The PGA Tour equipment landscape is a total pressure cooker. On any given Tuesday morning during a tournament week, a guy walks into the truck, hands over a club, and expects a fix in the 30 minutes before his tee time.

With all the focus on launch monitors, endless adjustability, and the retail marketing hype machine, you’d assume a tour rep’s life is a constant cycle of radical overhauls and chasing extra yards.

But if you sit down inside the Srixon truck with Michael Jolly, Srixon’s director of tour operations, a very different picture emerges. Out here, elite performance isn’t about reinventing the wheel every January. It’s built on something way more fragile: trust, baseline maintenance, and the art of subtlety.

The power of doing less

To really understand Srixon’s tour philosophy, you just have to look at the numbers. Jolly dropped a crazy stat regarding their PGA Tour crew: across 15 full-time staffers, the brand grabbed eight global wins last season.

But here’s the kicker: After the very first tournament of the year, exactly zero players changed their iron shafts.

“So much of our work on tour with our staff in particular is just maintenance,” Jolly says. “Making sure lofts and lies are in check, and providing fresh wedges. It’s incredibly low maintenance.”

That kind of consistency runs deep, especially when it comes to the development of their flagship irons like the ZXI7 line. While consumers demand massive visual changes to justify buying new clubs, tour players are total creatures of habit. When Srixon tweaks an iron profile, the changes are typically minimal to the naked eye. Only the real gear heads can pick ’em out. We’re talking about tiny, subtle modifications, based on feedback, about how a pitching wedge top-line looks at address, slight adjustments to the par area, off-set etc.

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The baseline is already so high that the general reaction from staffers when a new prototype drops isn’t excitement for something different. It’s usually: Please, just don’t mess it up. The goal for Jolly and his team is strictly incremental — maybe a tiny optimization of the V-Sole turf interaction or a hair better feel — without losing the shape the player trusts.

“Please dont mess this up” is something I’ve actually heard in my time on Tour. I used to always say “just play the hits,” and in some cases that’s a perfect statement. Just let good be good, at least at a Tour level.

Moving beyond the sales pitch

The big differentiator on tour right now isn’t who has the flashiest product launch; it’s who has built the deepest layer of trust. The truck isn’t a retail shop, and the guys running it don’t act like salespeople.

Jolly notes that the real breakthroughs rarely happen during a frantic session on the tournament range. They happen when things slow down. The real trick is building a relationship solid enough that a player can grab a prototype, hit a shot, and just process what they’re seeing in total silence.

Elite ball-strikers — think Shane Lowry or Keegan Bradley — have a scary amount of sensitivity when it comes to club geometry. They notice a fractional change in launch angle, spin, or peak height instantly. A tour rep isn’t there to hype up a product; they’re there to be a sounding board, protect that player’s consistency, and know how their swing might shift when the pressure of a major championship gets turned all the way up.

There is an art to getting the tour rep job right. The best ones I’ve seen not only understand their player but also understand how to say NO in many cases. That’s where the bond between rep and player is so important. If I look back to the relationship between Tommy Fleetwood and TaylorMade’s Adrian Rietveld, they have so much trust that even mistakes are treated as part of the learning process. Mike Jolly and his team at Srixon run the same game plan and it shows.

Cracking the ball code

That same incremental, player-first philosophy has fueled Srixon’s massive leap forward in the golf ball category over the last few seasons. On tour, getting players to switch balls is notoriously difficult — if the window or the spin profile changes even fractionally off a short iron, a player’s confidence vanishes.

Instead of forcing a single “one-size-fits-all” model down the staff’s throat, Jolly’s team relies on an exact three-ball matrix — the Z-STAR, the XV, and the Diamond — that covers the entire spectrum of elite delivery styles.

