz.1i HS putter that he switched to last week. The insert plays softer than the original one he had used when going to the heel-shafted L.A.B. Golf putter at Colonial. J.T. Poston joined the growing family of Spider putters. He’s moved into the Tour X head along with Fleetwood. Adam Scott is back in the L.A.B. DF3 head with a cool custom sole plate design. Ludvig Åberg continued with the Scotty Cameron 3.2 putter after putting it in play for the first time last week in Dallas. The Swede says it’s softer off the face than the blade he’s used most of his career. Justin Rose added a new set of raw McLaren Golf Series 1 blades. Other than the difference in look the set also features less of the progressive offset towards the mid-irons.

In the zero-torque putter world the TaylorMade Spider ZT has carved out a great following of golfers who love it. So TaylorMade wanted to go bigger and it did, literally. This new Spider ZT Max features a larger body that is made from aluminum to allow for heavier steel and tungsten weights to move to the perimeter. Combining the weight distribution with the larger size increases stability and the putter will reduce twisting on toe or heel impacts.

TaylorMade kept the zero-torque design the same with a shaft that inserts right near the CG location and 34mm behind the face. Placing the shaft here keeps the putter balancing with the toe up, helping keep the face pointed towards the target throughout the stroke. Each shaft is bored into the head with a 2 degree forward shaft lean to help keep that toe-up design consistent.

A unique sole design is incorporated into the putter to work with the center shaft so the putter doesn’t rock when it is soled on the green. Engineers looked at many different angles and putting strokes to make sure that the putter sits square behind the ball so alignment is easier. While you don’t see the bright white True Path alignment feature on the top of the putter, it is there in milled form. Milled lines on the top of the putter are the exact same width of a golf ball in order to help create better center face contact. The Pure Roll insert on the face is made from a combination of Surlyn and aluminum for a soft but solid feel. Forty-five degree grooves provide immediate forward roll and consistent speed on shots that don’t find the center of the putter.

Golfers can get the new Spider ZT Max in standard length, counter balanced, and in a long model. Offering the putter in these options lets players who find an alternative putting stroke better an option to get a high MOI mallet. The standard length models with get the same KBS CT 120 steel shaft as the new Spider Tour Torched putters while the CB and Long putters will get a KBS Graphite shaft that is heavier (155g & 210g). A Super Stroke Off-Axis Tour 2.0 and a Super Stroke 3.0 17″ grip are stock on these Spider ZT Max putters.

Spider ZT Max Pricing

• Standard: $449.99
• Counter Balanced: $499.99
• Long: $549.99