Gear Up: Uncovering The Most Used Clubs On The PGA Tour (2024)
In spite of the fact that pros seem to play a very different game to regular amateurs, it is almost impossible for us not to pay close attention to the clubs the best golfers are using.
While the pros play at an entirely different level, it’s hard for us amateurs not to keep a close eye on the clubs they use.
After all, a part of us can’t help but believe that using the same gear might just sprinkle some of their magic onto our game.
But what clubs do the top pros actually use? At Golfing Focus, we’ve analyzed the bags of the top 100 PGA Tour players in depth to uncover the following clubs as the most used:
- PING G430 LST Driver
- PING G430 Max 3-Wood
- TaylorMade Qi10 5-Wood
- Titleist T100 (4-iron to Pitching Wedge)
- Titleist Vokey Design SM10 Gap Wedge
- Titleist Vokey Design SM10 Sand Wedge
- Titleist Vokey Design SM10 Lob Wedge
- Scotty Cameron Phantom Putter
The best players on the PGA Tour however clearly don’t all use this setup.
Many use a number of different variations of higher numbers fairway woods such as a 7-wood, utility irons, and hybrids as well as a varying number of irons.
Others, particularly the younger generation, prefer to carry 4 specialist wedges including a specialist pitching wedge instead of a pitching wedge that matches their iron set.
And indeed some of the players will change the make up of their set on a regular basis depending on the particular course they are playing that week.
It is interesting however that the most common set-up of the best players on Tour will feel familiar to millions of amateurs across the world despite all of the options that are available to pros today.
But while the most common golf club set up for the top Tour pros is one thing we wanted also to dig deeper and find out what the best players on Tour considered to be the best individual golf clubs, including lofts, shafts, grips.
And not only that we also wanted to see what had changed over the years we have carried out this in-depth analysis!
The Most Used Clubs on the PGA Tour – Top 100 Player Breakdown
When it comes to pro sets and the most used clubs on the PGA Tour there is clearly a lot of similarity to the club type choices made by regular amateurs.
Having a set of clubs with 3 woods, 6 irons, 4 wedges, and a putter will be a familiar thing for the vast majority of amateur players.
But when it comes to the individual club choices of this elite group on the PGA Tour it is interesting to note what they consider not only to be the best clubs but also the preferred lofts, shafts, grips and balls they use with them.
So in the table below we’ve included the detail of all these aspects of the most used clubs making up the most used set among the top 100 PGA Tour pros
CLUB | MOST POPULAR CLUB MODEL / LOFT / SHAFT USED BY TOP 100 PGA TOUR PROS | |
Driver | PING G430 LST (9°) Fujikura Ventus Black 6X shaft | Check eBay |
3-wood | PING G430 Max (15°) Fujikura Ventus Black 8X shaft | View at PGA Tour Superstore |
5-wood | TaylorMade Qi10 (18°) Fujikura Ventus TR Blue 8X shaft | View at PGA Tour Superstore |
Irons (4-iron to PW) | Titleist T100 True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 shafts | Check eBay |
Gap wedge | Titleist Vokey Design SM10 (50°) True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400 shaft | View at PGA Superstore |
Sand wedge | Titleist Vokey Design SM10 (56°) True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400 shaft | Check eBay |
Lob wedge | Titleist Vokey Design SM10 (60°) True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400 shaft | View on Amazon |
Putter | Scotty Cameron Phantom Models | |
Putter grip | PING PP58 | Check eBay |
Club grips | Golf Pride Tour Velvet | View at PGA Tour Superstore Check eBay View on Amazon |
Golf ball | Titleist Pro V1x | Check eBay View at PGA Tour Superstore View on Amazon |
If you went to your local golf shop and picked up this set up of clubs you are obviously not automatically going to play like a top PGA Tour pro.
But for all the club choice options that are available to the best players in the world it is interesting to see how close this set probably is to many amateurs across the world.
Further over the last three years in which Golfing Focus has done this research this same set up – driver, 3-wood, 5-wood, 4-iron to pitching wedge, 3 specialist wedges and a putter – has each time been found to the be most common among the top 100 PGA pros.
The models may have upgraded – Vokey SM8 to SM9 to SM10 wedges for example – but the set up has stayed consistent.
Club Adjustments PGA Pros Make
Saying that however Golfing Focus’ analysis also found that the top pros are all constantly searching for little changes and tweaks in their golf set which will save them a stroke or three across the course of a round or a tournament.
Many PGA pros will therefore change one or two of their clubs from week to week depending on the type of course they find themselves playing.
That may for one player mean adding in an extra wedge at the expense of a fairway wood or utility iron, while another may add in a hybrid in place of their longest iron.
Take a close look at Hideki Matsuyama’s bag on the driving range at a PGA Tour event for example and you will likely see 17 or even 18 clubs in his bag.
And this means you will sometimes find him swapping in a ZX5 Mk II player’s distance 3-iron in place of his Cobra King RadSpeed Tour 5-wood when the course set up demands it.
This variation among the longer clubs in the bag is most common for many of the pros who do not follow the ‘standard’ set up listed above.
For every pro that uses a 5-wood you will find a number, although admittedly a smaller one, who choose a higher numbered 7-wood, utility iron or hybrid in its place.
Some pros meanwhile, including world no.1 Scottie Scheffler, opt to carry more than one utility iron and then start their standard iron-set with a 5-iron. Or in former British Open champion Brian Harman’s case even a 6-iron!
The decision to play 4 specialist wedges instead of the standard 3, by replacing the pitching wedge which comes with the rest of the iron set, is also increasing in popularity particularly among the younger generation of pros on the PGA Tour.
