In recent history, Tiger Woods has been reluctant to change his fairway woods. While he’s put TaylorMade’s new driver in play upon release each year since signing with the company in 2017, his 3- and 5-woods have been longer tenured.
The last time we saw Woods in action, at the PNC Championship in December, he had a 3-wood from 2020 (SIM Titanium) and a 5-wood from 2018 (M3).
So, when the 15-time major champion arrived at Riviera ahead of the Genesis Invitational with not only the aforementioned long-serving SIM in his bag but also a new TaylorMade Qi10 3-wood, equipment junkies everywhere were eager to see if he’d take the new weapon into battle.
After watching Woods with the club in play during his Wednesday pro-am round, our Andrew Tursky managed to lob a question his way during Woods’ press conference.
“The 3-wood is in play. I feel very comfortable with the [Qi10 Tour] 3-wood,” Woods responded. “I had to find the right shaft for it and decided to switch the shafts and go with what I have on my driver…I wanted to find something I could draw a little bit better and this one is definitely that.”
As Woods indicated, the “right shaft” is a Graphite Design Tour AD VF 7 X, which complements the Tour AD VF 6 X shaft he has been playing in his Qi10 LS driver since the Hero World Challenge. It’s a low-mid launch, low-spin shaft that the company denotes as “stiff” in the handle “stiff plus” in the middle, and “very stiff” in the tip.
He also highlighted the comparable ease of drawing the Qi10 Tour in comparison to the SIM Ti and is playing the club with the 50-gram sliding weight in the mid position for a balance of forgiveness and workability.
Looking at the loft sleeve, Woods’ Qi10 Tour 3-wood appears to be set 1.5 degrees lower (15 degrees stated loft at 13.5 degrees) with the face three degrees open.
You can check out in-hand photos of Tiger Woods full WITB here.
