Speaker 1: The guys from Ping. They've kind of showed me how
Speaker 1: much the equipment matters. I just love that I can
Speaker 1: hit any shot I kind of want.
Speaker 2: We're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about
Speaker 2: what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Ping Proving Grounds Podcast. I'm Shane Bacon,
Speaker 1: That's Marty Jertsen, and we have a special guest this Marty.
Speaker 1: We don't get special guests on the Zoom much. This
Speaker 1: is very exciting for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a fun day. This is an exciting day.
Speaker 1: Shane rose Fielder, the PING director of Engineering Operations, joins
Speaker 1: us and Rose. We're having you on for a multitude
Speaker 1: of reasons. One is I just am interested in your story.
Speaker 1: Two is we're going to talk about ladies to product
Speaker 1: development on this episode and the difference in how you
Speaker 1: go about building golf clubs for males versus females. But
Speaker 1: I wanted to start really kind of with your story
Speaker 1: and your journey because it's a very interesting one. First off,
Speaker 1: I was reading a little bit about you. You've had
Speaker 1: no other job. You've been at PING your entire career.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, it's something I'm proud of. But yeah, I
Speaker 3: interned for two summers at Ping before being hired full time.
Speaker 3: I've never had any motivation to go anywhere else. It's
Speaker 3: a great place to work.
Speaker 1: So did you go straight Michigan to Arizona? Was that
Speaker 1: kind of the process for you? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I grew up in Michigan. I was there for
Speaker 3: what was it twenty two years or so, and then
Speaker 3: I headed out here right after graduation. So I've been
Speaker 3: here about fifteen years now.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we won't talk about the heat right now.
Speaker 1: We'll just focus on this right now. I know it's
Speaker 1: been a little yeah, seven.
Speaker 3: Go ahead, seventeen summers. I was going to say seventeen summers,
Speaker 3: so not just fifteen years.
Speaker 1: It's like a badge of honor. That's like hunger game
Speaker 1: level stuff. If you spend that many times in Phoenix summers.
Speaker 1: I've dealt with it before. I don't deal with it now.
Speaker 1: I was interested in this because I was reading a
Speaker 1: bit about you. There's a great article on golf dot
Speaker 1: com that Jessica Marksbury wrote about you when she was
Speaker 1: doing a bit of deep diving into some of the
Speaker 1: females that work in golf in a lot of different areas,
Speaker 1: and something that was interested about you is not just
Speaker 1: what you do, but how few females are involved in
Speaker 1: your space, kind of in the engineering world. So how
Speaker 1: did you get interested in that in that specific part
Speaker 1: of golf, considering you were playing collegiate golf at Michigan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. So when I was in
Speaker 3: I think it was in high school, I took a
Speaker 3: physics class, just a basic physics class, and my professor
Speaker 3: instructor at the time, he asked me, he said, Hey,
Speaker 3: would you be interested in engineering? And I was like,
Speaker 3: what's that? I don't even know. So I pursued engineering
Speaker 3: kind of just knowing that I really liked math and
Speaker 3: physics and I didn't really like English as much, so
Speaker 3: it was a way to kind of avoid that a
Speaker 3: bit too, and it worked out great. So I majored
Speaker 3: in mechanical engineering at University of Michigan and worked with
Speaker 3: a professor there one semester on a project and he
Speaker 3: happened to be working with Ping at the time, and
Speaker 3: so that was kind of my way into paying for
Speaker 3: an internship.
Speaker 1: We've talked to Marty about getting involved in this space before.
Speaker 1: Did you have like an aha moment where you were
Speaker 1: diving into it. In college, you were kind of learning
Speaker 1: a little bit about the engineering side of things, and
Speaker 1: you went, oh, wow, this is maybe something I might
Speaker 1: want to pursue. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, so, I obviously loved golf. I played for
Speaker 3: a couple of years in college, and I never honestly
Speaker 3: considered the pairing of golf and engineering. I just kind
Speaker 3: of pursued each of them in parallel. And then, like
Speaker 3: I said, that professor that I worked with was pretty
Speaker 3: critical and helping me connect those dots to be like, oh,
Speaker 3: actually I could pair these two and that might be
Speaker 3: a fun career that I could be passionate about for
Speaker 3: the long term.
Speaker 1: So, and do you have a message that you would
Speaker 1: send out to young women out there that might not
Speaker 1: quite know what they want to do, but understand that
Speaker 1: this is maybe an area in the sport, or in
Speaker 1: golf or in golf manufacturing that if you are a
Speaker 1: female that gets involved in it, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it might be a small group of you guys
Speaker 1: that do this, but I mean it can be something
Speaker 1: that leads to seventeen eighteen twenty years of an amazing job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my best advice would be to just explore that's
Speaker 3: what I did through an internship. I've actually it's been
Speaker 3: exciting to see over the past several years since I've
Speaker 3: been here, how we've changed one of my responsibilities overseeing
Speaker 3: the internship program with an engineering and so I've seen
Speaker 3: a lot of the just I have hundreds of conversations
Speaker 3: with prospective interns over the course of a year as
Speaker 3: we're looking to hire for the next summer, and the
Speaker 3: ones that reach out and are proactive with answering, getting
Speaker 3: questions answered, just not being afraid to say, Hey, what's
Speaker 3: it like. Can I have a phone call with you
Speaker 3: for thirty minutes and try to understand what your job
Speaker 3: looks like to see if I might like it. So
Speaker 3: that's one thing. Then obviously, if you can secure an
Speaker 3: internship or get some hands on experience, that's huge. But
Speaker 3: I didn't know that I would end up loving my
Speaker 3: career when I was a freshman, you know, and then
Speaker 3: graduating signing up for a full time role here. I
Speaker 3: kind of I knew enough to know that I might
Speaker 3: be in it for the long run, but I kind
Speaker 3: of lucked out in many ways too, Marty.
