The 3 biggest changes for 2026 machines … so far

Six months into 2026 and the PGA Tour season is coming to an end as we approach the season finale next week.
It's been a very good year for machines, and that has led to a shake-up in the wallets of the game's top players. Some movements had more consequences than others.
While changes last month like Bryson DeChambeau's TaylorMade driver and Jordan Spieth's near putter switch made headlines, some had a lasting impact — and two even led to major headlines.
There's still plenty of golf left this season, but take a look at some of the biggest gear switches of 2026 so far.
Rory McIlroy plays with the butt
Rory McIlroy started the year strong by playing a set of TaylorMade P7CB cavity-back irons in both the TGL and his first DP World Tour season opener in the Middle East.
A month ago at the Australian Open, McIlroy first got into the long back irons, the non-blades he played in the tournament, and liked them so much that he switched to another set over the weekend.
That set was in the bag in his first TGL matches and at the Dubai Invitational.
“If there's any help I can get, I'll take it,” McIlroy said after his opening round of 66 in Dubai in early January. “And in Dubai at the end of last year, I hit a couple of irons that I hit a little slower, and instead of them coming up five or seven yards, they were 10 to 15 yards short.”
But while early results were promising, the new rear fenders didn't stick, and he was back on his custom RORS Protos by the time he started statetide at Pebble Beach.
He stated that the reason had nothing to do with performance, but rather his familiarity with what his blades did against the cavity backs.
“So no matter what the weight of the head was or the length of the blade,” McIlroy said in February, “I can make the swings that I feel like I'm going to make with my blades that would be the neutral plane of the ball, and then after the hole, they'd like to start the tail right.
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“It made me feel like I could release fully like my iron shots, which is good in theory and good in practice, but when you get to the course with the card in your hand, for so many years I used to feel that as holding back because of the impact, and then from that I try to release it, it was just a different feeling, especially under pressure or the heat of the competition,” he said. “I didn't feel as familiar as I wanted.”
Finally, McIlroy was playing the RORS Protos when he won his second straight Jacket on the Green in April, but it appeared he left the door open to using the iron back in the future.
We'll keep an eye on that one.
Wyndham Clark finds 'the one'
It's not often that a gearless agent falls in love with a club so much that they end up signing with a company that does, but that was a match made in heaven for Wyndham Clark and Ping's Scottsdale TEC Ally Blue Onset putter.
Clark, an undrafted free agent to start the year, started playing putter and driver roulette early in the season, trying five drivers in as many weeks to start the year and moving on to putters.
He later joked that he was “falling in love” with several golf clubs as he explored the options.
It even got to the point where Clark arrived at the Players Championship with a putter he bought at the local club store.
But since Houston, he's stuck with Ping's Scottsdale TEC Ally Blue Onset putter and later moved to a new contraption head. Since then, his putting numbers have returned to a world-class level that has seen him win three times in nine months, including his first US Open.

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Clark and Ping made their partnership official on Wednesday week of the US Open, and the deal couldn't have been better timed as Clark won his second US Open title, cemented his comeback and provided plenty of publicity for their new putter line.
McLaren debuts with Justin Rose splash
McLaren Golf was launched with pomp and circumstance at the end of April, but no move was more exciting than the announcement that Justin Rose would be joining the board as an ambassador and investor.
Rose had won twice in the previous eight months and finished top-3 at the Masters for the second year in a row. At the age of 45, Rose could have easily continued his free ways, but instead he's immersed himself in a new venture for a major auto maker in golf equipment.
World No. 1 earlier released a composite set of McLaren's Series 1 and Series 3 irons using Metal Injection Molding technology at the Cadillac Championship.
“McLaren Golf has been something that has been burning for months,” Rose said at a pre-tournament press conference that week, his first comments since the announcement. “Obviously, launching the product off the field has obviously taken more than a year. It's something I've been involved with since the beginning, helping the engineering team, testing the initial plans for the club. So, I've been working on this project for more than a year, maybe.”

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Since his debut in Miami, Rose has continued to make changes to his instrument setup and teased that more clubs are coming down the road.
In his last five events, Rose has finished outside the top-25 just once.
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