Srixon Z-Star 9 2025

Z-STAR delivers maximum greenside spin for unmatched control and stopping power. Its premium 3-piece construction provides skilled players with complete tour performance from tee to green, making it the ideal choice for golfers seeking precision and feel around the green. Product Details: New Thin, Premium Urethane Cover with Biomass: Each Z-STAR Series golf ball features an extra-thin, premium urethane cover for tour-caliber greenside spin, feel, and control. Engineered with Biomass—a durable, plant-derived material—this cover reduces carbon emissions during manufacturing, offering both performance and environmental benefits. New FastLayer DG Core 2.0: Starts soft in the center and gradually becomes firm around its edge, giving high-speed players exceptional feel and maximum spin on approach shots. Spin Skin+ Coating: A durable coating that digs deep into Wedge and Iron grooves, maximizing spin for better control and stopping power. It also resists dirt and grime to maintain consistent performance. 338 Speed Dimple Pattern: Designed for less drag and more lift, this aerodynamic pattern boosts overall distance and stability—even in tough wind conditions.

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The truck is currently split pretty evenly between the heavy-hitting XV users and guys playing the Diamond ball, which has quietly become a massive weapon for players like Shane Lowry. The engineering trick there was brilliant in its subtlety: give elite players a ball that spins more with their mid-and-short irons so they can actually hold firm, tucked major championship pins, but ensure it doesn’t balloon or over-spin off the tee. Because R&D has stayed perfectly aligned with real tour feedback, Srixon has achieved a rare feat out here — nearly their entire staff is playing a current, in-line ball rather than hoarding old models from three cycles ago.

A universal blueprint

That specific approach is exactly why Srixon gear keeps finding its way into the bags of non-staffers. The ZXI7 cavity back has quietly become one of the most common choices for free agents out here who need a clean, reliable iron that blends seamlessly with other OEMs across the bag.

At the end of the day, Srixon’s tour presence is a lesson in smart equipment management. By focusing heavily on turf interaction, keeping tolerances exact, and treating product design as a slow evolution rather than a hard pivot, they keep their guys ready for the most brutal tracks in golf.

In a sport where everyone is constantly grinding for an edge, Srixon’s superpower is knowing exactly when to stay out of the way.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — It might be said that every moment, every instant that Scottie Scheffler spends in the heat of battle is the product of thousands of decisions that nobody ever sees.

Decisions like the one he faced on Saturday afternoon at the Players Championship, shortly after completing one of the low rounds of the day at TPC Sawgrass, when Scheffler faced a question of the utmost seriousness: Burrito or bowl?

Golf is a complicated sport, and that’s largely because its champions are built upon fractional advantages. In 2022, Scheffler’s Strokes Gained: Putting was -.301, which ranked 162nd on Tour and caused several months of sustained apoplexy among golf talking heads. In 2025, it was .382 — an improvement of slightly more than half a shot per round — and Scheffler was unanimously viewed as one of the best putters on Tour and a generally unstoppable force in the sport.

The butterfly effect of such incremental improvements can be seen everywhere on a typical weekend on the PGA Tour, where golfers chase gear fixes, physical therapy and even psychological treatment in the feeble hope of an extra decimal point.

“If we can make them literally one percent better every week, then we’ve done something,” Kellen Watson, a Tour Rep for Callaway, says. “One percent is more than enough.”

Given this competitive environment, it should come as no surprise that nutrition has become a major focus. Allergy tests and other recent advances in nutritional science have led many golfers to adopt more restrictive, performance-focused diets. Some players cook everything themselves, avoiding common triggers such as gluten and dairy with militaristic diligence. Others bring personal chefs on the road to cater to even the most restrictive dietary needs. The shift has been so pronounced that in 2023, the PGA Tour revamped its nutrition program entirely to serve nutritionist-approved menus with various allergens and performance diets at the forefront.

Many players appreciated the shift, which labeled foods not only by ingredients but also by intended time of consumption, such as “RECOVERY” and “PRE-ROUND.” Still, not everybody was pleased.

“It’s actually my complaint here this week is the food is too healthy in player dining,” Tom Hoge said in ’23. “There’s a QR code for us; I logged that complaint. They need some food like the rest of the obese people in America eat.”

The truth is that the Hoges of the world are going the way of the dinosaur on today’s PGA Tour, where macros are counted and inflammatory foods are avoided. The shift towards wellness is particularly visible at Sawgrass, where a large, permanent gym buffets the Tour’s traveling fleet of wellness vehicles. Those vehicles, named the “Performance Center,” welcome licensed physical therapists, psychologists, trainers and a nutritionist to nearly every event on the schedule.

