Speaker 1: The guys from paying They've kind of showed me how
Speaker 1: much the equipment matters. I just love that I can
Speaker 1: hit any shot.
Speaker 2: I kind of want. We're gonna be able to tell
Speaker 2: some fun stories about what goes on here to help
Speaker 2: golfers play better golf.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Ping Proving Grounds podcast. I'm Shane
Speaker 1: Bacon with Marty Jertsen, and we're gonna talk today about fitting.
Speaker 1: And I know we talk so much about fitting in
Speaker 1: and around golf. It's very, very important. Everybody kind of
Speaker 1: screams at players, now, you gotta get fit.
Speaker 2: You gotta go get fit.
Speaker 1: I wanted to start with you about what you do
Speaker 1: in terms of your own fitting. You're a great player,
Speaker 1: you've played a major championships. How much time do you
Speaker 1: spend on your own golf bag? How much time do
Speaker 1: you spend kind of putting together what you're gonna go
Speaker 1: out and play with in terms of fourteen clubs?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean luckily I get to experiment with that
Speaker 2: quite a bit. But Shane, I think what I do
Speaker 2: is I schedule my fittings once or twice a year
Speaker 2: with one of our master fitters, and I tell them, hey,
Speaker 2: treat me as if you don't know who I am, right,
Speaker 2: and so they they can make sure I don't come
Speaker 2: in with any bias about my own personal game, and
Speaker 2: they can try to find something that I'm too biased
Speaker 2: to be aware of with my own observation, even with
Speaker 2: all my experience and playing experience. So I love doing
Speaker 2: that as an advanced player. Once or twice a year schedule,
Speaker 2: fitting have an expert come and look at your game,
Speaker 2: and they help me with a lot of things that
Speaker 2: I wouldn't otherwise be aware of. Looking at a new option,
Speaker 2: looking at a new club, looking at a new build, looking
Speaker 2: at a high lofted ferrywood with the shorter length, ask
Speaker 2: me questions about where I'm playing golf, what tournaments have
Speaker 2: coming up, what are my pain points on the golf course,
Speaker 2: looking at my own course stats, in things of that nature.
Speaker 2: So I think that's very important. Is you know, it
Speaker 2: would be easy for me to try to self fit myself,
Speaker 2: and I've tried to do that, and it's better if
Speaker 2: I have an expert look at my game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's inn a sense that goes into it.
Speaker 1: I mean everybody could go to a club champion and
Speaker 1: say I'm gonna get fit here and have an idea
Speaker 1: of a club they have in mind. But the way
Speaker 1: it feels like fitting has moved into is if you
Speaker 1: can go in unbiased in terms of what you're looking for,
Speaker 1: maybe even what you think you're going to get fit into.
Speaker 1: There's so much technology involved now. There's there's so much
Speaker 1: data that you can look through, and we've spent days
Speaker 1: looking through computers and robots and all sorts of things
Speaker 1: that really help a golfer understand way more about their
Speaker 1: own golf game than maybe they ever even thought they knew.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's the big thing that data
Speaker 2: is useful for. It's to have findings that you you
Speaker 2: as a golfer, you hit a bad shot on the course.
Speaker 2: Let's say you got it your eight iron or something,
Speaker 2: and you wipe it over to the right, you know,
Speaker 2: and you just try to forget about it. I try
Speaker 2: to wipe it out of my mind or uh, you know.
Speaker 2: We come in here to the putting lab, will ask
Speaker 2: the player, well, do you miss your putts to the
Speaker 2: left or to the right more? Well, I don't know
Speaker 2: about you, but I try to forget about my missus.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I missed more to them as well.
Speaker 2: So that's where the data can be really helpful. And
Speaker 2: and going to see an expert that can ask you
Speaker 2: those questions that you wouldn't otherwise be aware that that's
Speaker 2: even a thing, right, and extract that out of you
Speaker 2: and and uh and try to find something insightful and useful.
Speaker 2: And and we've come a long way and in technology
Speaker 2: and the in the usefulness of data and weaving that
Speaker 2: into the fitting process.
Speaker 1: Let's go back in terms of history. You said we've
Speaker 1: come a long way. I mean PING was at the
Speaker 1: forefront in terms of fitting players into clubs that work
Speaker 1: for them and not necessarily giving them something off the rack.
