PGA Championship Club Counts

The PGA Championship has been over for awhile, but club geeks are still talking about the fact that Phil Mickelson used both a TaylorMade r7 TP 3-wood and a Titleist 980F 4-wood in his victory (see SirShanksAlot for more).

Late last week, GolfWeek published the official club counts, and geeks dove right in. Can you guess who the five players using the Titleist hybrid woods were? How about the three lonely souls playing Maxfli golf balls?

Balls

Titleist: 103 (Pro V1x: 67, V1: 36), Callaway: 18, Nike: 17, Srixon: 8, Bridgestone: 3, Maxfli: 3
Bridgestone had only three, eh? Freddy Couples, Stuart Appleby, and… one other person. Maxfli probably saw some action with the under-rated BlackMAX, but Titleist is – as usual – the clearly dominant player here, with more than two times as many balls in play as all other balls combined.

Drivers

TaylorMade: 50, Titleist: 40, Callway: 23, Nike: 14, Ping: 13, Cleveland: 10
Titleist sees a bump here in the PGA because they have such an extensive program for club pros, and 25 of them played in this event. Not all of them played Titleist, of course, but a good portion did. TaylorMade is flagged for paying everyone they can to play their drivers, but the field at the majors doesn’t often include many lower-ranked players, so their dominance here makes a statement.

Fairway Woods

TaylorMade: 82, Callaway: 64, Titleist: 41, Ping: 23, Sonartec: 20
TaylorMade’s r7 TP fairway woods are something to behold (and something we’ll be reviewing soon), but a good majority of that 82 were probably playing the older V-Steels. The same is true of Callaway – the old WarBird fairway woods have been Tour favorites since their introduction. Titleist? Plenty of 904Fs mixed with 980s and some 970s.

Irons

Titleist: 39, TaylorMade: 28, Cleveland: 16, Nike: 16, Ping: 16
Ping makes a surprising leap to tie Nike and Cleveland at 16, and Titleist – again probably partly thanks to their great club pro program, beats out a usually dominant TaylorMade. 17 Nike drivers were put into play and 16 Nike sets of irons – you can guess that most of those are pros on contract – the Tigers, Cinks, and Chois of the Tour.

Putters

Titleist: 59, Odyssey: 33, TaylorMade: 15, Ping: 13
You really wouldn’t expect anything different here. Scotty Cameron (Titleist) has been dominant on the tour for a decade, and Odyssey (a Callaway company) with their Two-Ball putters, has long held the second spot. Even TaylorMade managed to pass the slumping Ping.

Wedges

Titleist: 168, Cleveland: 85, TaylorMade: 53, Ping: 41
Titleist has Bob Vokey to thank for this, though their club pro program helped just a bit. Vokey is a tireless tinkerer and has long built wedges that perform, and the spin-milled wedges introduced in 2005 are a hit. Cleveland wedges are comfortably in second, followed closely by TaylorMade, whose Y-Cutter wedges perform exceptionally well out of the rough.

Hybrid Irons

Titleist: 13, Cleveland: 2, Nike: 2, Fourteen: 2
In other words, the Titleist 503.H is about the only iron-like hybrid the pros play. I know a few Tour pros use them in place of their two-irons, but the wood-like hybrid (see below) sees a lot more play than the irons, largely for their versatility.

Hybrid Woods

TaylorMade: 20, Cobra: 11, Sonartec: 9, Ping: 5, Titleist: 5
Cobra makes its only appearance on the list with its Baffler hybrid woods (largely thanks to the club pros once again), and TaylorMade – with their Rescue Mids and Rescue Duals hybrids – takes first place once again. Please note that Sonartec woods are considered fairway woods, not hybrids, so they’re up above (with a count of 20). What are those “Titleist hybrid woods?” Hmmm… 🙂

Gloves

FootJoy: 50, Titleist: 44, Callaway: 17, Nike: 17
FootJoy and Titleist are essentially the same glove, giving Acushnet as solid a “grip” on the glove count as it has on the ball count.

Shoes

FootJoy: 94, Adidas: 29, Nike: 18
Acushnet once again has the lead here – as it has for about 300 years – but Adidas has its foot in the door (pun, once again, intended) with its Tour 360. Check out our covearge of both the GF:II and the Tour 360.