Speaker 1: I want to kind of turn the conversation to the
Speaker 1: idea of developing golf clubs for women, because it's something
Speaker 1: that Ping has been extremely passionate about and it's a
Speaker 1: huge part of what you guys push these days. How
Speaker 1: different is it developing golf clubs at Ping for women
Speaker 1: versus developing golf clubs for men?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Shane, I love this topic. It kind of reminds
Speaker 2: me a little bit of the podcast we did. Folks
Speaker 2: out there haven't listened to it on the junior product
Speaker 2: because it's very similar in terms of we want to
Speaker 2: define our customer and understand and have a lot of
Speaker 2: empathy and put ourselves in the shoes of the customer
Speaker 2: we're designing for. So with our clubs for women, that's
Speaker 2: kind of what we like to say is we don't
Speaker 2: design women's clubs, We design clubs for women. So with
Speaker 2: the clubs for women and good examples are gl three
Speaker 2: product that we just launched, we want to understand and
Speaker 2: we use the same engineering and technical horse power that
Speaker 2: we put into all of our product, our mainline product,
Speaker 2: our junior product. What are the problems we're trying to
Speaker 2: solve for that customer, For the ladies that are playing
Speaker 2: golf and a lot of times our priorities are a
Speaker 2: little bit different, and then what tools we use to
Speaker 2: optimize their product in the end solution of that can
Speaker 2: end up being a little bit different. So some example,
Speaker 2: some practical example, Shane, would be things like the weight.
Speaker 2: That's a really big deal. We know that the headway
Speaker 2: to the driver, the total mass that you make the club.
Speaker 2: The optimization there needs to be different. Now we're using
Speaker 2: the same horse power, we're using our same modeling techniques,
Speaker 2: we're using data analysis, we're data mining, we're using our
Speaker 2: ladies who work here on campus, or we're bringing in
Speaker 2: and Rose has really helped with this, bringing in ladies
Speaker 2: from local country clubs and women's legs around the valley.
Speaker 2: We bring them in test on campus to understand how
Speaker 2: are they delivering the club, what are their missus, what's
Speaker 2: important to them, what are they experiencing on the golf course.
Speaker 2: And then the end solution looks a lot different than
Speaker 2: our mainline product. It looks like higher lofts, lighter weights,
Speaker 2: the gapping is a little bit different. We make higher
Speaker 2: lofted hybrids and things of that nature. We put a
Speaker 2: different priority even on the putters. For example, in our
Speaker 2: new Jelly three line, all the putters very easily pick
Speaker 2: the ball up off the green, and two of them
Speaker 2: you can actually kind of have that fetch technology. We
Speaker 2: brought that into the new Catch putter where you can
Speaker 2: fetch it off the green. So a lot of the
Speaker 2: all the same engineering horsepower, but totally different end product
Speaker 2: solution that you see with our product there.
Speaker 1: Rose. I feel like when people think about product development,
Speaker 1: especially in the golf club business at golf club Space,
Speaker 1: they think of professional golfers. You know, it's almost like
Speaker 1: we work off the best in the world. And I
Speaker 1: find it interesting to think about you going out to
Speaker 1: country clubs and you know, finding a middling handicap golfer
Speaker 1: or an older golfer that's a little bit more of
Speaker 1: what the average player would look like and be What
Speaker 1: is that process like for you as you go about
Speaker 1: finding people to actually come in and test the equipment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, one one of my best examples of
Speaker 3: kind of our target customer is my mom. So I
Speaker 3: have a they live out here half the year, and
Speaker 3: I get to play with her pretty often. I go
Speaker 3: out to her you know, ladies events a couple times
Speaker 3: a year and and get to witness what that's like,
Speaker 3: you know, playing in that player category and the people
Speaker 3: that were designing this product for so yeah, that's that's
Speaker 3: it's a unique experience. It's definitely different to the the
Speaker 3: I find that they have a little more anxiety on
Speaker 3: the course than than what some of the better players
Speaker 3: might have. A lot of it is just fear of
Speaker 3: you know, missing a shot and holding your team up
Speaker 3: or your playing group up. We've uncovered a lot of
Speaker 3: just unique, unique concerns that we didn't realize before through
Speaker 3: just observing that customer.
Speaker 1: It's interesting you say the anxiety thing, because I caddied
Speaker 1: in Scotland when I got out of college, and what
Speaker 1: would happen was we would get a tea time assigned
Speaker 1: to us. It wasn't a player assigned to us. And
Speaker 1: I quickly learned that if there was a female in
Speaker 1: the group, I would go directly to the female because
Speaker 1: they hit it relatively straight and I didn't feel like
Speaker 1: there was a lot of to your point, anxiety involved
Speaker 1: in the round. They seemed very content with being out there.
Speaker 1: They seemed to play better than a lot of the
Speaker 1: older men that I could or would go and caddy for,
Speaker 1: and I felt like the level of fun was way
Speaker 1: higher in terms of a female on't Caddy Ford versus
Speaker 1: a male out Caddy four.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean not all not all
Speaker 3: women are created equal, right right, There's definitely variables, and
Speaker 3: maybe my mom tends to be a little more anxious
Speaker 3: with that type of stuff and not wanting to let
Speaker 3: people down that she's playing with. So yeah, I think
Speaker 3: I think it's important to understand the range of different
Speaker 3: customers too, not just try to design for one particular
Speaker 3: person that we've said is the target consumer. That's why
Speaker 3: we get you know, like Marty said, we've got a
Speaker 3: protocol that we use for testing any of our products,
Speaker 3: and we have a minimum number of players that we
Speaker 3: try to get within a given player pool to get
Speaker 3: us a good diverse set of data that we can
Speaker 3: actually make conclusions off of. The same thing applies to
Speaker 3: this category of designing clubs for women, as we bring
Speaker 3: in players of various skill levels, but still those that
Speaker 3: fit within that product category.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Marty, I haven't really asked you this question before.
