Turns out a jacket wasn’t the only green item Rory McIlroy received for winning the Masters last month.
At the PGA Championship this week, McIlroy traded in his Trackman 4 launch monitor that he’s used for 10 years and got back a new unit with a green cover.
What’s so special about the green cover? As you can guess, given the timing of the trade-in, the green cover is reserved only for Masters winners, and McIlroy’s is just the eighth Trackman in existence that isn’t orange.
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Lance Vinson, Trackman’s director of U.S. tour and elite player engagement, told GOLF It’s a fairly new tradition for the company. The first green Trackman was delivered to 2020 Masters champion Dustin Johnson at the 2021 Masters after some people at Trackman came up with the idea to honor DJ’s second major.
“It’s kind of become this tradition since then for Trackman clients that they have the option, and we will trade the orange one out for the green,” Vinson said. “It’s obviously part of the uniqueness as it’s the only Trackman that’s not orange, and there’s only one way to get it.”
The green Trackman has become so elusive that even previous Masters winners before 2020, like Adam Scott, Patrick Reed, Danny Willett and even 1987 winner Larry Mize, have asked for the green version.
It’s possibly one of the coolest lesser-known perks of winning the Masters and it’s something the players get buzzing about.
“With Rory winning and then we start hearing from his camp about how excited he is about getting it,” Vinson said. “So that part of it is now it’s become a known thing with the players of, ‘Man, I want to get that green Trackman,’ or, ‘I’m going to win the Masters.’
Based on swing speed, here are the ‘preferred’ Trackman numbers to hit your drives farther
Coincidentally, every Masters winner since Dustin Johnson has been a Trackman client, meaning they actually have purchased a unit from the company. Even Tour pros need to pay for a Trackman 4 unit, which starts at $22,495, but the company says they get a slight discount in exchange for their name, image and likeness in marketing and promotional materials.
When a player wins the Masters and wants to receive the green Trackman, it’s not as simple as replacing the orange cover with a green one. The face plates aren’t interchangeable. But players don’t have to pay for the green unit; Trackman looks at it as a trade-in with players giving up their old units in exchange.
But as exacting and demanding as pros are, do they ever wonder about something being slightly different about the new green units compared to the orange ones? Vinson said he actually worries about it more than they do.
“We are probably more superstitious than the players,” he said. “When we did Scottie’s, it’s like, ‘Man, this guy’s on an absolute heater. Is he going to want to change out his unit that he’s bought and trusted for all of these years?’
“And no problem, it’s like ‘Yeah, oh man! That’s really cool, I forgot you guys did that,’ and you know, then the rest is history.”
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