So for the sake of completeness we list below the most popular alternative clubs which we found used by some of the top 100 PGA Tour pros.
CLUB | MOST POPULAR CLUB MODEL / LOFT / SHAFT USED BY TOP 100 PGA TOUR PROS | |
7-wood | PING G430 Max (21°) Fujikura Ventus TR Blue 8X shaft | View at PGA Tour Superstore |
9-wood | TaylorMade Qi10 (24°) Fujikura Ventus TR Blue 9X shaft | View at PGA Tour Superstore |
Hybrid | Callaway Apex UW (19º) Fujikura Ventus Blue 9X shaft | Check eBay |
Utility / Driving Iron | Callaway X Forged UT (18º) True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 shafts | Check eBay |
Specialist Pitching Wedge | Titleist Vokey Design SM10 (46°) True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400 shaft |
[Editor’s note – to put together this analysis we researched all the drivers, fairway woods, utility/driving irons, irons, irons, wedges, putters, grips, shafts and golf balls used by the top 100 players on the PGA Tour. To find out more about the individual club types you can check out our other articles here:
- Driving For Dough! The Most Played Drivers On The PGA Tour
- Exploring The Fairway Woods The Best PGA Tour Pros Use
- Hybrid Power: The Most Used Hybrids on the PGA Tour
- Do Pros Carry a Driving Iron?
- A Deep Dive Into the Most Used Irons on the PGA Tour
- Wedge Wizardry: The Most Used Wedges on the PGA Tour
- The Putters PGA Pros Use To Master The Greens
- Spotlight On The Most Popular Shaft On the PGA Tour
- Getting a Grip On the Most Popular Grips on the PGA Tour
- On The Ball: The Most Used Ball on the PGA Tour]
Titleist Remains The Main Club Brand On The PGA Tour
When it comes to golf club brands they are an ever-increasing number of options on the market today.
As golf technology has developed at a rapid rate, and particularly since the turn of the century, an increasing number of specialist brands have entered the market.
And some have specialized in areas of the game, such as putter grips, previously considered not thought of as worthy of dedicated attention.
The big golf brands however have maintained an almost vice-like grip over the market and when it comes to the professional ranks, and what they consider to be the best golf clubs, that grip is once again in evidence.
And among those big brands Titleist has been consistently dominant over the years.
Golfing Focus’ in-depth study of all the clubs the top 100 PGA Tour players use found Titleist to be the most used club brand on Tour across almost all categories of clubs including drivers, hybrids, utility irons, irons and wedges.
And in the fairway woods and putter categories they are still the third and second most popular respectively.
TaylorMade and Odyssey (a brand of Callaway) top the brand charts in those particular club categories but they fall well behind Titleist overall.
For many years everyone has been aware of Titleist’s stranglehold over the golf ball market but I must confess to being slightly surprised of the popularity of Titleist clubs among all club types used by the best pros on the PGA Tour.
And when it comes to the most used wedges on the PGA Tour their dominance is almost overwhelming with their Vokey Design wedge clubs chosen 3 times as frequently compared to the next most popular wedge brands of PING and Callaway.
This infographic illustrates the most used brands among the top 100 PGA Tour pros cross the various club types and as you can see Titleist’s dominance is very clear.
And further it is a picture which has remained consistent each year Golfing Focus’ has carried out it’s in-depth study of the most used clubs on the PGA Tour.
We did though note two key points which have changed over the last three years.
Firstly Srixon has become an increasingly more popular brand among the PGA Tour pros in that time with its irons – both standard and utility – finding increasing favour.
And secondly PXG has fallen away by comparison with now very few of the top 100 pros we looked at using their drivers, fairway woods, irons or wedges compared to a few who were using them a couple of years back.
Before you go …
Knowing what clubs the top PGA Tour pros are using is always interesting but with the driver swingspeeds of the average male pro typically being over 20mph faster than the average amateur golfer (115mph vs. 93.4mph) there is possibly more to learn from the clubs being played by the best senior and female pros.
So check out our next articles to find out what clubs the best Champions Tour and LPGA Tour pros are choosing with their 106mph and 96mph average swingspeeds!
In The Bag: Unpacking The Clubs Champions Tour Players Use
The Complete Guide To The Most Popular Clubs On LPGA Tour
Or if you’re more interested in how much of a role the clubs the pros us plays in how far they hit the ball check out the following post to find out!
How Do Pros Hit the Ball So Far?
Other top articles related to this post:
- How Do Pros Hit the Ball So Far? It’s Not About the Equipment!
- How Often Do Pros Hit Driver? Not As Much As You Think!
- Do Pros Use Regular or Stiff Shafts?
- Do Pros Use Graphite or Steel Shafts?
- Why Don’t Pros Use Coloured Golf Balls? It’s Not Black and White
- Do Golf Pros Wear Metal Spikes? But They are Banned!
- What Percentage of Putts Do Pros Make? TV Does Not Tell the Story
- What Do Pros Have in Their Yardage Books? Things Have Changed
- Are There Any PGA Tour Pros Without a Hole in One?
RECENT ARTICLES
LEGAL INFORMATION
This site is owned and operated by Golfing Focus Limited, a private limited company whose registered office is in London, UK. Golfing Focus Limited is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees (at no cost to you) by linking to Amazon.com. Golfing Focus Limited also participates in other affiliate programs with the eBay Partner Network, FlexOffers, CJ.com, Svorn and other sites and is compensated for referring traffic and business to these companies (again at no cost to you).
Our Socials
Leave a Reply