Equipment Insider: Two classes of irons bring McIlroy victory

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Each week in the Equipment Insider, Adam Barr -- PGATOUR.COM's equipment columnist -- will provide breaking news, notes and analysis focused on PGA TOUR players. Adam will also appear in video segments for PGATOUR.COM.

Rory McIlroy roared across the finish line at Quail Hollow with a completely Titleist bag. So we know what brand his equipment was. His nerves? That's a brand we're not familiar with.

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But clearly, McIlroy was able to rely on his gear to keep him calm as he pulled off some memorable shots. The most important wasn't even on Sunday. Instead, it was Friday's approach shot into the par-5 7th hole, McIlroy's 16th of the day. The 4-iron covered 206 yards and stopped six feet from the hole, setting up the eagle that enabled McIlroy to make the cut on the number.

And he carried the energy from that shot into his iron play on the weekend. In Sunday's final round, riding the confidence he had in his driver, McIlroy set the stage for another eagle on 15, the crest of the wave that carried him to a course-record 62.

"I probably hit my best drive of the day there," he said after the round. "The wind was sort of down out of the left, and I've just aimed it inside the traps on the right, and just hit this hummer to a little draw down there, got it running, and I left myself 206 to the pin and just hit the nicest little floaty 5-iron in there."

With all his preparations, McIlroy must have been reading this space last week, when we discussed mixing iron types (classic players blades and those with game improvement features) in the same bag. The Titleist AP2 4-iron that kept Rory in the game Friday is forged into a better-player look. But it has a dual cavity, perimeter weighting, and some low-down heft provided by a tungsten-nickel box positioned on the back toward the sole. A specially tuned system that uses an aluminum plate and an elastomer insert improves feel, Titleist says.

The Sunday 5-iron, on the other hand, was from Titleist's MB (muscle back) series (and which we discussed last week in connection with New Orleans winner Jason Bohn). These are classic player's blades, with the weight dropped low as in the AP2, but in a more traditional way, with the muscle back forged right into the 1025 carbon steel head. Just a little bit of offset progresses through the set with the MBs, and the sole is narrow and cambered to provide the kind of turf interaction elite players favor.

Whether it was into the wind under make-the-cut pressure or a "floaty" for a career eagle, having two classes of irons in the bag got it done for McIlroy in Charlotte.

TRUCKIN': There has been so much player demand for TaylorMade's SuperFast driver that the company's tour truck actually ran out of heads. One player (who isn't a TM staffer and therefore can't be named) wanted one so bad that he went to a local golf retail store, bought two (needed a backup, we guess), and brought them back to the TaylorMade truck to be reshafted... TPC Sawgrass superintendent Tom Vlach and his staff had to work extra hard to have the Stadium Course in championship shape this week, thanks to one of the coldest winters in Florida history. Onshore winds dropped the temperature so often early this year that Vlach's corps of turf workers had to cover the greens overnight on 36 different occasions to protect the grass. In a normal winter, they do that perhaps twice the whole season.