Speaker 1: I guess really when we've talked about any product development,
Speaker 1: but is there a person you're thinking of when you
Speaker 1: develop golf clubs. Is there a certain handicap, a certain
Speaker 1: skill set because I guess you know, having these conversations
Speaker 1: with you about all different types of golf clubs and
Speaker 1: juniors and females adaptive golf, like there's so much golf
Speaker 1: out there. Do you in your brain, because your brain
Speaker 1: is a very interesting place, does your brain think of
Speaker 1: a certain golfer? Or is the idea to just try
Speaker 1: to make something that can kind of umbrella everybody that'd
Speaker 1: be interested in the product.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Shane, So I definitely, and I know all the
Speaker 2: rest of the product designers and engineers that are working
Speaker 2: on product, I think we have that archetype of golfer
Speaker 2: on our mind. Like for Rose brought up the example,
Speaker 2: it'd be like, oh, yeah, I need when I'm thinking
Speaker 2: about designing this product or how the head cover fits,
Speaker 2: or the color palette or the grip texture, I'm going
Speaker 2: to think about She's probably thinking about her mom right right,
Speaker 2: And I'm thinking about that same thing. Who is that
Speaker 2: one golfer that represents the target customer for that particular product,
Speaker 2: And that's very important. I mean, you know, I think
Speaker 2: the same way for juniors and Rose example of thinking
Speaker 2: about her mom is a great one of just us
Speaker 2: being such a golf family here, right, and we all
Speaker 2: whether it's designing clubs for literally ourselves, if we're working on,
Speaker 2: you know, a certain product, or now that a lot
Speaker 2: of us have kids, it's like we got skin in
Speaker 2: the game on the Prodigy product or Rose's mom is
Speaker 2: another good example of designing you know, clubs for women.
Speaker 2: So I think all of us that are designing product
Speaker 2: have that one, one typical golfer in their mind when
Speaker 2: we're designing. And I think that's very important because if
Speaker 2: you design try to design a product that suits everybody,
Speaker 2: you actually kind of end up with maybe a suboptimal
Speaker 2: solution for a lot of folks, right, And I think
Speaker 2: that's a that's a core tenet of product development.
Speaker 1: When did you learn that, Marty, When did you realize
Speaker 1: that it wasn't It wasn't for it wasn't the idea
Speaker 1: of designing for everybody? Because I can only imagine you
Speaker 1: probably have gone through iterations that personally as you've gone
Speaker 1: through developing products.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of psychology to this and product development, where, uh,
Speaker 2: if you get the average of a lot of opinions,
Speaker 2: you get an average solution. Yeah, and I think, you know,
Speaker 2: I think there's a there's so much truth to that.
Speaker 2: And even in our own groups designing products, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're doing a creative session, you want to have
Speaker 2: it two to three four people max. Right, Okay, the
Speaker 2: more folks you get in there chiming in, I think,
Speaker 2: you know, you start to dilute your opportunity for having
Speaker 2: an outside the box or creative solutions. So, but when
Speaker 2: it comes to defining your target customer, that's also very important.
Speaker 2: I'm really glad that it ping we've evolved from our
Speaker 2: days of you know it, two's fit everybody to now
Speaker 2: we have, you know, basically like six mainline irons. Then
Speaker 2: we have our ladies product and our junior products, so
Speaker 2: we can box in our target customer a lot tighter
Speaker 2: and really optimized solutions for them. And you know, then
Speaker 2: we obviously need to make the fitting tools very simple,
Speaker 2: easy to understand, and things of that nature so you
Speaker 2: don't get confused by all of our products. So those
Speaker 2: two things kind to juxtapose each other. But I think
Speaker 2: we're trying to weave the needle there on that.
Speaker 1: Here's a lot of stuff. Now let's try to simplify
Speaker 1: which club fits you the best. Here you go, Marty,
Speaker 1: I always like doing this when we talk about product
Speaker 1: and golfer. Is Okay, I have an eighteen handicap fifty
Speaker 1: year old male and I have an eighteen handicap fifty
Speaker 1: year old female. Did what's the difference in those two
Speaker 1: golfers that you guys are the solution you guys are
Speaker 1: trying to kind of achieve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, generally speaking, the fifty year old female probably
Speaker 2: was going to swing it a little bit slower, right,
Speaker 2: So in that we want to have the total mass
Speaker 2: of the club lighter. We want to have more loft
Speaker 2: on the driver. So all those same tools in our
Speaker 2: cool optimal launch and spin chart, our impulse momentum model
Speaker 2: where we figure out the perfect loft to make the
Speaker 2: ball go far, those same tools can be used. But
Speaker 2: we want to have a higher law the driver, lighter weight,
Speaker 2: probably a little more flexible shaft. And then when we
Speaker 2: start hitting the ball on the ground without teeing it up,
Speaker 2: we need to put more loft on the club because
Speaker 2: of more premium on launching the ball in the air
Speaker 2: becomes more important as the speed is a little bit slower, right,
Speaker 2: So we want to get very specific about that. We
Speaker 2: want to probably short that we want to accommodate to
Speaker 2: the build of the golfer. Two. So generally speaking, the
Speaker 2: female golfer might be a little bit shorter, so we
Speaker 2: have a shorter standard lengths, and the gapping looks a
Speaker 2: little bit different too, because especially you know, long irons
Speaker 2: and mid irons start to become very hard to get
Speaker 2: the ball in the air. So with our ladies product,
Speaker 2: which is that fifty year old female, we make up
Speaker 2: to a seven hybrid, so a lot so you can
Speaker 2: you can start your set at literally an eight iron,
Speaker 2: right you can play four five six or five six
Speaker 2: seven hybrid than eight iron through the rest of your bag.
Speaker 2: And one of the big things, and I think is
Speaker 2: that you know, depending on how far you hit the
Speaker 2: golf ball, we're not necessarily trying to feel that fifty
Speaker 2: year old females bag with fourteen clubs. They might not
Speaker 2: even need all fourteen clubs, So that bag might look
Speaker 2: like twelve clubs and that could be totally sufficient from
Speaker 2: a gamping standpoint. Then it might make room to have
Speaker 2: a couple extra slots in there to consider a you know,
Speaker 2: kind of a boutique solution for greenside play only like
Speaker 2: with our chipper, and so we've had a lot of
Speaker 2: Rose talked about the anxiety on the golf course. We
Speaker 2: have anxiety that applies to men and women, and then
Speaker 2: that creates more room for a solution like the chipper
Speaker 2: in the bag.
