As Rory McIlroy embarks on the 16th season of his career on the PGA TOUR, teeing up for his 2026 campaign debut at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am as the defending champion, he’ll do so with his “trusty irons” back in the bag.

McIlroy, who somewhat shocked the golf world by switching to a set of TaylorMade P7CB cavity-back irons for a few of starts on the DP World Tour at the beginning of the year, has made the move back to his RORS PROTO muscle-back irons at one of the PGA TOUR’s most historic venues.

“That experiment's over,” McIlroy told the media on Tuesday from a windswept Pebble Beach Golf Links in California.

Even for the second-best player in the world, who’s coming off the most illustrious year of his career, where McIlroy finally achieved his crowning moment at the Masters to complete his career Grand Slam, the experiment in question for the 29-time TOUR winner was for something every weekend hack is looking for: finding more forgiveness.

With cavity-back in hand, McIlroy was producing more consistent numbers, even with strikes that didn’t find the center of the club. He had previously spoken that with his bladed 5-iron, he would see a 10- to 15-yard difference with mishits, but with the cavity backs, it was close to 5 or 7.

Ultimately, after testing his options and with finishes of T14, T3 and T33 in his three starts on the DP World TOUR with cavity-back irons, the clubs weren’t as “familiar” as he wanted them to be.

“I felt like the cavity backs just had a little bit of a right bias in them,” McIlroy said Tuesday. “So whatever way the weight of the head was or whether it was the blade length, I would hit shots – I'd make swings that I feel like I'd make with my blades that would be a very neutral ball flight, and then with the cavity backs they would just like start to tail off to the right.”

While the Northern Irishman was undeterred by the new ball flight in theory and in practice, he liked the idea of being able to “fully release the club” with his iron shots. But the change in clubs was a distinct difference to years of muscle memory that McIlroy has built up from using bladed irons for most of his life.

“Once you get on the course with a card in your hand, for so many years I'm used to feeling that like held-off position through impact and then to go from that to trying to release it, it just was a different feel, especially under pressure or in the heat of competition,” McIlroy said.

So back in the bag go the blades, and traditionalists will be happy, especially as the TOUR heads to Pebble Beach, one of golf’s meccas. Despite many thinking their time is up, 10 out of the 13 winners on the PGA TOUR and DP World Tour have used blades to win this season so far, according to SMSonTOUR.com.

As McIlroy looks to add to the number, for him, it's feel over forgiveness.