Speaker 1: In your time here, how much has fitting changed.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's been tremendous. I mean Carson kind of put
Speaker 2: the industry on the map, and in terms of democratizing
Speaker 2: fitting because he wanted to make custom fitting available for
Speaker 2: everybody free of charge, like no extra cost. We can
Speaker 2: change your lining goals, we can do different lengths, we
Speaker 2: can do grip size, and those are our staple foundations
Speaker 2: of custom fitting that are still at the heart. Those
Speaker 2: are the foundation. But in my time here, this is
Speaker 2: when I first started working at PING, is when launch
Speaker 2: monitors first came on the scene. I mean we were
Speaker 2: one of the first places here at the proving grounds
Speaker 2: to have a TrackMan, right and before that, we had
Speaker 2: ultrasonic sensors on the range that triangulated where the ball landed,
Speaker 2: and that's what we were doing.
Speaker 1: Technologies made it almost it's made it more advanced, but
Speaker 1: also easier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, more advance and sad sometimes you're measuring things
Speaker 2: that you don't need to measure, so that's important and
Speaker 2: I think that's important lesson for the golfer is that
Speaker 2: not everything that you can measure should be something you're
Speaker 2: trying to optimize for. And that's something I think we
Speaker 2: can get into the weeds on. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: now from fast forward from when we were one of
Speaker 2: the first to have launch monitors here to now, there's
Speaker 2: consumer launch monitors and a lot of people have them
Speaker 2: in their homes, in their garage. You go to the range,
Speaker 2: you see a garment r ten, you see the you know,
Speaker 2: flights go mevo pluses out there and things of that nature.
Speaker 2: So people, you know, I think every every ten years
Speaker 2: or so, the everyday golfer kind of has tools and
Speaker 2: technology that you know, the tour players have or us
Speaker 2: on the research side. So you know, the early days
Speaker 2: of launch monitors though, it was hey, now we can
Speaker 2: measure this. Then the question became, well what do you
Speaker 2: do with it? Right? And so that's where we came
Speaker 2: up with this in flight fitting software to say, okay,
Speaker 2: this is your ball speed launching spin on a driver?
Speaker 2: Is that good or bad? What is optimal? What is
Speaker 2: good gapping? And really having those launch monitors tools tech.
Speaker 2: Now you know, you've seen our focal system which measures
Speaker 2: you know, it's kind of like an MRI machine for
Speaker 2: your golfer.
Speaker 1: And there's like ninety cameras in this room. When they're
Speaker 1: covering you around, it's wild. It feels like you're in
Speaker 1: an EA sports game exactly. That's the same technology, right.
Speaker 1: So but that's allowed.
Speaker 2: Us to ask questions of you know, get insights out
Speaker 2: of those tools, and really it could be a situation
Speaker 2: where it gets too complex and you, the golfer, might
Speaker 2: get overwhelmed. Hey there's too much technology. What are all
Speaker 2: these numbers mean? I think it's very important for us
Speaker 2: at paying to make the complex simple, right is to
Speaker 2: take to do that.
Speaker 1: I mean because when I'm hitting balls and I'm looking
Speaker 1: at TrackMan numbers. There's so much information on the screen,
Speaker 1: and there's terms that every day golfers don't understand what
Speaker 1: a smash factor, How important is ball speed versus club
Speaker 1: head speed. How do you take all of the information
Speaker 1: that's available now and give it to a player in
Speaker 1: an hour that they can actually understand and take home
Speaker 1: and and trust in the equipment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a tricky part. Is is you
Speaker 2: take all those measurements that you can measure, well, what
Speaker 2: what are the key one? What are the important ones? Uh?
Speaker 2: And then we have to scale that to the skill
Speaker 2: of the golfer too, right, some golf golfer is going
Speaker 2: to be more repeable or not. Some golfers think, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm not consistent enough for a custom fitting. Well, uh,
Speaker 2: you know you can lean on you know, static measurements
Speaker 2: of how your your your how tall you are, how
Speaker 2: long your arms are, how big your hands are, and
Speaker 2: so for the beginning golfer, somebody just getting into the game.
