Equipment: Titleist's new 910 driver used by McIlroy, Haas

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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.

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The Ryder Cup's team focus doesn't exactly comport with our weekly look into the bag of an individual winner. But the challenges at Celtic Manor in this year's tilt did bring up some intriguing equipment issues. Most of them had to do with water.

First, roll at the end of a driver flight was mostly a fantasy. Rain assaulted the Twenty Ten Course at the Manor for hours at a time, killing the kind of hearty bounces that can add 30 happy yards to a tee ball. Pure carry was virtually all the distance available.

The organizing bodies didn't keep individual driving statistics. But it's instructive to look at how certain players approached getting the ball into play. Titleist had seven of its brand ambassadors in the Cup: Steve Stricker, Rickie Fowler, Zach Johnson, Rory McIlroy and Ross Fisher. One of these, McIlory, has the new Titleist 910 D2 driver in his bag (with a mere 8.5 degrees of loft). The other four stuck with their tried-and-true 909 family drivers.

But maybe not for long. The 910, which has an adjustment ring on the hosel to allow for face angle changes, has been very popular on PGA TOUR ranges since midsummer. Titleist tour reps have reported that it's being adopted enthusiastically by TOUR players, most of whom aren't hair-trigger gear switchers. Johnson was working with it in the stiff winds near Chicago before the BMW Championship. He will likely work it into the bag soon.

Many other players have been trying it as well. And while the face angle part intrigues players, it's extra yardage that has been attracting most of them. When we first saw the club, at the AT&T National near Philadelphia, Brendon de Jonge and Charley Hoffman were busting it in early trials. de Jonge estimated he was getting six extra yards.

Rory McIlroy is already using the new Titleist 910 driver that many other players are auditioning.

Interesting: Fowler, who has not yet switched into the 910 driver, has the a 910 3-wood in the bag (13.5 degrees loft). The fairways and hybrids, which came out on TOUR around the time of The Barclays, feature the same face adjustment technology.

Also of concern to players in the wet conditions was wedge contact. We've all tried to make crisp contact on soggy ground. The extra precision required (can't afford to hit it fat) places a premium on confidence in one's short game tools. Jim Furyk, who put a Callaway 60-degree wedge in his bag earlier in the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup (which he won, recall), added a couple more Callaway wedges for the Ryder Cup.

Furyk's angle of attack is steep, so that 60-degree has 13 degrees of bounce. The two new wedges he ordered follow suit: 50 degrees of loft with 12 degrees of bounce and 54 degrees of loft with a whopping 16 degrees of bounce. All three of Furyk's wedges are Callaway's JAWS model, which feature what Callaway calls "aggressively sized" grooves to maximize spin.

Callaway's design chief, Roger Cleveland, engineered the sole with the "C-grind" many players prefer. The C-shaped crescent of metal removed from the sole relieves the heel, toe and trailing edge of the club to allow it to be opened more, the way pros like to do when they're creating shots around the green.

Despite the team focus last week, there was an individual winner on the PGA TOUR. Bill Haas took the Viking Classic, his second win of the year (Bob Hope was the other) with a top-to-bottom Titleist bag. Haas is already in the 910 driver (the D2 model, with 8.5 degrees of loft, just like McIlroy) and the identical 3-wood as well. For irons, Haas goes for the CB forged cavity backs, including -- it's good to be young and talented -- the ever-harder-to-find 2-iron.