Most tour pros treat a golf ball switch mid-season the way the rest of us treat changing dentists — something you avoid unless it’s genuinely necessary. Jacob Bridgeman switched anyway, right before the toughest setups of the year, and it worked.
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The Win
Bridgeman closed with a bogey-free 10-under 61 to win the 2026 Biltmore Championship Asheville at 26-under 258, his second title of the season. It’s the kind of number that gets attributed to putting heat or a hot week — but according to his TaylorMade tour rep, the real story started with his ball.
Why He Switched
Bridgeman is, in his rep Cory Johnson’s words, “one of the lowest spin iron players on tour.” That’s a problem on the kind of hard, fast playoff setups the back half of the PGA Tour season throws at players, where a ball that doesn’t spin enough just skids through greens instead of holding them.
The fix was switching to the TaylorMade TP5x. The added spin from the new ball let his fitters walk his P7CB irons back to standard lofts — he’d been playing them a full degree weaker to compensate for his low-spin tendencies before the switch. On top of the short-game fix, the TP5x also picked up 2–3 mph of ball speed with the driver. As Johnson put it: “This switch to TP5x was made for him to win on the hardest set ups in golf.”
Why This Matters for the Rest of Us
Bridgeman’s situation is a clean, real-world example of something most golfers get backwards: chasing more spin usually starts with the wedges, when the actual fix is often the ball. A ball that spins more everywhere lets your iron lofts do their actual job again, instead of needing to be bent weak to fake the stopping power the ball isn’t providing on its own.
If your irons have ever been “strengthened” by a fitter to compensate for a ball that just doesn’t grip greens, that’s the same trade-off Bridgeman was making all season — right up until he stopped.
For more info: GOLF.com
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