Justin Thomas explains driver switch at Wells Fargo Championship

In preparation for this week’s Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow Club and next week’s PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club – two courses where long and straight drives are imperative – Justin Thomas is making an unexpected driver change.

Since August of 2022, Thomas has been using Titleist’s TSR3 driver model; the TSR3 model has a slightly more compact shape than the company’s TSR2 model, and it’s made for slightly less spin, too.

In his first full season using the TSR3 driver on the PGA TOUR, Thomas ranked a respectable 62nd in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, but has since seen his ranking fall to 82nd in the same category in 2024.

So, with a couple of weeks off following his latest start at the 2024 RBC Heritage, Thomas sought to re-address his driver setup with the remote help of Titleist Tour fitting expert J.J. Van Wezenbeeck. About two weeks ago, Thomas and Van Wezenbeeck reviewed his recent driver stats, and discussed via phone call some possible driver and shaft combinations for him to try.

After receiving Van Wezenbeeck’s personalized shipment of product options while at home, Thomas found significant performance improvements with Titleist’s TSR2 head, equipped with Thomas’ familiar Mitsubishi Diamana ZF 60TX shaft.

Compared to Thomas’ longtime TSR3 model, the TSR2 has a larger footprint and offers slightly higher spin and launch characteristics.

According to Van Wezenbeeck, Thomas has picked up about 2-3 mph of ball speed, to go along with 1.5 degrees higher launch and more predictable mishits.

“I’d say I’d been driving it fine, not driving it great, so I just wanted to, honestly, just test or try some stuff,” Thomas said on Tuesday in an interview with GolfWRX.com at Quail Hollow Club. “I had used that style of head a couple years ago (Thomas used a TSi2 driver around 2021); I know it’s supposed to have a little more spin. Obviously, yeah, I’d love to hit it further, but if I can get a little more spin and have my mishits be a little more consistent, I felt like obviously that’d be better for my driving…

“This (TSR2) has been great. I’ve really, really driven it well the week I’ve used it. Just hitting it more solid, I don’t know if it’s the look of it or what it is, but just a little bit more consistent with the spin numbers. Less knuckle-ball curves. It has been fast. Maybe just a little faster than what I was using. Maybe it could be something with the bigger head, maybe mentally it looks more forgiving.”

Although Thomas is making a seemingly significant driver model switch-up this week at the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship, he’s finding comfort in the fact that he’s only switching the head, not the shaft, too.

“I trust (Van Wezenbeeck) and I trust the guys at Titleist,” Thomas said. “I feel I can make a swing and it’s doing what I want it to do, or I feel like it should do. Just putting a different head on and using the same shaft I’ve used forever is nice. There’s definitely some other shafts he sent that were great, but I think changing two things at once… it eliminates a question mark. At least if something is off, it’s like, OK, it’s maybe something with the head because I have the same shaft.”

With a Signature Event and a major championship to be played in the next two weeks, Thomas is looking to re-ignite his driver game with Titleist’s new TSR2 driver in the bag.