Speaker 1: My buddy Tim gets so excited every time the Chipper's
Speaker 1: brought up on this podcast. It's like the light bulb
Speaker 1: goes off. Rose. When you chat with golfers as you
Speaker 1: go through development and you go through their experiences a
Speaker 1: lot hitting product. What's the most common request that you
Speaker 1: get from women about golf clubs? What's the number one
Speaker 1: problem they might have with certain that they're trying to
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, figure out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean Marty again, I guess going back to
Speaker 3: my mom as being a representative figure in my mind
Speaker 3: for this category, I think bunker play is a big one.
Speaker 3: That's something that I've heard pretty consistently is just challenges
Speaker 3: getting out of the bunker, and I think in general
Speaker 3: just getting the ball near. Marty can can back me
Speaker 3: up on this or say something else, but I think
Speaker 3: all of our products are are generally geared toward how
Speaker 3: do we get the product, get the ball launching more
Speaker 3: easily and more consistently, so that they can ultimately rely
Speaker 3: on that as a given versus questioning, oh am I
Speaker 3: gonna am I gonna top this? Am I going to
Speaker 3: scull it, you know, one foot off the ground or
Speaker 3: is it actually going to land softly on the green
Speaker 3: and give me a chance to put on.
Speaker 2: The bunker side of things. We've seen that not just
Speaker 2: not just with roses mom, but we've seen that persistently
Speaker 2: with women. Green side play and bunker play uh in
Speaker 2: general again kind of tends to give them anxiety, whether
Speaker 2: it's you know technique I think being nervous, maybe never
Speaker 2: being taught to open the face to get that ball
Speaker 2: in the air out of the bunker, having a little
Speaker 2: bit less speed to kind of to kind of get
Speaker 2: underneath the ball and get that club through the bunker.
Speaker 2: So we've innovated on that. And in the gl three irons,
Speaker 2: the sand wedge has the I too hozzle, so the
Speaker 2: I two is kind of like the ultimate bunker club.
Speaker 2: We've talked about that a little bit, where the hozzle
Speaker 2: transition is much sharper, like thirty five percent less cross
Speaker 2: sexual area, so it digs into the sand, so if
Speaker 2: you do nothing else, that ball is going to get
Speaker 2: out of the bunker more easily. So we've taken again,
Speaker 2: we kind of went back to like, how do you know,
Speaker 2: how do you define the golfer? How do you design
Speaker 2: products a little bit differently, and that is a different priority.
Speaker 2: We've seen with the female golfer that anxiety out of
Speaker 2: the bunker, and we've tried to innovate directly on that
Speaker 2: with the j L E three sandweg that comes in
Speaker 2: the set Rose.
Speaker 1: When did this become a big focus for peing? When
Speaker 1: did clubs for women become a focus for ping? Because,
Speaker 1: as Marty said earlier, I mean the idea, you know,
Speaker 1: decades ago was here's an amazing set of irons, everybody
Speaker 1: can play it, and now you know, there's obviously plenty
Speaker 1: of solutions for plenty of different players and different handicaps. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny you say that because I was actually
Speaker 3: at lunch today with a group of women that work
Speaker 3: in our engineering and legal departments, and Stacy Powells joined
Speaker 3: as well at lunch, and she was I asked her
Speaker 3: this question actually because I don't know the answer is
Speaker 3: as far as when was our first uniquely designed for
Speaker 3: women product? And she kind of she said, we used
Speaker 3: to apply a different color to the irons and kind
Speaker 3: of make them lighter weight for women. And then there
Speaker 3: was a transition point, Marty, I don't know if it
Speaker 3: was around the G twenty five five days or if
Speaker 3: it was earlier than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it was around the G fifteen to
Speaker 2: G twenty time frame. And the first one was it
Speaker 2: the Rhapsody. I think it was our first lady's product line, ladies'
Speaker 2: specific product line. Yeah, I think you're right, Marty.
Speaker 1: Your brain does your brain just live in product like years?
Speaker 1: You know, like, yeah, when you close your eyes, you
Speaker 1: know when G landed, fifteen, landed, thirty landed, Like can
Speaker 1: you are you pretty? Are you pretty? Dialed on the
Speaker 1: time of your life and where you were in your.
Speaker 2: Wildly, it's way stronger than the actual years. That's one
Speaker 2: hundred percent correct, I think. On on the brand, just
Speaker 2: supporting women's golf, Sheen. I mean, I think a big
Speaker 2: staple everyone's pretty familiar with is the Solheim Cup and
Speaker 2: around I think it was around nineteen ninety is when Carston,
Speaker 2: you know, helped get the soul on cup off the ground,
Speaker 2: and I think kind of you know it ping. It
Speaker 2: tends to always go back to our founder, and you
Speaker 2: Carson is who got all the fame and attention for creating,
Speaker 2: paying the brand, the answer putter, and everything. But his
Speaker 2: wife Louise was, if you talk to any of the
Speaker 2: family members here, like the bedrock that helped get the
Speaker 2: company up and going. I mean, she was doing all
Speaker 2: the grunt work while Carson was out doing the engineering
Speaker 2: and sales of the product. She was doing the accounting
Speaker 2: and the sales and all the back end stuff. And
Speaker 2: then eventually, you know, when the company got bigger, she
Speaker 2: was taking care of all the HR and really laid
Speaker 2: the foundation of taking care of all the employees and
Speaker 2: creating that kind of family culture. And that's what Stacey
Speaker 2: Pals does for us today, is she's in charge of
Speaker 2: all the HR and maintaining that and keeping that going.
Speaker 2: So you know, if you read the books about the
Speaker 2: family and the brand, Louise is like the staple. And
Speaker 2: we named one of the hutters after her in the
Speaker 2: new gl product line. We have a Louise model that
Speaker 2: it's named after her.
