Titleist’s GTS driver just earned its hottest convert yet

Welcome to Fully Equipped’s weekly Tour equipment report. Every Friday of PGA Tour weeks (plus other times, if news warrants), GOLF equipment editor Jack Hirsh runs you through some of the biggest news surrounding golf clubs on Tour, including changes, tweaks and launches.

DUBLIN, Ohio — Cameron Young has made his move to golf’s hottest new driver.

Young became the latest player to switch to one of Titleist’s new GTS drivers, opting for a 10-degree GTS3, moving from the 11-degree GT3 he switched to earlier this year before winning the Players and Cadillac Championships.

Young is the first player ranked inside the top 10 of the Official World Golf Ranking to add the new driver. Previously, the highest-ranked player was No. 16 Justin Thomas. The add makes Young the 65th player currently gaming a GTS driver, while over 70 players have played one.

Young has had a unique driver build since his switch at Bay Hill, where he went back to his Mitsubishi Diamana PD 60TX shaft and changed to the 11-degree GT3, lofted down in the D1 setting, to help get more launch to match his prototype Pro V1x Double Dot golf ball.

While that switch put his spin in a great window, around 2,500 with an extra two degrees of launch at 11 degrees, his spin started creeping up as the season went on. Titleist rep J.J. Van Wezenbeeck told GOLF he was climbing into the upper 2,000s.

“His spins have been kind of creeping up a little bit. So the spins have been getting a little bit closer to 28, 29,” he said. “At times when he’s swinging really fast, the 11-degree head is bordering on a little too high, and a 10 is bordering a little bit on the too low.”

This is where the GTS’s dual weighting system really came in handy.

“Being able to utilize the dual weighting just lets us kind of get into a really nice in-between spot in terms of launch and spin for him,” Van Wezenbeeck said.

Because the GTS has both an adjustable front track weight and an adjustable rear flat weight, Titleist was able to put an extra two grams in the rear of Young’s new GTS3, which was just enough to give him the extra launch he needed, while staying at the 10-degree loft.

Young has been testing GTS3 since the prototype stage back in December, so he already knew the GTS3 was potentially going to be the right fit for him. Once he finally had some time off between this week’s Memorial and last month’s PGA Championship, he made the switch at home.

The new driver brings Young’s spin window into the 2,600 to 2,700 range and keeps it there thanks to the GTS platform’s improved spin consistency. While that’s a bit higher than it was at the beginning of the year, that extra spin helps Young manage his mishits and keeps them from falling out of the sky.

“He kind of knew the spin stability that he gets with this driver,” Van Wezenbeeck said. “So that was kind of a big one, it’s really how well it manages his mishits. And so that was kind of a big one to have in play for him.”

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Titleist GTS3 Custom Driver

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ALSO AVAILABLE AT: PGA TOUR Superstore, Titleist

Cameron Young’s GTS3 specs
Titleist GTS3 10.0
SureFit Hosel Setting: A1
SureFit CG Setting: 10g N track, 7g rear
Shaft: Mitsubishi Diamana PD 60 TX

Young also made a tweak to his iron set, soft-stepping his Dynamic Gold X7 shafts to give him back the ability to hit off-speed shots more effectively.

Similar to his driver setup, soft-stepping the X7 as opposed to going back to the X100s gave him a nice middle ground of control and feel, Van Wezenbeeck said.

Rose goes raw

Justin Rose has been making little tweaks here and there to his McLaren Golf Series 1 irons as he works to fully dial them in after making the switch to the supercar maker’s first venture into golf equipment.

This week, Rose made the most notable move yet, switching to a completely raw set of Series 1s.

But don’t get too excited. McLaren doesn’t have any immediate plans to offer their new irons unfinished. Instead, the absence of the plating and polishing serves a functional purpose, McLaren Golf Senior Design Manager for Irons and Wedges JP Herrington told GOLF, as Rose works to tweak his new clubs.

