Player of the Year nominee Scottie Scheffler tees up at the Hero World Challenge seeking a third win in as many years at the Tiger Woods-hosted event. The annual stop at Albany GC is the final outing of the season for Scheffler, and over the past few years, it has served as a perfect spot for end-of-year testing.

Just last year, en route to collecting his second victory in The Bahamas, Scheffler debuted a new claw putting grip style, which propelled him from 77th to a career-high 22nd in Strokes Gained: Putting in 2025. The trend continues this time around, as the world No. 1 has brought another change to his golf game, adding the unreleased TaylorMade Qi4D driver and fairway wood to his equipment setup.

“I would say that's a lot of what's really valuable for me about this week,” Scheffler said Wednesday, ahead of the Hero World Challenge. “I would say testing things out in competition is a good way of kind of seeing where you're at. You can simulate competition at home, but coming out here and playing stroke play is always a bit different over the course of four days. I find this week to be pretty valuable."

Now, while Scheffler may be looking to improve his SG: Off-the-tee ranking, he won’t be able to make such a jump, as he currently ranks second in the category behind Pierceson Coody. It will be Scheffler’s first driver swap since February of 2024, when he first added the Qi10.

While details on the new driver are yet to be announced, with most equipment companies launching their latest gear at the start of the new year, Scheffler’s Qi4D model has some subtle intricacies compared to that of Rory McIlroy’s, who switched into the lineup for the DP World Tour season's end last month.

While both feature the new four-weight system, something TaylorMade first implemented in the R7 driver lineup of the mid-2000s, the main difference that Scheffler has requested from the TaylorMade team is the face. With his new Qi4D model, he’s replicating the face design that he had been using previously on the Qi10, which, in fact, is the design that Scheffler took from his very first driver from TaylorMade, the Stealth in 2022.

“Yeah, for me so far this driver's been a really good fit for my eye, and that's always the first test for me,” Scheffler said. “So far the performance has been good, my spin numbers have been really consistent, ball flight's been consistent, and looking forward to getting it in competition.”

He went on to add: “Going into this year, I feel like Adrian (Rietveld) and the whole team at TaylorMade had a really good kind of idea of what my eyes needed to see in order for the driver to be able to work. We went through a lot of different kinds of options for what the face needed to be specifically for me and felt like we're in a good spot, and then the testing was a lot simpler this time around for sure.”

Scheffler did go through multiple tests with the newer Qi35 model at points during the 2025 season, but ultimately stuck with the Qi10, with which he has amassed 13 PGA TOUR victories.

“So last year I had a little bit of trouble getting into the Qi35, and I feel like we learned a lot throughout that process of what I like to see in a driver, the way it needs to perform for me specifically,” Scheffler said.

Looking at all three versions from the Qi driver series, the Qi4D is returning to a more pear-shaped outline, similar to the Qi10. It also features a more distinct trailing edge, with more mass towards the pointed end of the club and less area around the toe and heel, a design that seems to have had better adoption on TOUR.