15-Year-Old Irons Finally Got Retired This Week at WM Open

This week the PGA Tour is in Arizona at TPC Scottsdale for the WM Phoenix Open and unlike the Signature Pebble Beach event last week, we have a full field of 132 golfers looking to duke it out for the trophy including world number one Scottie Scheffler.

Another golfer in the 132-man field this week, who has had a noteworthy last 24 months for very different reasons is Daniel Berger - who also happens to be like many other players on the PGA Tour, an equipment free agent.

It was just last year at the American Express that Daniel returned from a 19-month hiatus caused by a back injury, and since then he has gone from 664 in the OWGR (Official World Golf Rankings - where he was once as high as 12th) back to 120th starting off this week. Also for those keeping track of the FedEx Cup race he currently stands at 111th.

But we're not just following Berger because of his ranking this week, instead, we're paying close attention to the long-standing relationship he has or should I say had with his irons 15-year-old TaylorMade Tour Preferred MC irons, clubs that date back to 2010 when he was in high school and Katy Perry's Teenage Dream Album just dropped.

But, in the world of golf equipment, all things must eventually come to an end, and just like the lyrics from Katy Perry's Firework says "Maybe a reason why all the doors are closed - So you could open one that leads you to the perfect road", (Yes, I found a way to crowbar some Katy Perry lyrics into this).

Anyway, that perfect road looks to be a set of Ping Blueprint S irons, which come with a funny story of how they got into his bag in the first place.

With such an interesting gear switch coming at this time of the year, I reached out to the PGA Tour reps at Ping to find out how they went about working with Daniel to help dial in his new set of irons and the answer I got wasn't quite what I expected.

As per the Ping reps, they had no idea Daniel had moved into the new Blueprint S irons and were only made aware of the switch after Daniel approached Ping rep Kenton Oates on the range in Hawaii and said he put the new irons in play. As the story goes, Daniel had requested a set in April 2024 - almost a whole year ago at this point, and after building and sending him the set, nobody at Ping heard a peep.

Now, as much as equipment free agents have access to gear from all of the manufacturers, this kind of super long-term testing approach to putting a new set of irons into play is pretty unusual, but there could be any number of reasons for it including injury prevention. Looking back on the clubs Daniel used for his T2 finish back in November 2024 at the RMS Classic he was still using the TaylorMade MCs.

Note: It's not that Daniel had used the exact same iron set since high school because he used Callaway TCB irons when he was on staff with them. But, when they went their separate ways, he went back to the set he used before signing his previous club deal. (It's still a very long time to use a single model of iron)

As for specs, Daniel's new Ping irons match up to his previous set with ProjectX 6.5 iron shafts, and Golf Pride grips, but what separates the Blueprint S irons from his previous MCs is the way weight is distributed in the head. Rather than having a centrally located weight in the back middle of the club to fine tune swing weight, the Ping's have weigh positioned equally in the toe and heel to boost forgiveness in the compact iron.