“Right now we want to be able to move fast and get everything dialed in,” Herrington said. “It allows that flexibility to make some of those adjustments versus having to send them out and get them plated and then get them back.”

The change Rose and Herrington made at the Memorial this week? Moving toward less offset in the mid-irons.

At Rose’s request, the initial Series 1s had a unique progressive offset package with jumps between the short and mid-irons and the mid- to the long irons. With this new raw set Rose saw for the first time at Muirfield Village, the offset on the mid-irons was reduced by half a millimeter. That’s enough to make a difference to someone like Rose, who Herrington said has one of the most discerning eyes on Tour.

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“Having something that really feels comfortable looking down at it — and we’re talking those little minute changes, whether it’s a half or a quarter of a millimeter — make a difference, especially to someone like Justin,” Herrington said. “A lot of it, he talks about just that visual at address, how it meets his eye, and then that translates to confidence into the golf swing.”

Herrington wasn’t sure Rose would end up gaming the raw set this week, but it looked like from watching Rose’s first testing session on Tuesday that a lightbulb went off on the first swing. He immediately noted that he was reaching apex heights of more than 130 feet with the raw irons, something he said he hadn’t seen in a long time.

The ball also seemed to be holding his line better, Herrington said.

That probably had more to do with visual comfort than any performance difference with the clubs.

The raw finished irons could remain in the bag, but Herrington said it’s unlikely. Rose even asked if the specific set he had could eventually be polished and plated.

After a rough start with the new irons at the Cadillac Championship, Rose seemed to find a groove at the PGA Championship with a T10 finish. This week, he opened with a 69 on Thursday and led the field with 15 greens in regulation.

Maybe he continues with the raw irons if he keeps hitting the ball like that.

Fleetwood sees ‘shadows’

Tommy Fleetwood is looking for a “shadow” on the greens this week and it might have finally jump-started his putting slump to begin the season.

The reigning FedEx Cup champion made his fourth putter switch this season and perhaps the most significant one yet. After playing with TaylorMade’s larger Spider Tour since moving to the mallet platform at the RBC Heritage last year, Fleetwood is gaming a new, smaller Spider Tour X this week at the Memorial.

Despite earning five top-10s already this season, Fleetwood has struggled on the greens, losing .064 strokes a round and ranking 93rd on the PGA Tour. Last season he gained more than four-tenths of a stroke and ranked 20th.

At the Valero Texas Open, Fleetwood changed his alignment aid on the Spider Tour Black from the custom Sharpie lines hand-drawn on the top by TaylorMade putter rep James Holley to a “pilot’s eye” aid. He then used a similar model in the new 2026 Torched finish at the RBC Heritage before returning to the black finish for his next start at the Cadillac Championship.

But this week, he’s gone to a different head entirely with the Spider Tour Black X with the same “pilot’s eye” alignment aid and short slant hosel.

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TaylorMade 2025 Spider Tour X Black Custom Putter

BLACK PVD FINISH The durable PVD coating creates a beautiful high-quality finish with sole plate, back badge and copper accents.
TRUE PATH™ ALIGNMENT The patented alignment system provides visual clarity and helps golfers better envision the line to the hole.
WHITE TPU PURE ROLL™ INSERTMade from a combination of Surlyn and aluminum, the white TPU Pure Roll™ insert creates a softer feel. Grooves are angled at 45° to encourage optimal forward roll as well as better sound, feel and overall roll characteristics. The white insert also creates better symmetry with the white True Path alignment.
THIN WALL UNDERCUT CONSTRUCTION We’ve engineered a super stable structure by removing excess weight to create high MOI and legendary Spider performance.
HYBRAR ECHO®DAMPENER HYBRAR is behind the face to dampen unwanted vibrations, delivering premium sound and feel on every putt with the best possible sensation.
TSS WEIGHTING TSS weights provide balanced weighting and help optimize performance for all various putter lengths.
STEEL WIREFRAME Allows engineers to better control weight distribution and CG location.

