The TaylorMade BRNR Mini Driver Copper made waves with its retro styling when it was released ahead of The Masters – and it seems that at least one professional was impressed.
TaylorMade’s new BRNR Mini Driver Copper club is a purely aesthetic addition to their new range of BRNR Mini Drivers.
McIlroy started testing it before the Texas Open, and he was using it in the practice rounds of The Masters.
He did not utilize the club during the tournament main, choosing to continue using his TaylorMade Qi10 3-wood, but the PGA Tour now makes its way to the tighter winding course at Harbour Town Golf Links for the RBC Heritage.
McIlroy sees it as the perfect place to properly debut the BRNR Mini Driver.
The Harbour Town layout, which is rather condensed, narrow, and twisty, mimics a chess game on grass where the opponent is the course.
To have an unhindered line to the green and avoid being impeded by overhanging trees, players must position themselves on the fairway off the tee at the appropriate distances and places meaning that they want accuracy over distance.
Although Harbour Town is not a “bomb-and-gauge” course, long hitters may still be successful there. However, longer hitters can smash the ball too far, putting them in a tough situation, or chip out sideways because of the tight lines and sharp doglegs off the tee.
For a player like McIlroy, the BRNR Mini Driver will deliver tight dispersion and close to pinpoint accuracy.
“For someone like Rory, who’s that long at the top end of the bag, and then you put him on a course like Harbour Town, it’s tough off the tee,” Adrian Rietveld, senior manager of Tour TaylorMade said.
“It’s tight into the greens, and you have to put yourself in position off the tee to have a shot into the green. It kind of reminds me of Valderrama in Spain, where you can be in the fairway and have no shot into the green.
“I’m caddying for Tommy [Fleetwood] this week, so I was walking the course last night and looking at a few things.
“There’s just such a small margin for error. You can be standing in the fairway at 300 yards and have a shot, but at 320 you don’t. So if you don’t hit a perfect shot, you could be stuck behind a tree. And then if you’re back at 280, it might be a really tough shot into the small greens.
“So for Rory [with the BRNR], it’s a nice course-specific golf club for him. He’s got both shots with it; he can move it right to left or left to right. And the main thing about this club has been the accuracy and the dispersion with it. I mean, it’s been amazing for Tommy.
“This was the first event Tommy used a BRNR last year, and I remember talking to him about it, and he said he couldn’t wait to play it at Augusta next year. And he just never took it out of the bag because he’s so comfortable with it, and hitting it off the deck.
“So you look at Rory, and you want to have the tools working to your advantage out here, and the driver could hand-cuff him a bit with all of the shots you’d have to manufacture.”