Speaker 1: Very cool and I have always been interested in this
Speaker 1: because I've seen it in my life, especially with some
Speaker 1: of my older golfing buddies. Is you'll occasionally get male
Speaker 1: golfers that will lean into the female golf line because
Speaker 1: again some of the stuff that they don't do well,
Speaker 1: the answers are proven if you dive into that space.
Speaker 1: Do you see a little bit of that, Marty, Yeah, So.
Speaker 2: I got an interesting story on that because one of
Speaker 2: the thoughts in my in my head, Shane was like,
Speaker 2: we quite often will bring out a new technology in
Speaker 2: the ladies line first, and this is I think a
Speaker 2: good testament that we do. We don't wait. If we
Speaker 2: have something good, we don't wait for it in our
Speaker 2: mainline product. We'll we'll deliver it into our clubs for
Speaker 2: women first. I think a good example that is our
Speaker 2: tr grooves we had in our putter line. I think
Speaker 2: now you're seeing it. We have a brand new fitting
Speaker 2: head that's called AFS three D, which is one head
Speaker 2: allows you to fit three different color codes and power
Speaker 2: spec all with one head, five different options. Bringing that
Speaker 2: out in the g L E three first, I had
Speaker 2: a good buddy of mine mini tour player. You might remember.
Speaker 2: His name is Barry Concert and he's a good mini
Speaker 2: tour player around the valley, and but he hits the
Speaker 2: ball pretty low, so we always need a high lofted
Speaker 2: driver kind of hit down on it, didn't generate enough spin,
Speaker 2: hit his long irons low, and we he wanted to
Speaker 2: look at a nine, a nine wood, and we at
Speaker 2: the time, this like a decade ago, we we didn't
Speaker 2: have a nine wood in a in our mainline. We
Speaker 2: just went up to the seven and I was like, hey,
Speaker 2: we should go to our ladies line and I'm gonna
Speaker 2: build you a nine wood out of here. And it
Speaker 2: had a different color paint to it and different graphics
Speaker 2: on it, and he did not care. He was like,
Speaker 2: I need I need this club to get the ball
Speaker 2: in the air, go a certain distance, land steep. And
Speaker 2: he played our Ladies nine wood and absolutely loved it.
Speaker 2: Uh and and uh and couldn't couldn't care less, right,
Speaker 2: And we had another golfer, Matt Simone and our engineering
Speaker 2: group who played the Ladies twelve degree driver is his
Speaker 2: second is this kind of like a fair wayfinder driving
Speaker 2: here in the desert And he loved it as well.
Speaker 2: So there's definitely, uh, some some really fun good examples
Speaker 2: of that over the.
Speaker 1: Years, Marty, if you're watching someone hit balls at the
Speaker 1: proving grounds and you know that a club for ladies
Speaker 1: for women could be helpful in that space. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's twenty twenty three. The world is a different place
Speaker 1: than maybe it was back in like the precept lady
Speaker 1: Laddie days. But when do you introduce that club to
Speaker 1: potentially be in their bag? I mean, how do you
Speaker 1: present that? Because men are you know, we're stubborn in
Speaker 1: stupid people. You know, we have a hard time sometimes
Speaker 1: accepting the fact that maybe this would actually help your
Speaker 1: golf game.
Speaker 2: Just hit it. I mean I built this club and
Speaker 2: gave it to Barry Concert. He hit it and the
Speaker 2: ball went, you know, two hundred and thirty five yards
Speaker 2: straight up in the air, and there you go the
Speaker 2: p person, the experience, and you just absolutely loved it.
Speaker 2: I mean, once you hit something and realize it's the
Speaker 2: right club, there's a pain knowing that you might not
Speaker 2: be able to have that right. It's there's some loss
Speaker 2: of version there. So that's where you've got to have
Speaker 2: the golfer just try it, and once they try it
Speaker 2: and fall in love with it. It's worked in a
Speaker 2: couple of really fun examples here.
Speaker 1: Rose, what has it been like being involved at PING
Speaker 1: for a couple of decades and seeing this movement, you know,
Speaker 1: for women as golf's become more popular in different circles
Speaker 1: and now you know, seeing these lines, seeing these commercials
Speaker 1: the last few weeks, the car Banks doing an amazing
Speaker 1: job of voicing those commercials. What is it like seeing
Speaker 1: the company that you work for really lean into this
Speaker 1: side of the game.
Speaker 3: It's awesome, obviously, It's It's not a surprise to me
Speaker 3: because I think, like Marty said, we've had a long
Speaker 3: history of supporting women's golf.
Speaker 2: But it's great.
Speaker 3: I think the the investment that that Ping has made
Speaker 3: in the women's side of the game and making products
Speaker 3: for women, it's consistent and yeah, like I said, I'm
Speaker 3: not too surprised and pleasantly pleased it.
Speaker 1: Rose, have you been bummed out that that Rose Zang
Speaker 1: is now maybe the most popular Rose and golf? I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like you probably have for years you.
Speaker 2: Had to say that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I'm just happy to see another Rose
Speaker 3: in my general like generation because for a long time
Speaker 3: I was I was the only Rose that I knew
Speaker 3: of that was within a couple decades of my my
Speaker 3: birth date. So yeah, I'm okay with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Titanic was years ago, you know, I mean rote Rose,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. You hit your stride by. My wife
Speaker 1: is Cindy, and we joke a lot about this. You know,
Speaker 1: she goes on, I'm at a Cindy. Oh is she's
Speaker 1: seventy or eighty? I mean there's really only one of
Speaker 1: two ways to go about that, Marty. I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask about LPGA players because you guys have a lot
Speaker 1: of great LPGA players on staff at Ping. How do
Speaker 1: you fit LPGA players and what line do they typically
Speaker 1: lean into?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Shane, it's uh, we we do really good on
Speaker 2: the LPHPGA tour. We have an awesome Rep Scott Wolpa,
Speaker 2: who takes such a great care of the staff, and
Speaker 2: he's an awesome fitter and he loves all the tools
Speaker 2: and a lot of them we've talked about. He's using
Speaker 2: co pilot and gapping out and poll namic and get
Speaker 2: our players dialed in, so all these same tools that
Speaker 2: our fitters have access to. Scott's been testing and vetting
Speaker 2: for us. Our LPGA tour players are fantastic. I think
Speaker 2: a couple of key differences from the men's tour is
Speaker 2: that they generally drive the ball straighter in terms of
Speaker 2: fairways hit, so there's a little bit more of a premium.
