Aldrich Potgieter – who’s a first-timer in the field this week at THE PLAYERS Championship 2025 – has an equipment setup that’s built for control, not speed, but he still currently ranks third on the PGA TOUR in Driving Distance at 322.9 yards per drive, and he leads the PGA TOUR in ball speed at 190.60 mph.

According to Titleist fitter Nick Geyer, who works with Potgieter closely on his equipment needs, the 20-year-old rookie from South Africa uses clubs that are “probably some of the stiffest and heaviest out here” on the PGA TOUR. Case in point, Potgieter uses 132-gram X7 steel shafts in his Titleist MB 620 blade irons, and in his Titleist GT3 driver, he uses a Fujikura Ventus Black 8X shaft that weighs in at 85 grams.

Of course, Potgieter doesn’t use heavy-weighted shafts to boost club head speed; he uses them to maintain control.

Also, while most speed-chasing golfers work on increasing their angle of attack with the driver to hit it higher and with less spin, Potgieter actually does the opposite. Instead, he performs drills where he tees the ball lower – or even “off the deck” – to practice staying more on top of the ball.

He also uses a 2025 Titleist Pro V1x golf ball, which is the higher-spinning option between the Pro V1 and the Pro V1x. His fitter, Geyer, explains the uniqueness of Potgieter’s setup, and why it works for him.

“Obviously tons and tons of speed; the easiest 190-plus (ball speed) I think you’ve ever seen,” Geyer told GolfWRX.com on Tuesday at THE PLAYERS Championship. “So the setup is built for control, all the way down to his golf ball, the 25 Pro V1x ... spin is his friend in terms of left-right, but we’re always trying to control the up-down. So you see things like X-Seven (iron shafts). You see things like Ventus Black 8X in his driver. That gives him the feeling of stiffness and stoutness that can control the speed. But we want left-right control, too, so that’s where 2025 Pro V1x comes in …

“I think that’s the cool part about the golf ball; super high-speed player, but he’s playing 2025 Pro V1x. Kind of unique, right? He wants the control, the spin, both around the greens and into the greens, and we’re going to control it with the golf ball.”

As he works down from the driver in his setup, in the past, Potgieter played without fairway woods in the bag, opting instead for a Titleist U-505 1-iron and a T200 2-iron.

Although he still has the T200 2-iron in the bag and says, “That’s not going anywhere,” he did recently add a Titleist GT2 13.5-degree fairway wood to his setup.

“Loving this thing at the moment,” Potgieter says about his new fairway wood. “(I) don’t usually play a 3-wood, but I’ve been hitting it well, so we put it in the bag.”

Mind you, the loft that’s printed on the head is 13.5 degrees, but Potgieter’s specific setup has added loft to create more spin.

“The 3-wood is interesting in the sense that it really is a driver-like weapon, but it’s got added spin to it for control,” Geyer said. "The 3-wood is probably really close to 300 (yards of carry). I think, again, when you’re trying to slow it down, we’re doing things with shaft weight. He’s in a 90-gram (shaft) in his 3-wood. We’re doing things with loft and head size, so (it’s a) bigger head. He’s in our 13.5 model, but we’ve added loft to it… to get that right window of, ‘OK, I’ve got a club that looks comfortable,’ but it’s got spin. It’s got control.”

Don’t let the eye-popping distances fool you, though, because Potgieter isn’t just a long-ball hitter. The 20-year-old South African nearly won the recent 2025 Mexico Open at VidantaWorld – ultimately losing to Brian Campbell in a playoff – and he currently ranks second on the PGA TOUR in Strokes Gained: Putting.

Potgieter says he switched into a custom Scotty Cameron Tour-Only 009M putter about 3-4 months ago, and “it’s been really good. I’m not taking it out of the bag, hopefully, soon.”

So, Potgeiter is currently, statistically, one of the longest drivers on the PGA TOUR, and one of the best putters on the PGA TOUR, too? That’s a dangerous combination for the competition this week at THE PLAYERS Championship, as the rookie seeks his first PGA TOUR victory.