Six-time PGA TOUR winner Rickie Fowler is searching for a swift return back to the FedExCup Playoffs after missing out on the postseason in 2024.

With one event left in the Regular Season, a steady campaign so far has Fowler perched inside the top-70 bubble at No. 61 entering the Wyndham Championship. Fowler’s all-but-certain return to the three-legged FedExCup Playoffs can be attributed to a late-season switch in equipment setup, changing into new iron shafts, and then again into a new driver shaft.

While shaft changes during the season aren’t that far out of the ordinary, with players always looking for marginal gains, Fowler’s catches the eye as the 36-year-old has turned to graphite shafts. Fowler switched from his ever-present KBS Tour C-Taper 125-gram steel shafts, which offer low launch and spin in his irons, to the graphite Aerotech SteelFiber 125cw shafts in his Cobra King Tour irons at last month’s Travelers Championship. A change he hinted initiated by something that hits everyone: age.

“I mean, went to the week of Travelers, so been in for, I guess that's a little over a month now,” Fowler said Wednesday at the Wyndham. “Something that's a little easier on the body and seemed to get very similar numbers to where I was at. Yeah, it's gone well so far.”

To achieve similar numbers and feels to a standard steel shaft, the graphite shafts in Fowler’s irons have an added micro-thin layer of steel fiber to the surface of the shaft – hence the name. With the added weight, it shifts the center of gravity outward, trying to achieve the performance of a regular steel shaft, but at the same time provides the benefits of graphite.

These benefits of the composite graphite include vibration damping compared to steel for a softer feel and better control at impact, especially with off-center hits, as well as the ability to transition energy in the downswing more easily for increased ball speeds.

SteelFiber shafts aren’t new to the TOUR. Matt Kuchar most notably has played them for much of his career, winning nine times on TOUR including THE PLAYERS Championship and during the Playoffs at the FedEx St. Jude Championship.

Fowler sat on the No. 70 bubble at the time of switch with hopes of making it to Memphis, now his hopes are closer to reality at No. 61, and he has Signature Events qualification on the horizon with the top 50 cutoff for the BMW Championship locking up starts for 2026. The Californian has seen positive results since the change, jumping from 85th to 72nd in Proximity to the hole and 121st to 111th in Greens in Regulation.

The shaft swapping hasn’t stopped with just the irons. Fowler followed the change at the Travelers by switching into a UST Mamiya Lin-Q Proto V1 6 TX driver shaft in his Cobra DS-Adapt X, two weeks later at the John Deere Classic. Originally in a Mitsubishi Diamana WB 73 TX, Fowler moved to the same prototype style of shaft that saw Ben Griffin claim his first two PGA TOUR wins.

UST Mamiya says that the new prototypes have a stronger carbon fiber material that helps create added stability while still helping produce ball speed. Since the introduction into Fowler’s bag, he’s seen an improvement from 65th in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee to inside the top 50.

As with Fowler, who’s very much into his equipment, there’s always room for improvement and to find more gains, and it seems more testing is still in the future.

“Probably do some more testing in some different weight configurations with them once I get some time,” Fowler said. “Yeah, I feel like we're always trying to search, one, to get better but are there ways to make things easier, whether that's physically, mentally, whatever it may be. So yeah, I thought they were good enough to obviously put into play and looking forward to doing some more testing.”