To give you some perspective on the changes in golf equipment since Tiger Woods won his first PGA Tour event, the 1996 Las Vegas Invitational, consider this: Woods’ opponent in the playoff that week, Davis Love, used a persimmon driver.
Now that Tiger has won his 82nd PGA Tour event, the Zozo Championship in Japan, it’s the perfect time to look back on how his gear has evolved, and in many ways how it has stayed the same, since he turned pro.
The early years
Before he turned pro, Tiger used clubs from a variety of manufacturers. At the 1996 U.S. Amateur, where Woods won his third title, he used Titleist woods, a blended set of Mizuno irons, Cleveland wedges and a Ping Anser putter. Woods split his irons and used clubs from two different sets to create a blended set because he wanted as little offset as possible, and within the Mizuno family at that time, the combination provided him with the look and the performance he wanted.
Like other elite golfers at that time, Wood also played a wound ball, the Titleist Professional 90.
Before the 1997 Masters rolled around, Woods made two substantive equipment changes. He added a King Cobra Deep Face driver and a Scotty Cameron Newport Tel3 putter.
The driver was made from 17-4 stainless steel, a material that is commonly used in fairway woods and irons today because it is strong. However, it is also much heavier than the titanium found in modern drivers. At that point, Woods was also playing a steel shaft in his driver, a True Temper Dynamic Gold X100 steel shaft.
The putter had a dark finish, white dots on the back and a copper-toned insert designed to create a softer feel at impact.
That putter was eventually benched in favor of a Scotty Cameron Newport 2 GSS, a silver-toned putter that Tiger would use throughout the next two decades.
The Nike Years
While Tiger continued to have success after switching into a Titleist 975D driver and 681T irons, to him, one of the most important equipment changes of his career came at the onset of the new century.
“I think the biggest transition I ever made was back in 2000. It was the wound-ball technology at that time, and (Nike) came out with a solid-construction ball,” Woods said in 2014. “I tested it and felt great about it and what it did for me, how it performed around the greens and especially in the wind. I believe it was in Germany, at the Deutsche Bank event in Hamburg, where I put it in play for the first time. Then I came back and played Memorial and won. And then I had a good showing at the U.S. Open at Pebble (he won by 15 shots) and then won the British (by eight) and the PGA. It was a nice little run, and I basically won four straight majors with that ball.”
That prototype was sold at retail as the Nike Tour Accuracy ball, however, that ball was actually manufactured by Bridgestone.
By the end of 2002, Tiger had not only switched into a Nike Ignite driver, he was also using a graphite shaft and had switched to Nike forged muscleback blade irons and wedges too.
As the decade continued, Tiger used various Nike drivers, including the Sumo and the VR Pro, but the look and design of his irons remained virtually unchanged. He transitioned into new models like the Victory Red Forged, VR Pro and Vapor Pro, but the clubs were not drastically different.
In 2014 he said, “When it comes to my irons, I really have not done too much to them. (Nike) did have a muscleback that was rounded that I did not really like that much, because when I hit it slightly off-center the distance disparity was too great. I did not like that, so I went to a straight-back version and all of a sudden, I started winning golf tournaments again. That was a big move.”
Recent history
While Tiger Woods was away from golf and recovering from multiple back surgeries in 2016, Nike announced that it would no longer make golf clubs, golf balls and bags. Tiger would continue to wear Nike footwear and apparel, but like other Nike staffers, it was only a matter of time before he would need to transition into new gear.
In December 2016, after playing in the Hero World Challenge using a Bridgestone B-330S golf ball, Woods signed an endorsement deal with the Japanese company.
Corey Consuegra, who at the time was Bridgestone’s senior director of marketing, told Golfweek, “When we looked into the opportunity to be a partner with Tiger Woods, we studied closely and learned (in focus groups) that our brand perception increases by 50 percent when he is connected to our brand and the purchase intent of our consumers goes up based on the nature of his credibility.”
In other words, even after scandal and prolonged absences from competitive golf, Tiger Woods could still influence purchasing decisions.
A month later, during the 2017 PGA Merchandise Show, TaylorMade announced that it had signed Woods to an endorsement deal to use the company’s clubs.
Tiger had already played the company’s M2 driver and fairway woods, and later in 2018, he added a set of TaylorMade prototype irons. Again, the clubs, stamped TW Phase 1, were very similar in shape and size to the irons he had played since turning pro.
In 2019, Woods added a new TaylorMade M5 driver to his bag, as well as a new set of irons, the TaylorMade P-7TW. According to the company. the design and shape were dictated by Woods, with the sole being milled by a computer to create the exact shape he wanted. Forged 1020 carbon steel with tungsten inserts in the toe to pull the ideal hitting area into the middle of the face, the clubs were made available to the public on the eve of the 2019 Masters, which Woods won.
So as you can see, Tiger Woods has been willing to make some meaningful equipment changes over the years, but there are some things that he has kept too. He is willing to test almost anything but knows what he wants.
“I’ve been asked this many times, ‘What’s your favorite club?’ Woods said. “Well, all 14. They have to be. In order to win a golf tournament, you’re going to have to use all 14 of them, and they’d better do exactly what you want.”