Speaker 2: That's why fitting is really important, is you can lean
Speaker 2: on the more fundamental things how golfer's built. Then you
Speaker 2: fast forward to the most advanced golfers. When we're working
Speaker 2: with our tour players, you're getting really down into the weeds.
Speaker 2: That's when you might need to look at those more
Speaker 2: advanced numbers. Maybe you're weaving in you know, teaching and
Speaker 2: fitting at the same time, and making sure that we're
Speaker 2: making changes to the equipment that their coach is kind
Speaker 2: of bought into because maybe they're working on a swing
Speaker 2: change to try to get them to deliver dynamically flat
Speaker 2: or reduce their rate of closure and things of that nature.
Speaker 2: So we need to scale our fitting processes to our customer.
Speaker 2: Right your everyday golfer, beginning golfer, we might not need
Speaker 2: to get down into the weeds that much, but for
Speaker 2: you know, Victor or you know when we have you know,
Speaker 2: Boyd Summer, Hayes and Tony Final and we are getting
Speaker 2: into the weeds.
Speaker 1: So I always think about like the first down line
Speaker 1: in football or shot tracer when you're watching golf on TV,
Speaker 1: and I think back to when I was initially getting fit,
Speaker 1: you know, years ago, and there was an entire bag
Speaker 1: of drivers, and there's an entire bag.
Speaker 2: Of three woods.
Speaker 1: What's been the biggest advance in technology in terms of
Speaker 1: fitting to help you guys out, In terms of explaining
Speaker 1: what's going on to the player in front of you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question, Shane. I think it's it's
Speaker 2: being able to pass on all those fitting levers that
Speaker 2: we could give to the tour players. Now your everyday
Speaker 2: golfer can get right.
Speaker 1: When did that change? Like, when did that adjust from
Speaker 1: you come in and we kind of dot you to
Speaker 1: the right iron to now we can actually give you
Speaker 1: the same information that Tony Finale gets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of it's it's kind of been a
Speaker 2: gradual evolution. You know. I think back to when I
Speaker 2: first started. We had our tie aside close to twenty now,
Speaker 2: but we had our ti Asi metal woods that had
Speaker 2: different sleeves on them, and they had you could move
Speaker 2: the shaft around and be more upright, flatter and change
Speaker 2: the loft. Well, fast forward to you know, about ten
Speaker 2: years after that, we started screwing in our hozzle. And
Speaker 2: what's fun about that is that it's really being able
Speaker 2: to pass along with the tour players had access to.
Speaker 2: So before we had that, let's say you had a
Speaker 2: G five G ten driver glueden hozzle. Well, if lee
Speaker 2: West would need a little less loft, guess what we
Speaker 2: would kind of trim the feral and shit, we call
Speaker 2: it shimming. We'd shim the shaft in to have a
Speaker 2: little less loft. Well, you know, I think I view
Speaker 2: my role is to kind of take Hey, that access
Speaker 2: to the tour players have, let's pass that to the
Speaker 2: everyday golfer. And so then we designed our hozzle. Now
Speaker 2: the everyday golfer in the fitter could do that, so
Speaker 2: he unlocked all this little micro tweaking of loft. Well,
Speaker 2: fast forward to our G four ten driver. It's you know, hey,
Speaker 2: our tour players, some of them want to make the
Speaker 2: driver not go his left or eliminate the left side.
Speaker 2: Well we put a little hot melt in the toe.
Speaker 2: Well what wasn't fair that your every day golfer couldn't
Speaker 2: do that, right, So that's when we brought in the
Speaker 2: CG shifter. So now when you go into the fitting environment,
Speaker 2: you can tweak, you can change shafts, you can micro
Speaker 2: tweak the loss in between your nine ten, five twelve,
Speaker 2: and you can change the center gravity of the club.
Speaker 2: So you can unlock all these variables. And again it's
Speaker 2: like that same level of access that literally our tour
Speaker 2: players have access to. Now the every day golfer can
Speaker 2: get dialed in with their fitter.
Speaker 1: You think it about fitting in terms of the equipment
Speaker 1: you have here at paying and then you think about
Speaker 1: the player when the player comes in, how important is
Speaker 1: it to fit them for how they play versus maybe
Speaker 1: how you want them to swing or how they want
Speaker 1: to swing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think custom fitting is a lot
Speaker 2: about reducing, you know, the golfer from having to make compensations. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a good way to look at customs.
