Texas Children's Houston Open

Memorial Park Golf Course



News

U.S. Open 2020: Matthew Wolff is making his impressive run at Winged Foot with a new set of irons and tweaked putter

September 20, 2020
1273352210

Matthew Wolff's march up the U.S. Open leader board has happen even with some changes to his equipment.

Gregory Shamus

Two weeks before taking a two-shot lead into the final round of the U.S. Open, Matthew Wolff missed out on the Tour Championship. In hindsight, that might just turn out to have been a fortunate off week for the 21-year-old if he can close things out on Sunday at Winged Foot.

During the down time, Wolff asked his equipment company, TaylorMade, to send him a set of its new P•7MC irons. According to TaylorMade manager of player development Ryan Ressa, Wolff played with them for one round at home and put the new sticks in the bag, commenting the irons were “sick.”

Despite Wolff’s solid year in which he finished 35th in the FedEx Cup standings, his iron play appeared to be an area he could improve on, ranking 104th in greens in regulation and T-91 in strokes gained/approach-the-green for the 2019-’20 season.

The P•7MC irons are a forged muscle-cavity design not far removed in look from the company’s P750 irons Wolff used during the 2019-’20 season. The shafts are Nippon N.S. Pro Modus3 Tour 130x and the grips are Golf Pride’s Z-Grip Cord. The lofts are standard and the lie angles are one degree flat, but perhaps the most unusual aspect of the irons are that they are shorter than standard. Wolff stands 6-feet tall but told Golf Digest last year, “My clubs are about a half-inch shorter than standard through the bag. Compare my pitching wedge to anyone else’s on tour and it looks really short. I’ve done that for a long time and it just feels comfortable to me.”

Through 54 holes at Winged Foot, Wolff is T-12 in greens in regulation, including hitting 13 during Saturday’s third round. Wolff also made a couple tweaks to his putter. According to Ressa, some weight was added to Wolff’s TaylorMade Spider X mallet and the lie angle was flattened slightly. Those changes appear to be working for Wolff as well as he ranks second for the week in putting average through three rounds.

Whether missing out on golf’s big payday at the Tour Championship leads to a major championship for Wolff is to be determined, but through 54 holes it appears to have been a solid tradeoff.