Matthew Wolff switches irons for first start of season

Matthew Wolff is making his first start of the season at this week’s Sanderson Farms Championship, and he’s doing so with a familiar set of irons back in the bag.

Wolff switched back to a set of P7MC irons this week after using TaylorMade’s P750 throughout the summer. The “new” set of P7MCs is the same one he used during a successful stretch last fall that included consecutive runners-up at the U.S. Open and Shriners Children’s Open.

That fruitful fortnight saw Wolff shoot a tournament-low 65 in the third round at Winged Foot and then a Saturday 61 at TPC Summerlin before losing a playoff to Martin Laird. Wolff, who is one of just three players to win the NCAA individual title and a PGA TOUR event in the same year (Tiger Woods and Ben Crenshaw are the others), rose to a career-best 12th in the world ranking after Shriners.

Why’d Wolff make the switch back to the old irons? It wasn’t about spin rates or launch angles. The P7MCs and P750s are both forged, cavity-back irons. They are an identical size and have similar performance characteristics. Only a few cosmetic differences separate the two lines. Instead, it was one of the aspects of the irons that can easily be adjusted by the TOUR trucks that are on-site early each week that led to the change.

The P7MCs were a degree flatter than his P750s, which made them well-suited for a swing adjustment that Wolff was trying to make. He wanted to get his hands lower at address, which made it easier for him to quickly get the club up and outside the target line, a trademark of his unique backswing.

Instead of bending his P750s during his time off between THE NORTHERN TRUST and this week, Wolff simply returned to the P7MCs, which he first put in the bag when they were released last fall.

“His setup is just one or two things he’s focusing on in his swing right now. He’s keeping things really simple,” said Ryan Ressa, TaylorMade senior manager, player development. “We talked after NORTHERN TRUST about making adjustments to his lie. I said we could change them but he said, ‘I’ll just use this old set that I played well with and that sits better on the ground.’”