Speaker 1: You're hitting a big So I'm hitting a big slice.
Speaker 1: I'm a fifteen handicap that slices it thirty yards and
Speaker 1: I keep hitting the slice and keep hitting the slice,
Speaker 1: and you're basically trying to make that same exact swing
Speaker 1: go less right exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's one of the advantages of now of
Speaker 2: our CG shifter is that you could look at that
Speaker 2: and be like, hey, that's kind of a band aid.
Speaker 2: If we put the center gravity in the heel, well,
Speaker 2: guess what, And our tour players do this all the time.
Speaker 2: You start changing your mechanics, working on your swing, getting
Speaker 2: your path less over the top, et cetera. You can
Speaker 2: move that center CG shifter back to the neutral position,
Speaker 2: right That's one of the really fun advantages is of
Speaker 2: custom fitting and then having that little little bit of
Speaker 2: adjustability there in the fitting process. Marty.
Speaker 1: What I think is so cool here at paying when
Speaker 1: I watch you guys go through your processes is you're
Speaker 1: using technology to make it easier on the player. And
Speaker 1: you think about coming in and getting fit for a putter,
Speaker 1: you think about going out to the driving range, and
Speaker 1: in theory you have three hours to get fit if
Speaker 1: you want it. But not everybody can swing every club
Speaker 1: in their bag for three hours. You guys have leaned
Speaker 1: on technology to simplify that process, make it easier for
Speaker 1: somebody that maybe only has thirty minutes or forty five
Speaker 1: minutes or doesn't want to hit every club in the bag.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we've really tried to lean on our data.
Speaker 2: We have a team of data scientists and so we
Speaker 2: have a lot of algorithm.
Speaker 1: Scientists are here. They're like one hundred scientists here.
Speaker 2: I mean our engineering team is protest. Yeah, no, we're
Speaker 2: about eighty engineers, you know, between engineers, machinists, technician data scientists.
Speaker 2: Data science is a new thing, Like we didn't have
Speaker 2: data scientists five years ago, but now we have so
Speaker 2: much data we need to go in there and extract
Speaker 2: it and make sure we're doing meaningful things right. So
Speaker 2: we've developed a lot of tools in tech. I think,
Speaker 2: Shane exactly is what you talked about is if you
Speaker 2: want a full bag fitting, you'd be exhausted, right.
Speaker 1: I mean it's almost half a day to come here
Speaker 1: and get fit through the bag because again you want
Speaker 1: to make sure everybody's comfortable wedge through driver.
Speaker 2: Yep, exactly. So that full bag fit and a skilled
Speaker 2: fitter and we focus this a lot here is not
Speaker 2: going to allow that golfer to rake balls over whack
Speaker 2: a rake at, whack it and they're get tired, right.
Speaker 2: So a lot of times in that fitting experience we'll
Speaker 2: do very simple things like this. Golfers start to hit
Speaker 2: drivers and we will pull the golf balls away and
Speaker 2: start tossing to them like a tour player. So they're
Speaker 2: hitting one ball at a time. Okay, now why do
Speaker 2: we do that? It brings in more focus. We can
Speaker 2: control the pace of them fitting. So if you can tell, oh,
Speaker 2: they're kind of drag them over whacking them, Hey, take
Speaker 2: a little breather, recalibrate, Hey, we're going to set you
Speaker 2: up in a game like fitting environment that we call it.
Speaker 2: See those poles out there, that's your fair way, you know,
Speaker 2: hit your natural shot. Or we'll create situational games like
Speaker 2: pretend you're on a reachable par five, you know, give me,
Speaker 2: give me your swing there. I think when we were
Speaker 2: when we were working with you, even on irons, we
Speaker 2: had you hit different shots, hit your knockdown shot right,
Speaker 2: hit your stinger driver, what would you do if the
Speaker 2: wind's blowing? And so a really good fitting situation. We
Speaker 2: can put you in those encore simulations and make sure
Speaker 2: the club's going to be working for those scenarios.
Speaker 1: And I know you guys have been working on technology,
Speaker 1: and I think this is really really smart because I'd say,
Speaker 1: as someone that observes golfers a lot, and obviously I
Speaker 1: don't live in your space, but the gapping is a
Speaker 1: big issue. And I mean even for professional golfers, gapping
Speaker 1: is an issue. I think would you call the bad
Speaker 1: area over two hundred yards? Say yeah, the tour players
Speaker 1: sat zone, planger zone if you're two hundred and two thirty.
