Players Championship 2026: Is Justin Rose endangering his late career resurgence with an iron change?
· Yahoo Sports
NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — Strokes gained is probably mainstream enough as a statistic that it doesn't need to be explained, but for our purposes here, it isolates a player's overall performance against the rest of the field in a given tournament, and against all his competitors over the course of the season.
Specific stats give an even more granular view, and SG/approach is the best method we have of measuring a golfer's iron play against his colleagues. Here, then, is a chronological look at Justin Rose's iron play thus far in 2026, with his SG/approach number, and his ranking in each field:
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American Express: -0.32, 95th out of 156
Farmers Insurance Open: +2.197, 3rd out of 147
Pebble Beach: +0.27, 32nd out of 80
Genesis Invitational: +0.14, 35th out of 72
Arnold Palmer Invitational: +1.77, 2nd out of 72
Players Championship: +.228, 39th out of 123
The Masters: +1.56, 4th out of 91
Cadillac Championship: -0.328, 46th out of 72
Truist Championship: -0.190, 42nd out of 72
PGA Championship, through two rounds: -.279, 87th out of 156*
*Note that these numbers will fluctuate as the tournament goes on
Now, clearly the point of this exercise is to compare his iron play before the newsworthy switch in late April to McLaren just before the Cadillac Championship, so let's compile the seven tournaments before, and the three that have followed, and break them out:
Before McLaren: +5.845 cumulative SG/approach, ranking him 28th
After McLaren: -0.797 cumulative SG/approach: ranking him 59th
Carl Recine
The obvious disclaimer here is that we're dealing with a very small sample size, so when we say he seems to be more than two times worse with McLaren irons in 2026, we could be looking at entirely different numbers by the U.S. Open. "Statistical noise" is a potential explanation here, as are temporary growing pains from switching to new equipment. But as a Golf Digest editor put it, it's also true that his window of time to win another major is a small sample. Rose is 45, but he's notched four major top-10s in the last three years along with two PGA Tour wins, and he seems to be knocking on the door of winning his second major.
The obvious anxiety is this: Will he blow his last chance to change his legacy by switching irons?
The concern feels especially relevant considering it has happened to Rose before, when he signed with Honma in 2019. As Golf Digest’s Joel Beall wrote earlier this year, "conversely, Rose already experienced a career bump not long ago when he made an ill-fated foray with Honma Golf when he was No. 1 in the World." That relationship ended after a year and a half, when Rose went back to TaylorMade.
At Aronimink on Friday afternoon as the second round played out, for the PGA Championship, Rose is projected to make the cut on the number after a chip-in eagle on the ninth hole, his last of the day. He still struggled to a 73 and had a three-over total through 36 holes.
Before the tournament began, Rose spoke at length about the irons and told reporters that he was set to put them in play as early as February, but that they weren't quite ready.
"I've played so many different sets of irons in the last five years that I just don't think that it's a big deal," he said. "I've been working hard on this project for 18 months now, and it's kind of like it's a full wish list of all of the things I would like to see in a set of irons.
"The fact I haven't played great the last two weeks has got nothing to do with the irons either," he added.
Even so, he conceded that playing with the irons in tournament conditions isn't quite the same as the testing process, and that it may take time before he's "fully, fully, fully comfortable."
"The technology behind them is wonderful," he said. "I'm seeing more performance in my range sessions, the spin and the launch and the speed and all the stuff I'm seeing on the range is performance, and I'm seeing the performance."
Rose said he has played around eight sets of irons in the last five years, and that the psychological blow of coming up short in the recent Masters—he finished two shots back of Rory McIlroy—was the biggest factor in his struggles at the last two events.
There's no reason not to believe him, but it's also true that the stats will also speak for themselves, and the stats show that his approach game has struggled since the switch. Whether that's noise, an adjustment process, or something more concerning could determine quite a lot about Rose's immediate future.
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