Rory McIlroy Back To Blades As He Defends At Pebble Beach

Rory McIlroy's irons have been a hot topic of discussion in the gear world even since he put into a play a combo set of irons in Australia at the end of 2025, and then put a full set of cavity back (TaylorMade P7CB) irons into play in Dubai.

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So far his results have been good but not great with the new irons, and when he showed up to defend his AT&T Pebble Beach title this week, he was once again back to his old custom Rors Proto. When asked about the swap during he Tuesday press conference Rory had this to say.

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"Yeah, I felt like the cavity backs just had a little bit of a right bias in them. So whatever way the weight of the head was or whether it was the blade length, I would hit shots -- I'd make swings that I feel like I'd make with my blades that would be a very neutral ball flight and then with the cavity backs they would just like start to tail off to the right.

I felt like in a way it's not a bad thing because I don't like seeing the ball go left. So it made me feel like I could fully release like my iron shots, which is great in theory and great in practice, but then once you get on the course with a card in your hand, for so many years I'm used to feeling that like held-off position through impact and then to go from that to trying to release it, it just was a different feel, especially under pressure or in the heat of competition.

So just wasn't -- just didn't feel as familiar as I wanted it to."

Feel is the keyword there because a player's ability to know where the face is at all times, headed into impact, makes all the difference. Where that feeling comes from is based on an obscure golf club design; center of gravity to axis of rotation, and to help you understand what that means and what it could mean for your game were here to break it down.

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