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ALSO AVAILABLE AT: PGA TOUR Superstore, TaylorMade

“The main reason Tommy switched to the X was the slightly more forward CG and the alignment benefits of the true path,” Holley told GOLF. “He started lining up the Clear Path on his TP5 pix more often and although the TruePath is blacked out, the ‘shadow’ of the true path matched up nicely to that.”

While Fleetwood’s new Spider Tour X is still all black with no TruePath aid like his previous putters, the Spider Tour X has the outline of the True Path built into the top, while a Spider Tour without TruePath is smooth.

That outline of the TruePath turned out to really help Fleetwood with his alignment on the greens. Fleetwood has actually had the putter for a few months leading up to the change.

In Round 1 at Jack’s place, that paid off as Fleetwood was third in the field in SG: Putting, picking up nearly two and a half shots as he fired a 67 to co-lead going into Friday.

Fleetwood also got two new replica putters this week to celebrate his FedEx Cup victory last year. Holley had the original Sharpie lines scanned and then laser-etched them into the toplines of the putter. The replicas also came with custom Winston Collection headcovers with the same design embroidered on top.

Rory makes a change to the big stick

Rory McIlroy leads the PGA Tour in SG: Off-the-Tee this season, but he’s still finding the fairway just 55 percent of the time.

McIlroy is switching this week to the Fujikura Ventus Black 7-X shaft, up in weight from the 6-X he has played for the past several years. McIlroy also added weight to the head of his TaylorMade Qi4D driver, going up to two 13g weights in the rear instead of the 11s he had to begin the year.

The 7-X is nothing new to McIlroy, as he played the heavier version of Ventus Black at times in his career.

Caddie Harry Diamond told GOLF that McIlroy saw more stability with the heavier build in testing, leading to the switch.

Check this out

This section is dedicated to cool photos we’ve snapped recently on Tour, but haven’t had a reason to share yet. This week, check out Hideki Matusyama’s prototype Srixon 5-wood he added to the bag last week in Fort Worth to replace his longtime Cobra RadSpeed Tour 5-wood.

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Odds and Ends

Some other gear changes and notes we’re tracking this week.

Lucas Glover (Spider Tour Torched Long) and Jhonny Vegas (Spider Tour X Torched) switched into TaylorMade putters this week, giving the brand the win in the putter count with 20 in play, 19 being Spider models. … Sepp Straka gamed the Qi4D LS driver and Qi4D fairway woods he first added in Austria last month. … Corey Conners was the first player to test Mitsubishi’s new Tensei 1K Pro Orange wood shaft with Rip+ technology in his Ping G440 LST, although it didn’t quite crack the bag, yet. … Justin Thomas was testing Titleist’s unreleased GTS 3-wood prototype, although he stuck with his GTS300 Mini Driver. … Keegan Bradley and Sepp Straka added TaylorMade’s Qi4D LS driver while Brandt Snedeker and Daniel Berger added the core model Qi4D. … Berger (4-wood), Brian Harman (3-wood) and J.T. Poston (7-wood) all added Qi4D woods.

3 things you should read/watch

A selection of GOLF content from the past week that may interest you.

Wyndham Clark was ‘dating’ putters. Now he’s finally found the one – Wyndham Clark has seen a dramatic improvement in his putting since switching to a Ping Scottsdale TEC Ally Blue Onset.

Explaining Project X’s Titan Yellow wood shaft – Clark earned his win the week he switched to Project X’s new counterbalanced Titan yellow wood shaft. Jake Morrow explains how the new shaft works.

Russell Henley took advantage of Titleist GTS’ newest club option – Russell Henley won last week in Fort Worth using a Titleist GTS3 7-wood, the first 7-wood option the company has ever offered in the “3” head.

The author welcomes your comments at Jack.Hirsh@golf.com.

Want to overhaul your bag in 2026? Find a club-fitting location near you at True Spec Golf.

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