Speaker 2: And we are One of our last couple podcasts was
Speaker 2: the whole distance versus accuracy topics, So we give ourselves
Speaker 2: permission to help put that priority on getting more distance
Speaker 2: off the tee because when you look at fairway hit percentages,
Speaker 2: they are way higher because the fairways are similar with
Speaker 2: to the PGA Tour, but they're not but their cone
Speaker 2: is about the same, so their fairway hit percentage is
Speaker 2: really higher. So that's a key difference off the tee.
Speaker 2: And then I I think we have over the last
Speaker 2: five to eight years dominated with our I series Iron
Speaker 2: So this is I two hundred, I two ten, and
Speaker 2: now I two thirty. On any given week, the percentage
Speaker 2: of those played on the LPGA Tour is between that
Speaker 2: fifteen to twenty five percent for that one Iron model alone, Right,
Speaker 2: So I think and I kind of wish the American
Speaker 2: golfer was a little bit more like the Japanese consumer.
Speaker 2: They study and admire the women's tour on Japanese Tour
Speaker 2: even more than the men's tour because it's more relatable
Speaker 2: in terms of the distance they hit it, the trajectories
Speaker 2: how they play golf. I think the American golfer can
Speaker 2: maybe lean on that a little bit at least to
Speaker 2: kind of give yourself permission to really look at what
Speaker 2: the LPGA Tour players are playing, because that I two
Speaker 2: thirty iron is the perfect sweet spot. It's they have
Speaker 2: an ample amount of distance, but they need a little
Speaker 2: bit more spin to get that stopping power. They need
Speaker 2: a little bit more bounce with the soul design, even
Speaker 2: though they don't take big divots. That gives them that
Speaker 2: turf interaction forgiveness and they like that good blend of
Speaker 2: distance control with the right amount of forgiveness. And that's
Speaker 2: the exactly the sweet spot of our I series iron.
Speaker 2: And we put a lot of priority on that I
Speaker 2: two thirty iron designing it thinking with the LPGA Tour
Speaker 2: player in mind when we design that iron.
Speaker 1: What's the biggest difference in an LPGA Tour player's bag
Speaker 1: versus a PGA Tour player's bag. Because we talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about the eighteen handicap for you know, male
Speaker 1: versus female fifty year old player, what's the biggest difference.
Speaker 1: If I was going to look through the ping staffers
Speaker 1: on the LPGA and then the ping staffers on the
Speaker 1: PGA Tour, what's the biggest difference, not necessarily in what
Speaker 1: club they're playing, but maybe what types of clubs they're playing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally different in terms of where they transition. So
Speaker 2: you'll see LPGA I would say probably the average LPGA
Speaker 2: Tour player on our staff probably ends their irons at
Speaker 2: a five iron, right, some of them like Dana Finkelstein
Speaker 2: she just got married this last year, Dana Fall She
Speaker 2: plays all the way up to a seven hybrid, then
Speaker 2: starts her set at an eight iron, and she is
Speaker 2: incredible her dispersion with those hybrids. So they transition to
Speaker 2: hybrids earlier, and they'll have multiple hybrids in the bag then,
Speaker 2: as I think you would expect Shane the lofts on
Speaker 2: their fairway woods and a few more high lofted fairway woods,
Speaker 2: even though that's super popular on the PGA Tour. Now
Speaker 2: we've talked about that. With the seven woods and nine
Speaker 2: woods out there, you see just a higher percentage of that. Now. Interestingly,
Speaker 2: LPGA tours tend to hit up on the ball more
Speaker 2: on their driver. Okay, so the lofts they play are
Speaker 2: actually pretty similar to the PGA Tour because the PGA
Speaker 2: Tour has a wider range of hitting up and hitting down,
Speaker 2: like you know, you hit down on your driver, your
Speaker 2: stock driver, like three degrees or so. But on the
Speaker 2: LPGA Tour, almost all the players are hitting up more
Speaker 2: their swing directions more to the right. They're hitting more
Speaker 2: up so they can play what you would think is
Speaker 2: a lower loft in driver than you might expect, which
Speaker 2: is pretty interesting, Marty.
Speaker 1: I've never asked you this either, but what is the
Speaker 1: average what is the average loft now in terms of
Speaker 1: tour players both male and female in the driver category,
Speaker 1: Because when I was in high school, you know, back
Speaker 1: in the late nineties, early two thousands, you know, you'd
Speaker 1: see good players playing seven degree drivers, you know, seven
Speaker 1: and a half degree drivers, and then it went the
Speaker 1: other way. I remember there was a time. This was
Speaker 1: again talking Marty language, This is probably g twenty days.
Speaker 1: I remember I had I had like an eleven and
Speaker 1: a half degree driver at one point, and it almost
Speaker 1: looked like like a three wood it when I look
Speaker 1: down at it, and it seems like it's kind of
Speaker 1: gone somewhere in the middle of that. What do you
Speaker 1: feel like is the average tour player loft?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the average is probably around nine and
Speaker 2: a half. Shane, I would say for the PGA Tour,
Speaker 2: and it's probably pretty similar quite frankly for the LPGA Tour.