“Basically, what I want is for our athletes to have the same type of services that a professional sports team [has],” said Andy Levinson, the Tour’s SVP of tournament administration. “So we try to have all the same types of equipment, the same services, everything.”

But not every change is quite so mundane — at the Players Championship, the Tour threw a bone to the Hoges of the world by welcoming a first-of-its-kind addition to the player, caddie and family dining scene: Chipotle.

The omnipresent fast-casual brand was a late addition to the fold for Players week, setting up shop in a small tent just behind the player scoring area. While the menu isn’t quite as scientifically sourced or nutritionally dense as the traditional offerings in player dining, it didn’t take long to become a Tour favorite.

“The 17th is the most-photographed location at TPC Sawgrass this week,” said one security guard working out front of the tent on Thursday morning. “But this area might be second.”

Chipotle says they have committed to providing 400 meals per day at the Players through a limited menu of burritos and burrito bowls. The customization options have been trimmed to include only the most popular (and most healthy) menu items, which are cooked in an attached, full-service kitchen by staff sourced from locations throughout the Jacksonville area. At the end of the day, extra meals are given away to security and tournament staff.

Throughout the day on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the tent was a hub of activity among the competing class. In addition to Scheffler, golfers like Maverick McNealy (who is said to plan his tournament weeks around Chipotle visits) and Max Homa were regulars, along with a host of caddies, tournament staff and other players. The love affair had a simple reasoning: the food is relatively healthy, easy to find, and dependably good — three traits that can be elusive in a lifetime spent on the road.

“When I leave on Sunday, it’s my tradition to eat some bad shit — usually my favorite airport candy,” Homa, who picked up a Chipotle sponsorship last year, told GOLF with a grin. “Otherwise, I try to eat pretty healthy. I’m not counting calories or anything, but good food helps.”

Homa’s spin on nutrition is relatively open-minded. He tries to eat “healthy” during tournaments and competitions, but his diet isn’t too restrictive. He stays away from red meat in the evenings, but eats the rainbow. Scheffler is similar, though his Chipotle habits did gain some fame at the Open Championship in July.

“There’s one right where I grew up, kind of near SMU’s campus. If I was to go to that Chipotle and try to eat nowadays, it would be very difficult for me,” Scheffler said. “There’s another one in a different part of town that I’m not going to tell you where it is, but if I go there, nobody recognizes me ever.”

The unifying theory is not devotion to the brand but to the lifestyle. Pro golfers are willing to do big things for small advantages — and silly as it sounds, a burrito bowl is an instrument in pursuit of those goals.

“It’s been cool to see people realize that nutrition is actually quite personal,” Homa said. “Like, lettuce is good in the salad, but some people don’t digest lettuce. So I think it’s gotten a lot more personalized versus back in the day. When I was growing up, it was, you know, candy’s bad, this is good.”

On Saturday at the Players Championship, the spectrum of personal choice was on full display. As players flooded in from a weathering moving day at TPC Sawgrass, the choices facing players were as dizzying as they were varied. Lunch or recovery? Range time or putting practice? Burrito or bowl?

The World No. 1 pondered each of these things as he headed off the 18th green at TPC Sawgrass and towards scoring. A few minutes later, Scottie Scheffler had settled on a solution.

“Barbacoa in a bowl,” the bean-scooper who served him repeated later with a smile. “A little bit of everything inside.”

The second round of the 2026 Players Championship begins Friday, March 13, at TPC Sawgrass’ Stadium Course in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. You can find full Players Championship tee times for Friday’s second round at the bottom of this article.

Featured tee time for Round 2

Two-time PGA champion Justin Thomas is showing some signs of life at the Players Championship.

Thomas missed the first part of the 2026 PGA Tour season while recovering from back surgery. His first start back at last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational did not go well. He shot back-to-back 79s to miss the cut by a wide margin.

You’d think that treacherous TPC Sawgrass would present an even bigger problem for Thomas as he works to re-find his form. But based on his early play, you’d be wrong.

