Justin Rose is making a surprise equipment change at the Cadillac Championship after signing a deal with McLaren Golf to become the first global ambassador for the fledgling golf company.

Rose will debut the McLaren clubs in Miami this week, in coordination with the company's global launch of its first set of irons. Rose will play a full set of the new irons, while keeping the same setup of woods and putter. He was previously an equipment free agent.

Known best as a Formula 1 powerhouse, McLaren earlier this year announced its intention to launch a golf division. The initial announcement was light on details, but the company promised to “push the boundaries of equipment design and manufacturing.” Now it has a bona fide top-10 player on the PGA TOUR backing its product.

Rose said he has been part of the engineering process since the company's outset more than a year ago.

"Clubs are feeling great," Rose said Tuesday. "Obviously a lot of my own preferences have gone into the irons that I'm playing. I'm excited to finally get them in the bag and sort of just enjoy them now for the rest of the season."

The initial announcement raised questions in the broader golf community, quickly recalling Rose's similar equipment dealings less than a decade ago. Back in 2019, while world No. 1, Rose shifted from his reliable setup to take an equipment deal with Honma. Rose won in his second start with the new clubs, but soon dropped outside of the world's top 10 and ultimately parted ways with the equipment company just over a year later.

Rose is now similarly changing course with his equipment, ditching his gamer set for McLaren's new line, within months of winning and vaulting back into the world's top five. Rose was quick to separate the two experiences while speaking to the media.

"I've learned so much from being brand agnostic for a while that I kind of have my own preference list now. I feel like I'm in an environment where I can take all my preferences to one place where they can execute on that for me," Rose said. "So from my point of view, no, I'm actually looking at what can be better. I'm looking to mitigate risk. Yeah, I've done this once before as well in 2019 obviously and I kind of learned a lot from that process. So I feel a bit better place now to kind of go down this path."

Though Rose did acknowledge the inherent risk that comes anytime a golfer changes something in their setup.

"I'm looking at some of the performance data that I'm getting on the range and places like that and outperforming what I have. So that's the exciting part for me. Obviously there's going to be a refinement process. You can test all you want, you got to get the clubs in play, and there's going to be little mini situations out there, different lies, all sorts of things, just getting comfortable," Rose said. "But in the long-term, no, I don't see there being an issue at all."

It's easy to connect the dots on how the deal came to be. Rose is close with several top McLaren officials, including Zach Brown, CEO of the racing division, and lives 20 minutes from the company's headquarters. Rose will also wear the McLaren Golf logo on his apparel and have a custom McLaren Golf bag, as he first showcased in a social media video announcing the partnership.

According to its website, McLaren Golf will fully launch Wednesday, April 29, the day before the first round of the Cadillac Championship. It’s also the same week of the Formula 1 race in Miami.