Did You Say A 15° Hybrid? YEP!

So far at The Open, it's been a pretty fun and busy week to be covering golf equipment. From coat hangers to irons off cart paths, everyone has been pulling out all the stops to figure out how to play the firm-and-fast Royal Birkdale.

After round one, surprise leader Jackson Suber sits at 5 under, while Sungjae Im and Dan Brown sit one back. Another surprise, depending on who you ask, is Bryson DeChambeau, who sits at 3 under.

For Bryson, he has been mostly quiet in regards to gear this week beyond going back to a previous Krank driver, with just 5.5° of loft on it, but there is one more player resorting to some seriously low loft and that is Marcus Plunkett, who put into play a tour-only Callaway Apex UW with just 15° of loft on it. The lowest retail option is 17° which is already a low-launch and low-spin club, but the 15° truly takes it to another level of low launch, and there is a very specific reason for it—the firm turf.

Thanks to the information gathered from the Callaway tour rep Johnny Thompson, Marcus moved into the tour-only UW option, and away from his standard mini driver, because the shallower face made it easier to launch and spin the ball off the firmer turf.

This is basically the fairway wood version of what Collin Morikawa did when he switched out his irons to achieve more consistent center-face contact.

And that should be the biggest takeaway for golfers looking for more consistency throughout their entire bag. Finding the right style club with the correct style sole to fit your game goes a long way in improving consistency. For example, if you're steeper into the ball, a deep face can be more ideal, and vice versa if you tend to be shallow.

It once again proves that finding the right soles from your wedges up to your woods is another part of the fitting process that goes a long way.