Thomas shot out of the gates Thursday morning, making birdies on his first three holes to quickly move to three under. That put him ahead of playing partner Scottie Scheffler in the early going. The hot start should also set him up nicely for Friday’s second round.

JT started on the 10th tee for the first round, so on Friday he’ll switch to a 1st-tee start and an afternoon tee time. Thomas will tee off for Round 2 on Friday at 1:42 p.m. ET alongside Scheffler and Tommy Fleetwood.

You can watch Friday’s second round of the 2026 Players Championship from 1-7 p.m. ET on Golf Channel. PGA Tour Live on ESPN+ will provide exclusive early streaming coverage starting at 7:30 a.m. ET on Friday, in addition to featured group and featured hole coverage.

Check out the complete Round 2 tee times and groupings for the Players Championship.

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2026 Players Championship tee times for Friday: Round 2 (ET)

Tee No. 1

7:40 a.m. – Tom Hoge, Denny McCarthy, Nicolai Højgaard
7:52 a.m. – Patrick Rodgers, Kevin Roy, Marco Penge
8:04 a.m. – Chad Ramey, Alex Smalley, Pierceson Coody
8:16 a.m. – Kurt Kitayama, Harry Hall, Stephan Jaeger
8:28 a.m. – Keegan Bradley, David Ford, Chris Kirk
8:40 a.m. – Andrew Novak, Nick Taylor, Wyndham Clark
8:52 a.m. – Steven Fisk, William Mouw, Joe Highsmith
9:04 a.m. – Cameron Young, Davis Thompson, Sam Burns
9:16 a.m. – Nico Echavarria, Jason Day, Corey Conners
9:28 a.m. – Matthieu Pavon, S.H. Kim, Austin Smotherman
12:30 p.m. – Mackenzie Hughes, Eric Cole, Rico Hoey
12:42 p.m. – Max Homa, Daniel Berger, Michael Thorbjornsen
12:54 p.m. – Rasmus Højgaard, Danny Walker, Kristoffer Reitan
1:06 p.m. – Jhonattan Vegas, Taylor Pendrith, Alex Noren
1:18 p.m. – Akshay Bhatia, Brooks Koepka, Tony Finau
1:30 p.m. – Collin Morikawa, Ludvig Åberg, Si Woo Kim
1:42 p.m. – Scottie Scheffler, Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Thomas
1:54 p.m. – Viktor Hovland, Russell Henley, Robert MacIntyre
2:06 p.m. – Aldrich Potgieter, Jake Knapp, Sungjae Im
2:18 p.m. – Patton Kizzire, Seamus Power, Johnny Keefer

Tee No. 10

7:40 a.m. – Lee Hodges, Andrew Putnam, Sam Stevens
7:52 a.m. – Erik van Rooyen, Keith Mitchell, Michael Kim
8:04 a.m. – Taylor Moore, Joel Dahmen, Ryo Hisatsune
8:16 a.m. – Jacob Bridgeman, Ben Griffin, Adam Scott
8:28 a.m. – J.J. Spaun, Sepp Straka, Shane Lowry
8:40 a.m. – Sahith Theegala, Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth
8:52 a.m. – Xander Schauffele, Rory McIlroy, Hideki Matsuyama
9:04 a.m. – Chris Gotterup, Justin Rose, Min Woo Lee
9:16 a.m. – Brian Campbell, Karl Vilips, Aaron Rai
9:28 a.m. – Matti Schmid, Max McGreevy, Takumi Kanaya
9:40 a.m. – Zach Bauchou, Sudarshan Yellamaraju, A.J. Ewart
12:30 p.m. – Mark Hubbard, Thorbjørn Olesen, Mac Meissner
12:42 p.m. – Bud Cauley, Vince Whaley, Chandler Phillips
12:54 p.m. – Emiliano Grillo, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Max Greyserman
1:06 p.m. – Kevin Yu, Cam Davis, Gary Woodland
1:18 p.m. – Ricky Castillo, Ryan Gerard, Patrick Cantlay
1:30 p.m. – Adam Schenk, Garrick Higgo, Matt McCarty
1:42 p.m. – Brian Harman, Maverick McNealy, Davis Riley
1:54 p.m. – Sami Valimaki, Lucas Glover, Matt Fitzpatrick
2:06 p.m. – Michael Brennan, Harris English, J.T. Poston
2:18 p.m. – Haotong Li, Zecheng Dou, Jordan Smith