Speaker 2: Now that said, I would say right now, there's a
Speaker 2: wider range in lost than there's ever been. I mean,
Speaker 2: we have some players that are playing very low loft them,
Speaker 2: some players playing very high lofted because how they dynamically
Speaker 2: deliver is very different on the PGA Tour, and then
Speaker 2: their range and angles of attack is very different on
Speaker 2: the PGA Tour. So that just you know, whenever you
Speaker 2: talk averages, you also got to think ranges, because it's
Speaker 2: the range. If everyone was average, we wouldn't need custom fitting.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the ranges that are so important to
Speaker 2: be able to cover those en ranges so we can
Speaker 2: fit you perfectly on that optimal launch and spin chart
Speaker 2: that our fitters absolutely love.
Speaker 1: Rose. We mentioned off the top that you played collegiate
Speaker 1: golf at Michigan. How's the golf game these days?
Speaker 3: Almost non existent?
Speaker 1: Oh no, yeah, you're working too hard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've got two young kids, so they occupy most
Speaker 3: of my time. It's hard to find a few hours
Speaker 3: to spare, so I do like to still get out.
Speaker 2: Though, Rose, Why don't you tell Shane the fun little
Speaker 2: contribution that University of Michigan has had to our campus
Speaker 2: that you can see cruise around campus.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: Yes, So it didn't come directly from the University of Michigan.
Speaker 3: It came from my parents. They they had a golf
Speaker 3: cart that they had. My whole family is is alumni
Speaker 3: of the University of Michigan, and so they had a
Speaker 3: place in Florida.
Speaker 1: They they had a.
Speaker 3: Golf cart that they adorned with U of M colors
Speaker 3: and the logos and whatnot. And when they moved out
Speaker 3: to Arizona, they didn't have a use for it anymore.
Speaker 3: So they said, Hey, do you think you could use
Speaker 3: this at ping And I said, yeah, I think so,
Speaker 3: So we do have. It's very faded at this point
Speaker 3: because the Arizona sun is not kind, but it's still
Speaker 3: kind of resembles the Maze and blue.
Speaker 1: Paying is a Michigan campus, is what you're telling me.
Speaker 1: I like to hear that. That's that's good to know.
Speaker 3: There's at least one or two other people that are
Speaker 3: that are Michigan fans, but Ohio State I think has
Speaker 3: its beat on campus.
Speaker 1: I wasn't. I thought the rules we weren't going to
Speaker 1: bring them up on this podcast. I was Brian hard Rose,
Speaker 1: you can edit that out. So, Rose, is most of
Speaker 1: your golf now played like product development? You going out
Speaker 1: and hitting clubs, you know, at the proving grounds? Like
Speaker 1: is that where you do most of the swinging these
Speaker 1: days versus going out on a golf course and playing
Speaker 1: eighteen holes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's much easier for me to sign
Speaker 3: up for player testing here on campus during my work
Speaker 3: day and benefit you know, the testing that we're doing
Speaker 3: as well as myself with hitting hitting a few balls.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I try to get out every now and
Speaker 3: then with coworkers and at least maintain some awareness of
Speaker 3: how the work that my team and I are doing
Speaker 3: translates into the product that we're that we're producing. It's
Speaker 3: actually kind of a nice luxury, I'll say, to be
Speaker 3: a little more distant from the game and not play
Speaker 3: it as often because it gives me a fresh perspective
Speaker 3: on how how much advancement we make product to product.
Speaker 3: So as an example, I just refreshed my bag with
Speaker 3: all the new G thirty product and the I two
Speaker 3: thirty irons, and that's been awesome because I've been like, wow,
Speaker 3: my game goes like this and the product goes like this,
Speaker 3: and I end up kind of about where I've been previously.
Speaker 3: So it's it's really cool to see. And I try
Speaker 3: to come back and relay that to the team as
Speaker 3: often as I can to say this is you guys
Speaker 3: do amazing work.
Speaker 1: Rose. When you take a month or two off of golf,
Speaker 1: those first range balls you hit always seem to be perfect.
Speaker 1: It's the second range session for me where I go
Speaker 1: or do I put my hands on the club but
Speaker 1: I don't really quite remember how to do it. But
Speaker 1: I always feel like the first, like the first long
Speaker 1: break from golf. When you return to it, it's like
Speaker 1: take it back, swing through and that thing goes relatively straight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you have some you don't have all the
Speaker 3: like recent memories to bring you down. It's more like, oh,
Speaker 3: this could be fun.
Speaker 1: This is what I want to do. Marty always fun
Speaker 1: to talk about product development, very cool to see new
Speaker 1: lines and as you guys continue to kind of expand,
Speaker 1: really the offerings I mean, I think that's what I've
Speaker 1: learned the most, you know, seeing the campus and getting
Speaker 1: a chance to chat with you this much is how
Speaker 1: many offerings there are for golfers, because you know, in
Speaker 1: my space, you know, when I was coming in, I'm like,
Speaker 1: what am I going to play? You know, I'm looking
Speaker 1: at blueprint? Am I going to be a blueprint guy?
Speaker 1: And to realize there are literally five sets of irons
Speaker 1: that I could play and be content with. There are
Speaker 1: multiple fairway woods that I could play. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: going to the US amitur next week. I have four
Speaker 1: woods I'm taking with me because that's I mean, would
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have had that last year, you know, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have had this many offerings. It's just so cool
Speaker 1: to see how much the products expand to fit every
Speaker 1: golfer out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Shane, and I think, you know, to kind of
Speaker 2: circle back to one of the things Roe said that
Speaker 2: we've really had some insights out to the female golfer
Speaker 2: of having some anxiety on the golf course. Well, that
Speaker 2: same thing really applies to the custom fitting process. I
Speaker 2: think a lot of women are nervous about going out
Speaker 2: and get custom fit, you know, a lot of men
Speaker 2: are too. They have doubts in their mind. They don't
Speaker 2: want someone to see their swing. They think they're thinking,
Speaker 2: I'm not good enough to get custom fit. So I
Speaker 2: think a really good practical piece of advice is to
Speaker 2: start and learn about the fitting process and figure out
Speaker 2: what model might be best for you using our webfit tool.
Speaker 2: So if you go to webfitt ping dot com, this
Speaker 2: is an amazing set of algorithms. They will just ask
Speaker 2: you a series of questions, how you play golf, what
Speaker 2: do you struggle with now? Are you male or female?
