Rory McIlroy returns to old irons, wins Wells Fargo Championship

Rory McIlroy hit an impressive 75% of greens in regulation during his winning week at the Wells Fargo Championship, picking up more than five strokes on the field in Strokes Gained: Approach en route to his 19th PGA TOUR victory.

McIlroy had some old tools in his box at Quail Hollow that helped him hoist a PGA TOUR trophy for the first time in 18 months.

McIlroy returned to his 2017 Rors Proto TaylorMade irons — a prototype version of TaylorMade’s P730 irons, which were released in August 2017. The two-time FedExCup champ played the irons after signing with TaylorMade in May 2017.

To provide a bit of a refresher, the Rors Protos were part of the custom series of irons made for a number of prominent TaylorMade staff players, including Dustin Johnson and (at the time) Justin Rose. They all featured slightly tweaked profiles of the TaylorMade P730 blade with either a unique grind or blade length profile.

McIlroy began this season with TaylorMade P7MB irons before switching to a combo set of the P760 (3- and 4-iron) and P730 (5-PW).

While neither McIlroy nor TaylorMade have commented on the return to the irons, McIlroy reportedly was looking for an iron with shorter blade length, less offset, and a thinner topline, similar to the Titleist 660 MB irons and Nike VR Pro Blades he played earlier in his career.