Change is coming to the PGA Tour. In the latest move to raise the Tour’s profile and counter LIV Golf’s influence, new Tour CEO Brian Rolapp and the Future Competitions Committee are looking to shrink the number of tournaments on the schedule, the length of the season and the number of PGA Tour cards doled out each year.

The expected moves have been publicly supported by the likes of Tiger Woods (though not so much Rory McIlroy).

But two well-known figures in the game have now provided an alternative view.

In a new report by Golfweek’s Adam Schupak, two-time major champion Curtis Strange and seven-time PGA Tour winner-turned TV analyst Peter Jacobsen sharply criticized the new PGA Tour changes.

Here’s what you need to know.

Curtis Strange criticizes new PGA Tour direction, cut changes

Strange is a household name to golf fans. The World Golf Hall of Famer captured 17 Tour wins in his career and won back-to-back U.S. Opens in 1988 and 1989. He also served as U.S. Ryder Cup captain in 2002.

After that, Strange embarked on a lengthy career as a color commentator and TV analyst, first for ESPN and ABC and later for Fox.

But in his comments to Schupak, Strange made it clear he does not support the major PGA Tour changes that have been made recently, or the direction the Tour seems to be heading.

Strange’s primary points of contention are the loss of cuts at many Signature Events, the negative impact on long-running regular Tour events and the six-month season the Tour is reportedly eyeing.

“You can have an elevated event,” Strange told Schupak, “But a cut, it’s part of the fabric of the Tour. It’s making longstanding events into a feeder tour to the other Signature Events,” Strange argued.

In a thinly-veiled hit at Rolapp, the Tour’s CEO who used to work for the NFL, Strange added, “Golf is a different animal than football. It’s not a six-month audience.”

Strange then identified the “problem” that led to so many changes on the PGA Tour is having the “players running the asylum.”

“The problem is you have the players running the asylum. Why do you think (former PGA Tour board member) Jimmy Dunne left?” Strange asked. “He said, ‘shoot, why am I wasting my time anymore?’”

Since LIV Golf arrived in 2022, one of the other big Tour changes that occurred was giving players more influence in the Tour’s decision-making via the Future Competitions Committee, which is led by Woods.

Peter Jacobsen: Pros who support Tour changes should ‘go join LIV’

Like Strange, Jacobsen was an accomplished PGA Tour player before becoming a golf TV analyst.

Unlike Strange, Jacobsen did not hold back at all in his criticism of recent Tour changes in his own comments in Schupak’s story.

Jacobsen described the plan to “remake the PGA Tour” as a “huge gamble,” and questioned why major changes are necessary.

“It’s a huge gamble trying to remake the PGA Tour. I’ve read a lot of the players saying, ‘Well, we all know the PGA Tour has to change,’ and I ask the question, Why? It was working really well before.”

He also hit directly at the big-name players pushing for changes, saying that if they wanted to play fewer events with more stars in the field they should “go join LIV.”

“If the players wanted to have tournaments where the good players play more often together, they have that at LIV. Go join LIV.”

But Jacobsen saved most of his ire for the Tour’s plan to add scarcity to the Tour schedule. That would involve getting rid of some long-running Tour events in favor of a shorter season.

“I get scared when I hear people saying cutting events. When you look at the individual communities, those events are so important to that community and the charity money raised is important to those golf fans,” Jacobsen argued. “I always thought the PGA Tour should expand their reach rather than contract their reach. Count me as someone who thinks we should be growing the Tour and having more events rather than contracting.”

Rolapp has a pre-Players Championship press conference planned for Wednesday morning at PGA Tour headquarters, where he is expected to make an announcement regarding the future of the Tour.

You can read both Jacobsen and Strange’s full comments in Schupak’s Golfweek story here.