PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – When in doubt, call Uber.
Last Saturday, McIlroy treated his clubs to a $995 Uber ride to Bay Hill Club & Lodge in Orlando – hope it was Uber Black – so that McIlroy could swap in his old reliable sticks for the latest and greatest from TaylorMade that he had played for the first three days. Those same clubs are in action again this week and have helped McIlroy produced rounds of 67 and 68 at the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, two off the lead and good for T-4 through 36 holes at the 2025 Players Championship.
McIlroy explained why he changed his wedges last week on the eve of the Arnold Palmer Invitational and how it resulted in a switch to a standard TaylorMade Qi35 and matching fairway woods. But the experiment was short-lived. Trailing by seven strokes heading into the final round, McIlroy regretted the club switch and told his manager that he wanted to go back to old faithful, the TaylorMade Qi10, that he had used to great effect in winning the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am last month.
There was just one problem: the clubs McIlroy wanted were back home in South Florida, nearly 200 miles, or 2 ½ hours, away. Allow McIlroy’s putting coach, Brad Faxon, to detail what happened next.
“He had them Ubered from his house on Saturday night, which is pretty extraordinary to have those shipped up,” said Faxon, who works as a TV analyst on Sky Sports.
Asked how much the Uber cost, McIlroy said, “No idea. Not my department.”
But his longtime manager, Sean O’Flaherty, checked his phone and confirmed that the ride cost $665 plus a $330 tip. The clubs arrived about 9:30 p.m., and were back in the bag for the final round.
McIlroy shot even-par 72 on Sunday and finished T-15 at Arnie’s Place. After the round he talked about the club switch but buried the lede.
“Sort of going back to what I’m comfortable with,” said McIlroy, who noted he would stick with his current mix of clubs through the Masters. “I tried new woods for the first three days, didn’t quite work out the way I wanted it to. So, yeah, I went back to my old stuff today.”
He continued: “I led Strokes Gained: Off the Tee in both Pebble and Torrey, so it was a really good idea to change,” he said with a facetious laugh. “Then, [Saturday], I lost strokes off the tee, which is the first time I’ve done that in a long time. Yeah, just went back to what was familiar.”
Ahead of the Players, he was asked about the club change again.
“You’re always looking for a little edge, and for me it was like, OK, if I can find something that goes 300, that would be great, just for — not just for what’s coming — for a lot of golf courses we go to nowadays, it seems like fairways pinch in at like 310, 320 (yards), which is just awkward enough for me to hit driver. But then if I hit 3-wood 285, 290, I feel like I’m not quite pushing it up there as far as I can. If I have to hit 7-iron into a green instead of 8-iron, I’ll deal with it,” he said. “Some years you vibe with a new piece of equipment a little easier. Like that Qi10 that I’m using that they brought out last year, it was like love at first sight. I was like, this thing is amazing. I think when you feel like that about a golf club, it’s very hard to change into something else. It ebbs and flows. Some years it’s easier than others.”
McIlroy hit just four fairways on Thursday and just one on the inward nine. He managed to recover and shoot 67 but according to stats guru Justin Ray, it tied for the lowest score by a player to hit four or fewer fairways in a round at the Players. McIlroy headed to the range after the round and left with a feel of what he wanted to do.
“Hit it way better off the tee and that was very encouraging to see,” he said. “I hit more fairways in six holes today than I did in 18 yesterday. Yeah, got it in play much better and then from there was able to give myself some opportunities and obviously make some birdies early. Couldn’t quite continue that on to the back nine, but it was much better off the tee.”
Asked to explain the fix, he said, “I was just getting a little underneath it, just getting a little too much sort of side bend coming down, sort of in transition. So just trying to keep my right side a little higher and just try to cover it a little bit more was really the thought.”
That swing thought and a $995 Uber ride have McIlroy, the 2019 Players champion, in the thick of another trophy hunt at TPC Sawgrass.
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