Pat Perez has certainly always been a good golfer — two second-place finishes on Tour and a top-100 World Golf Ranking will certainly pad the pocketbook. But when Perez fired rounds of 61, 63, 67, 67 and 69 to win January’s Bob Hope Classic — including a PGA Tour-record 36-hole score of 20-under-par — more than one person said, “Where did that come from?” Turns out that Perez had a trick up his sleeve — or rather, in his bag. Perez was one of the first pros — including Sergio Garcia, who placed seventh the same week at the Dubai Masters — to play the TaylorMade r9 driver, a club so new it won’t even be in stores until April. So what’s so great about the r9 that it’s quickly becoming the most popular driver on Tour? Using a small wrench included with the club, the shaft of the r9 can be removed and reinserted in any of eight different positions, allowing golfers to change the face angle, loft and lie angle of the clubs — what TaylorMade markets as “face control technology.” The same wrench can also be used to adjust weights in the head and to change shafts as desired. While it probably won’t mean to you what the Bob Hope’s $918,000 winner’s share meant to Perez, being able to customize a driver to your precise swing is a benefit you simply can’t put a price on.