Equipment Insider: Ogilvy's Titleist debut, wind adjustments

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Each week in the Equipment Insider, Adam Barr -- PGATOUR.COM's new 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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Last year, Geoff Ogilvy, who as of Sunday has won the last two SBS Championships at Kapalua, was a Cobra staffer. This year, he has shifted to sister company Titleist without so much as a tiny hitch. But a look in his bag reveals that Ogilvy has put together products from both of those Acushnet Co. golf brands to build the best toolbox for him.

Ogilvy's driver is a Titleist 909 D3 with 9.5 degrees of loft. But the two fairway woods -- one 15 degrees, the other a stock 18-degree bent to 20 degrees for a higher flight -- are Cobra S9-1 models. The Titleist driver head is described as a classic pear profile, as opposed to "full" in the D2 model -- meaning that in the D3, the design is a bit more tapered in the "southeast" part of the clubhead, as you look at it in the hitting position.

The fairway woods have a shallow face, but the head shape is again classic. Seeing a theme here? Check Geoff's irons as well: Titleist MBs, for muscle-back. Heel to toe, the heads are relatively short, and the look is traditional. But the narrow, cambered sole throughout the set is designed for optimal bounce angle. All in all, it's a shotmaker's club.

Video: In the Bag

What do players carry when they head out on TOUR? We take an inside look at the adjustments they make to their clubs ... and they show us other things (ball markers, training aids) that make their tools of the trade unique. Archive: In the Bag In the Bag: Mickelson In the Bag: Furyk In the Bag: Harrington

The same goes for the three wedges Ogilvy carries: They are C-C models that wedge guru Bob Vokey designed to conform to the new Condition of Competition Rile, which regulates groove size. The lofts on his wedge set are 50, 55 and 60 degrees. Ogilvy rolls a regular Pro V1 ball with a Scotty Cameron prototype putter.

Ogilvy is a product of Victoria Golf Club in Melbourne, Australia, where members such as five-time Open Championship winner Peter Thomson are still beaming with pride over Ogilvy's 2006 U.S. Open win. They named a clubhouse terrace after Ogilvy in honor of that victory. If Ogilvy keeps playing the way he has been lately, they may need to build a bigger clubhouse down there in the Sand Belt region to have enough things to name after him.

TaylorMade-adidas players are tinkering and adjusting as the new season begins. Both Martin Laird and Nathan Green put TaylorMade R9 irons in the bag for the first time in competition for SBS; both shot 6 under in the first round at Kapalua. Brian Gay, now a TaylorMade staffer, has been experimenting with the moveable weights in his R9 driver to decrease both launch angle and spin to keep the ball down.

Other players preparing for windy conditions at the Sony Open in Hawaii include PGA Championship winner Y.E. Yang. He has the technicians in the TaylorMade truck building him a new 3-wood with 13 degrees of loft (15 is the standard), clearly looking for that low, drilling flight.

Pat Perez started playing the new, five-layer TaylorMade Penta ball. Four other players were using it at Kapalua: Yang, Sean O'Hair, Retief Goosen and Dustin Johnson.

Ernie Els is in the field at Waialae, looking for his first PGA TOUR win since The Honda Classic two years ago. In Ernie's bag for this tough driving challenge will be the FT-iZ driver from Callaway; it's the latest in the line that includes FT-iQ and the FT-9 (Els had been playing the latter). FT stands for "fusion technology," Callaway's name for its multi-material approach to driver design.

Composite materials and titanium combine to allow larger amounts of weight to be put where it will do the most good, Callaway engineers explain. In the new iZ, the face is heavy, and there is plenty of weight in the back of the driver as well -- a concept Callaway calls polar weighting. That, in concert with an aerodynamic design, yields more linear acceleration -- that is, speed -- says Callaway.

Waialae will be a good proving ground for the concept, especially in the hands of Els, a consistent tee-ball performer over the years.