Speaker 2: What's your handicap? And it will give you a really
Speaker 2: good starting point like ninety percent jumpstart to your fitting process.
Speaker 2: So if you're out there female golfer, or your shopping,
Speaker 2: your maybe your your spouse wants to get into the game,
Speaker 2: go to webfit dotping dot com, answer those questions, print
Speaker 2: out those results and bring them to your local fitter
Speaker 2: because that will answer that question for you of which
Speaker 2: set is right for me. We don't want to have
Speaker 2: too many models and too many things out there and
Speaker 2: then confuse golfers, so we want to make it very actionable.
Speaker 2: One of the other things to notte there Shane, is
Speaker 2: that there is a graduation point. Rose talked about just
Speaker 2: building herself a new set of g four thirties and
Speaker 2: loving them and I two thirty irons. There's a graduation point,
Speaker 2: and Rose hits it pretty far where that lady's product
Speaker 2: might not be the best product for all women. Right,
Speaker 2: we talked about boxing in your target customer. Our ladies
Speaker 2: product is really optimized for ladies who hit their have
Speaker 2: a driver swing speed of about eighty miles an hour
Speaker 2: or less, which means you're gonna hit your driver one
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty to two hundred yards or less. Rose
Speaker 2: hits it significantly further than that, so she and kind
Speaker 2: of her category of golfer graduates up into our mainline product.
Speaker 2: So there is that transition point. Webfit can help answer
Speaker 2: that question for any of our consumers out there, and
Speaker 2: then for our fitters, we have awesome tools built into
Speaker 2: co Pilot to help determine that and again help answer
Speaker 2: that question of set configuration. How should I build the bag,
Speaker 2: which is the longest iron I can play? How do
Speaker 2: I piece together the wedges? How many clubs do I
Speaker 2: need in the bag to really make good use of
Speaker 2: the gapping Marty.
Speaker 1: Do you guys have conversations with fitters about the anxiety?
Speaker 1: You know, if you have somebody coming and they're on
Speaker 1: the range and you can just sense that anxiety from
Speaker 1: the player, is there a way And I mean I've
Speaker 1: dealt with plenty of fitters at Ping, and everybody is
Speaker 1: really personable. I think it's actually a big part of
Speaker 1: that job, is the personality part of it, because you know,
Speaker 1: you have to start the conversation, get the mind off
Speaker 1: the golf swing. Is what is the conversation like behind
Speaker 1: the scenes with fitters about trying to kind of squeeze
Speaker 1: that anxiety out of a player that feels a little
Speaker 1: tight or tense as they start to hit golf balls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. I think that's what separates the good from great.
Speaker 2: In the fitter they're like psychologists. You know, you're working
Speaker 2: with the golfer, your understanding them. You're like the butcher harmon,
Speaker 2: what are you gonna what is he saying into the
Speaker 2: golfer's ear and then he's hitting him good? You know
Speaker 2: type of thing. And Yeah, deflating that anxiety is a
Speaker 2: very important skill. So you can do things like let's
Speaker 2: say the golfers hit three or four terrible shots in
Speaker 2: a row. Hey, I'm gonna step away for a minute
Speaker 2: and put another club together over here. Give him a
Speaker 2: few shots to hit on their own, interesting right, so
Speaker 2: they can kind of have that in private, right. So
Speaker 2: that's one tactical practical technique. Another one we've talked about
Speaker 2: when we've looked at our Arco stata is that you
Speaker 2: hit a lot of shots. And this is also true
Speaker 2: for the female golfer that are off fatigue. So there's
Speaker 2: no problem in the fitting process to uh, put those
Speaker 2: irons on a tee because you're gonna hit maybe half
Speaker 2: of those or a third of those iron shots on
Speaker 2: the golf golf course off of tea. So that is
Speaker 2: another really good technique. But yeah, I think the great
Speaker 2: fitter can kind of put you at ease, give your
Speaker 2: you know, deflate that anxiety. And that's again, Shane, where
Speaker 2: our tools come in. We can have a golfer hit,
Speaker 2: you know, get some good data with their seven iron,
Speaker 2: and then we can figure out, using our algorithms how
Speaker 2: to build out that full bag so the golfer doesn't
Speaker 2: have to exhaust themselves trying to hit a lot of
Speaker 2: shots with clubs that might be a little bit harder
Speaker 2: to hit, especially off the ground, or especially if you
Speaker 2: don't have good lies in your fittings scenario.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's it's like caddy in Marty. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know when you have a great caddy that can
Speaker 1: you're playing a place that you've always wanted to play,
Speaker 1: or it's a bucket list golf course and you're nervous.
Speaker 1: You know, the best caddies can ease a little bit
Speaker 1: out of that out of you. They're not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to take it all out of it exactly, but
Speaker 1: to ease, you know, the nerves in the golf game,
Speaker 1: get the conversation going out, you have kids. You know
Speaker 1: how many times have you been here, things like that,
Speaker 1: to just get your mind off Oh my goodness, I
Speaker 1: gotta hit this five iron grade or it's going to
Speaker 1: be in the ocean. You know, those things are really important,
Speaker 1: exact Rose, I would say, the real all star of
Speaker 1: this podcast, outside of you, of course, is your mom.
Speaker 1: I really hope your mom listens to this episode. What's
Speaker 1: her name, by the.
Speaker 2: Way, I hope she does.
Speaker 3: Her name's I hope she doesn't kill me for exposing
Speaker 3: her deep spears on this podcast.
Speaker 1: Now Kara's the all Star. I'm telling you we got
Speaker 1: to give her a big shout out. Rose, I really
Speaker 1: appreciate the time. Thank you so much for joining us,
Speaker 1: Thanks for all the insight. We're fans of you obviously,
Speaker 1: and congrats on the many years of ping and all
Speaker 1: that you do there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Shane and Marty as always, thank you for the insights
Speaker 1: as well. This is the Ping Proving Grounds Podcast.