After two seasons with the Qi10, the world’s No. 1 player begins the Arnold Palmer Invitational with a new driver.
ORLANDO, Fla. — When the world’s No. 1 player finally decides a club deserves a place in the bag, it tends to mean something.
After two seasons of sticking with his trusted TaylorMade Qi10 driver, Scottie Scheffler started the 2026 Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill Club and Lodge on Thursday using TaylorMade’s new Qi4D driver, joining a growing list of the company’s marquee players who have already made the move.
“I feel like what we have seen is more consistent spin numbers. So that will help it be a little bit more accurate off the tee,” he told members of the media after an opening-round 2-under 70 on Thursday. “Directionally, I struggled a little bit with it at the start of the year, but I got to what I thought was a really good spot last week, and I liked what I saw today.”
Scheffler used the driver Wednesday during the pro-am, and it appears to be fitted with the same Fujikura Ventus Black shaft that was in his Qi10.
For TaylorMade, the list of players already in the Qi4D includes Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa and Tommy Fleetwood. Nelly Korda, Brooke Henderson and Charley Hull have also been playing Qi4D, but adding Scheffler to the group carries a different kind of weight because of how reluctant he has been to change.
Scheffler’s loyalty to the Qi10 has been notable over the past year. Even when TaylorMade released the Qi35 driver in 2025, Scheffler bypassed it and kept using the Qi10, a club that had already delivered wins and consistent performance for the 29-year-old Texan. While McIlroy quickly transitioned into the Qi4D earlier this season, Scheffler tested it at the Hero World Challenge and then went back to his Qi10.
His reasoning was simple.
“I can be a difficult person to get a club in the bag,” he explained after the second round of the WM Phoenix Open. “I’m a little bit adverse to change as it is, and I have a driver in my bag that’s won quite a lot of golf tournaments. I’ve had a lot of success with it.
“It’s just one of those things that is tough. I’m not going to put anything in the bag unless I feel it’s better. We are getting really close. There are some improvements I’ve for sure seen in the new driver. It just hasn’t gotten quite where it needs to be in order for me to put it in competition.”
Apparently, it has now crossed that threshold.
The timing of the move is significant. The Arnold Palmer Invitational is a PGA Tour signature event. Next week comes the Players Championship. The 2026 Masters, the season’s first major, is just 35 days away. This is typically not the time of year players experiment with equipment or create a quarterback controversy inside the world No. 1’s bag.
For TaylorMade, getting Scheffler into a Qi4D driver is significant because it creates alignment: the brand’s most prominent ambassadors are all teeing it up with the same driver. That does not always happen, especially when one of those players spent the better part of two seasons proving that he did not feel the need to change.