Speaker 1: Even for tour players, at times, they feel way less
Speaker 1: comfortable in that world because they're less clubs that they
Speaker 1: can go after and hit in that space. I know
Speaker 1: you guys have been working on technology to help you
Speaker 1: guys out in that world as well. For again, for
Speaker 1: someone that wants to come in get fit, doesn't have
Speaker 1: all data hit balls, and doesn't want to get exhausted
Speaker 1: going through the bag.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly is We're developing and we have and we
Speaker 2: can continue to refine a tool called the Gapping app,
Speaker 2: which is which gives our fitters that ability to figure
Speaker 2: out what is the optimal set makeup for your bag
Speaker 2: And really you don't want to look at when you
Speaker 2: go to get fit. It's like, hey, I need to
Speaker 2: go get new irons. Well, that might impact how you
Speaker 2: gap your wedges. That might impact how you transition to
Speaker 2: either hybrids or high lofted fairway woods. And that's one
Speaker 2: of the toughest problems to solve out there, because a
Speaker 2: golfer might not have a fitter in, a golfer might
Speaker 2: not have access to hit all those different clubs, see
Speaker 2: what they're going to do the time and energy to
Speaker 2: do that. So we're building more and more tools to
Speaker 2: predict how they would hit those clubs, and our predictions
Speaker 2: are getting more and more accurate. We're kind of feeding.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like is real artificial intelligence. We're feeding
Speaker 2: our algorithms and our model with data from ping man
Speaker 2: player testing the fittings we do, and as we do that,
Speaker 2: the algorithms are getting smarter and smarter, and it scales
Speaker 2: for fast players like yourself, where you might end your
Speaker 2: bag at a four iron or some of our even
Speaker 2: faster players a twenty fee hour ending it at three iron,
Speaker 2: to your slower swing speed golfer that's going to start
Speaker 2: there in their irons at a seven iron and then
Speaker 2: play six hybrid. So it's really fun. You can go
Speaker 2: in there and simulate, hey, how would that hybrid trajectory
Speaker 2: compared to a fairway wood. Some golfers prefer fairwywoods over
Speaker 2: hybrids or vice versa. Right, So you can do a
Speaker 2: lot of these what if experiments without exhausting the player,
Speaker 2: and quite frankly, we can actually do a better fit
Speaker 2: just having to get really good seven iron numbers than
Speaker 2: exhausting them and having them hit all these these fairwywoods
Speaker 2: and long irons and things of that nature.
Speaker 1: What do you tell people that come in and go, Okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta get fit for my driver.
Speaker 2: I love my driver.
Speaker 1: Obviously, you know, it's the most fun club to hit
Speaker 1: in the bag. I want to get fit for my driver.
Speaker 1: I want to get fit for my woods, but maybe
Speaker 1: I don't want to spend too much time on my
Speaker 1: wedges or even you know, here in the putting lab
Speaker 1: with the putter, what do you say to people that
Speaker 1: are maybe focused a little bit more on the clubs
Speaker 1: that hit it far and maybe less on the clubs
Speaker 1: that don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a good question. I mean, when
Speaker 2: you're part of the fitting process is to interview the
Speaker 2: golfer and get to know what's important to them, right,
Speaker 2: So I think it's it's our job to know, maybe statistically,
Speaker 2: what are the most important clubs in the bag, And
Speaker 2: candidly the driver is the most important, is the biggest
Speaker 2: contribution to score. I'd men be a controversial thing because
Speaker 2: everyone's like, oh, you hit you know, you hit more
Speaker 2: shots with your putter, therefore it must be the most important.
Speaker 2: But the putter and the driver are close. It's almost
Speaker 2: tied for first of which is the most important for scoring.
Speaker 2: But the driver leads a little bit. So if it's
Speaker 2: that scenario, I mean, we one hundred percent support them.
Speaker 2: Trying to get them dialed in on the driver because
Speaker 2: A it's fun and BA has the biggest contribution to scoring.
