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It’s a home game for Collin Morikawa this week at the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club where the Southern California native will make his second PGA TOUR start of 2022 after making two starts on the DP World Tour in late January.
Collin makes his return to his home state fresh off announcing his long-term commitment to Team TaylorMade with a new multi-year deal, as well as his confidence in his Stealth Plus 9° Carbonwood driver.
“I’m glad to partner with TaylorMade for another handful of years. I really have had them by my side forever and it’s always nice to have someone you can trust. I tweaked the driver in Dubai and I think I’ve found the exact setting I want, something that I can stick with for a long time.” Collin Morikawa
Morikawa’s noted comfort with his driver just three starts into the season begins with simply being able to trust the product from the outset of the fitting process. Once Morikawa learned the technical why’s and how’s of the 60-layer Carbon Twist Face™, it didn’t take long to like the results he was seeing with Stealth Plus.
“(The fit) was really quick,” he said. “For me it’s about if can I trust the driver and know it’s going to come off the face really hot based off all the numbers, and after the first few hits even though we hadn’t had every lie and loft perfectly adjusted, you could feel that when you found the center of the face the ball was going. The trust factor was fully there and after that it was just tweaking things knowing that the ball is going to go far.”
In testing prior to DP World Tour events, Morikawa worked with TaylorMade tour reps to take a deeper dive into dialing in the exact spec he was looking for.
The biggest thing Morikawa looks for visually in a driver is the way it sits at address and eliminating having to work to get it to sit in a way that leads to the right feel off the face. TaylorMade senior tour rep Adrian Rietveld used machine measurements to match specs from Morikawa’s previous gamer and tested more upright, as well as flatter heads, before finding the correct middle ground Morikawa was comfortable with at address.
Next in the fitting was finding the right setting for the 10g sliding weight on Stealth Plus to allow Collin to play his preferred cut when the course demands it. The weight started at the neutral position, before dialing it more towards the toe to allow the ball to start left of the target and fall right towards the target.
“How the face sits and how it looks at address, it’s not super fade bias but it’s not draw bias either. For me, knowing that I can produce my swing and hit my normal cut and move the ball both ways, it’s huge.” Morikawa
Every detail matters when it comes to getting a fitting right and once each fraction in the process was perfected, Collin was able to consistently find the center of the face with ease. With the carbon face of Stealth, doing that means one thing: more ball speed.
The lightweight carbon material creates better energy transfer, especially on center face strikes, but on mis-hits as well. During testing, Morikawa was gaining upwards of 3 MPH ball speed with Stealth Plus, which has equated to 8-10 more yards of distance.
That free swinging feeling proved lethal in Morikawa’s first PGA TOUR start of the season at the Sentry Tournament of Champions where he finished second in Strokes Gained: Off The Tee (+3,656), his highest finish in that category of any PGA Tour start in his career.
The rest of Morikawa’s driver setup remains the same: Mitsubishi Diamana D+ 60 TX shaft tipped one inch, D3 swing weight and a Golf Pride Z-Grip Cord.
More to come on Collin, Rory, DJ and the rest of Team TaylorMade as they get set to tee it up at Riviera on Thursday.