Why Rickie Fowler is playing a 3-wood-length driver at the PGA Championship

Rickie Fowler is playing some of his best golf in years, having finished outright second at the Truist Championship last weekend.

This naturally has people wondering whether Fowler is truly on the cusp of reclaiming the tournament-winning form he enjoyed back in his early career. Is a late-stage Major push potentially even on the cards?

That remains to be seen, but Fowler is still busy tinkering away on his set-up in an effort to push into a new level of performance. And he's made one unconventional tweak to his driver that has caught more than a few eyes.

Keeping a balance between distance and control is the fundamental challenge of any driver fitting for a tour pro, and Fowler has leaned towards the latter with his latest move, trimming te the shaft of his driver down by almost two inches from what would be considered a standard size. 

He plans on using a 43.25" shaft in his Cobra OPTM X driver this weekend at the PGA Championship, the shortest driver build he's ever played in his career and a length more commonly associated with the long-end of 3-woods than a driver at all.

Speaking to Golf Digest and GolfWRX, Cobra Tour rep Ben Schomin said that the shorter driver build not only helped to create a sense of more natural progression between his driver and fairway woods, but leant the driver a more familiar feeling, similar to the early days in his career when he would typically play a longer driver and grip down on the club for control.

“He’s been at 45 (inches), and he’d been at 45 for a few weeks, 44 1/8 (inches) is really is where he is been living really for the most part, for the last couple of years, and is where he is been comfortable,” Schomin told GolfWRX. “It just felt like it was a little long and loose on him.”

"I think when it gets longer and he's swinging well, it maybe feels like it's just lagging behind him," he said to Golf Digest. "When it's shorter, it feels like he can just turn on it a lot better. It's like a good pass."

Fowler has spent most of the season using Cobra's do-it-all OPTM X driver, however Schomin revealed that Fowler actually fit well into all three of Cobra's mainline driver heads for the 2026 season. As such, he's also used the lower-spin OPTM LS in some tournaments, as well as a lower-lofted build of the more forgiving OPTM Max-K (as used by Gary Woodland in his win at the Houston Open). 

As ever, Fowler driver comes fitted with a UST Mamiya LIN-Q PowerCore White 6TX shaft.