If you didn’t get a chance to watch Episode 1 of the TaylorMade Tour fitting experience with Adrian Rietveld, I would encourage you to check it out here. The video will give you an appreciation for the level of detail that tournament fitters go into to ensure that every club they place in a player’s hands is strategically made.
As a world-class chess player, a brilliant assembler (like Rietveld, who fits Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy AND Tommy Fleetwoodamong other stars) will make strategic moves to push and spur a player into the right setup. It’s a craft that takes years to perfect and, no, it’s not a “who knows the facts” contest—it’s a listening AND watching competition. Great clubs help, but I’ve seen the best fitters overcome the shortcomings of certain products.
After our adjustment (which you can watch in the video below), I asked Adrian to give me an overview of what he found to be the first fit. I left the Kingdom that day thinking the process went well, but it was important for me to get an honest opinion from the man himself. It’s not often that an editor sits down and writes down his thoughts after the fact, so this was a unique opportunity to get into AD’s head.
I hope you learn a lot from what he wrote below – it’s insightful stuff.
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Inside Johnny Wunder’s TaylorMade driver assembly
by Adrian Rietveld, Senior Manager of the TaylorMade PGA Tour
As a fitter, what I learned about Johnny is that he is incredibly athletic, but also seasoned in years with deeply ingrained habits. For this reason, I deliberately avoided anything overly technical or instructive during assembly. My role was simply to optimize the equipment to match his exact physical characteristics, swing characteristics and swing tendencies – no more, no less. When giving guiding tips, I only went as far as tee height.
I made it a conscious point to get Johnny as far away from his typical loss as possible. This approach immediately put him at ease, removing any anxiety and helping him trust the club in his hands. Johnny’s strengths are his incredible ability to generate speed and – perhaps even more impressive – his ability to repeat his movement with an extremely high level of accuracy and consistency. In all honesty, this is a club fitter’s dream: you know exactly what you’re working with. Its strengths in finding speed and repeatability allowed me to understand the impact and geometry of the club so thoroughly that we could essentially eliminate its weaknesses before the fit began.
TaylorMade Qi4D Custom Driver
SHAPE FOR SPEED The re-engineered head profile increases ball speed thanks to improved aerodynamics developed through advanced simulations. FACE FOR DISTANCE 60x Carbon Twist Face™ is a technological cornerstone that provides weight savings, exceptional ball speed and more durability compared to a titanium face. ADJUSTABLE PERFORMANCE The 4° loft sleeve can be used to adjust the loft angle, reach and face for optimized flight. PROVEN TOUR TECHNOLOGY The new and improved Speed ​​Pocket™ cutting edge protects ball speed and reduces spin on low face shots. Advanced CAD modeling creates a design with a clean and powerful sound, a foundation of TaylorMade driver performance. Multi-material construction allows engineers to strategically place mass in areas of the head where it maximizes performance, speed and stability.
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To be honest, the fit went better than I expected. Johnny is already a strong player using high-end equipment and he has had many high-end equipment in the past. The competitive side of me continued to believe that I could discover some marginal gains, but I knew that it would depend on identifying what really mattered to it and steering those improvements in the right direction.
What exceeded my expectations was that every parameter in which I was hoping to find even small edges ended up offering exponential improvements. I could read it in his body language and see it in the flight of the ball early. We achieved such strong results so quickly that I actually had extra time to refine things further and explore multiple viable options. That’s a great feeling as a fitter: you have a fixed window and you’re normally racing to maximize it just to get the best possible result. In this case, I can use the full time not only to optimize, but also to give John real choices – building his ownership and confidence as he moves through the course.
Several key achievements stand out. First, we completely eliminated his one-way error. From a scientific perspective, this effectively widens the leeway and creates a much larger margin for error. This reduction in steering variability builds confidence, which in turn unlocks more speed and overall performance.
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Fully equipped
Second, we didn’t reinvent the wheel. Johnny was already happy with some of the club’s parameters—like grip, length, and swing weight—so I kept those familiar elements intact and focused on more subtle adjustments that he wouldn’t necessarily notice visually, like lay angle, face angle, and center of gravity location. These changes produced great results without spoiling his feel.
Third—and this had perhaps the biggest impact—I used technology to TaylorMade Qi4D driver (often referred to in the device as a standout in its class). The driver delivers exceptional spin speed consistency across the face. This allowed me to safely put more loft in his hands without the penalty of excessive rotation.
Johnny has historically played extremely low drivers because he has spent years trying to manage and suppress spin. For the first time, roll deflection is no longer a concern – he can rely on the performance of the head to keep things tight and predictable. This product characteristic was a great asset in this assembly; it gave me the freedom to optimize so many other variables without fear, making the whole process extremely rewarding. In my opinion, this spin consistency is likely the main reason Johnny will choose this driver over anything else he’s tested. Speed ​​was an added bonus.
The final result:
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Fully equipped
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Fully equipped
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Fully equipped
TaylorMade QI4D (Core) 8 degrees
Weight: 2X 9g rear, 2X 5g front
FCT sleeve: Place it in a straight direction at an angle of 61 degrees
Swing weight: D4
Axis: Fujikura Ventus Black Velo+ 6X Tipped 5/8 @45.25 EOG
Grip: Golf Pride Tour Velvet 58R 2 DBL Side
