PGA Championship 2026: Rickie Fowler’s playing the shortest driver of his career. Here’s why it’s working

NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — Two and a half inches. That’s the gap between the longest and shortest driver builds Rickie Fowler has played in his professional career.

This week at the PGA Championship, Fowler plans to use a 43.25-inch Cobra OPTM X driver, the shortest build he’s ever put in the bag, following work with Cobra tour rep Ben Schomin. The change didn’t come from a data point or swing overhaul, but rather from a feel he remembered from early in his career.

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When Fowler first came out on tour in 2009, he played a 45.5-inch driver and choked down on it—a habit that gave him a sense of control. As his setup evolved over the years, Fowler tried different driver lengths to see which felt better. But no matter what Fowler used, he found himself coming back to the feel of choking down on the club.

During a recent conversation with Schomin, the two discussed options to replicate that feeling, including returning to a longer build.

Instead of repeating old habits, Fowler went in the opposite direction entirely and had the driver built at the shortest length he’s ever used in competition.

Fowler put the 43.25-inch OPTM X in play last week at the Truist Championship and finished T2 to eventual winner Kristoffer Reitan.

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The conversation about length had been building for a while. In San Antonio, Fowler moved to 45 inches, but it wasn’t working the way he wanted. By last week, he told Schomin the driver just didn’t feel like it belonged with the rest of his bag.

“It just doesn’t feel like that club quite fits in with the rest of my bag right now,” Fowler told him. They went shorter, tried 43.75 inches, and eventually settled on 43.25 inches.

“I think when it gets longer and he’s swinging well, it maybe feels like it’s just lagging behind him,” Schomin said. “When it’s shorter, it feels like he can just turn on it a lot better. It’s like a good pass.”

The move does cost a touch of ball speed, Schomin acknowledged, but Fowler’s numbers at Truist told a different story. He averaged 308 yards off the tee at Quail Hollow, a six-yard increase from his driving distance this season.

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The shorter build is helping him find the center of the face more consistently and swing with a better path, which, counterintuitively, allows him to be more aggressive, not less.

“It definitely doesn’t feel like he has that right miss as much,” Schomin said.

Getting the swing weight right required some work under the hood. Fowler’s OPTM X features two adjustable weights, and Schomin had to make a meaningful change to compensate for the shorter shaft. He dropped the rear weight from 11 grams to 7 grams and added a piece of lead tape to the center of the head to dial in the final feel.

Fowler’s response in testing was immediate.

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“He’s like, yeah, it feels good there,” Schomin said.

At 43.25 inches, Fowler is at a length Schomin said is unusual, even by tour standards. “I don’t know if a player in his career has ever had that big of a difference in driver lengths,” he said.

But after the T-2 finish at Truist and a driver that finally feels like it belongs with the rest of his bag, Fowler isn’t second-guessing the decision. Sometimes the shortest path forward is the right one.