Speaker 2: But second with that is your putter right. And we
Speaker 2: see so many folks that in that scenario we would say, hey,
Speaker 2: just give me a few putts with your putter. Let's
Speaker 2: make sure you're in the right stroke type. So one
Speaker 2: of the lowest hanging fruit we see in putters is
Speaker 2: to match how somebody how much they rotate the face
Speaker 2: of the putter and make sure they're in the right balance.
Speaker 2: So to simplify, it's, you know, either face balance or
Speaker 2: strong arc or tow down putter right. And so that's
Speaker 2: a simple way to kind of get in there. Provide
Speaker 2: some stats, Hey, this is how much putting contributes to
Speaker 2: your overall score of the game, and then we can
Speaker 2: do things like showcase performance. If it's wedges, hey let's
Speaker 2: just chip a few while you're warming up. Just chip
Speaker 2: a few here, and we can take a look at
Speaker 2: the grinds and see, hey, get you know, maybe they're
Speaker 2: kind of steep. We'll give them a wide soul and
Speaker 2: they'll get that click, they'll get a little more turf protection,
Speaker 2: they won't fat one every once in a while, and
Speaker 2: so you can kind of subtly introduce the introduce those
Speaker 2: concepts if they're if they're kind of like, yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't want to look at my my wedges and my
Speaker 2: putter and some people a lot of people are intimidated
Speaker 2: by getting fit for wedges. Great, yep, right, it's a
Speaker 2: chipping can be a scary thing for a lot of golfers.
Speaker 2: So a good fitter will empathize with the player and
Speaker 2: not too much put too much pressure on them, maybe
Speaker 2: have them hit a few while they're go assembling they're
Speaker 2: they're fitting their their seven iron interchangeable club or some
Speaker 2: of that nature. Very smart.
Speaker 1: So you you know, you look at the technology that
Speaker 1: you guys have already and the stuff that you guys
Speaker 1: are about to introduce, and you talk about the gapping system,
Speaker 1: which I think is so smart, and it's so it's
Speaker 1: so innovative in terms of the technology you can lean on.
Speaker 1: How much more is there? You know, you feel like
Speaker 1: you kind of get to a point where what more
Speaker 1: can we do for the golfer at home?
Speaker 2: I Shane, I think about that concept a lot. You know,
Speaker 2: It's like I think it'd be it's a very easy
Speaker 2: thing to kind of think, Hey, how much more can
Speaker 2: these companies do? Well, That's been the case for all
Speaker 2: twenty years years I've been here, Right, I think the
Speaker 2: reality is I think that there's this famous quote like,
Speaker 2: you know, the further you are from the shore, the
Speaker 2: deeper the ocean, you know. And I think myself and
Speaker 2: my colleagues are very are more optimistic and excited about
Speaker 2: the future than ever, right, because we have both design
Speaker 2: innovation pathways that are very exciting to get more performance,
Speaker 2: and we have more advanced custom fitting tools. Right. And
Speaker 2: I go back to the tour players. They have access
Speaker 2: to shot link data. Okay, so their teams you know this, Shane.
Speaker 2: Their teams they have statisticians.
Speaker 1: Literally about how they did week to week and quarter
Speaker 1: to quarter exactly.
Speaker 2: They get reports. Look, they get a report when they
Speaker 2: show up to the course. A lot of them have
Speaker 2: a statistician. It's like this, how you should play this hole.
Speaker 2: You might want to put it in this different type
Speaker 2: of club. They look at the history of things, are
Speaker 2: constantly either instructing and or equipment working with our tour reps,
Speaker 2: maybe changing the club for a certain golf course. Right,
Speaker 2: that's coming for the everyday golfer. Right, things like arcos
Speaker 2: they give the ability to measure that on course performance,
Speaker 2: and then with our data science team, we can go
Speaker 2: in there and take a look at that level of
Speaker 2: nuance to your everyday golfer and provide insights that they
Speaker 2: would just like a tour player might not be able
Speaker 2: to get themselves. So the future is very bright on
Speaker 2: that front.
Speaker 1: I was at event a few weeks ago. It was
Speaker 1: an outpost event at Chicessi, and there was a guy
Speaker 1: there that was setting up his buddy's golf trip, and
Speaker 1: he's an analyst. He was doing data work on his laptop.
Speaker 1: He had all of his friends submit for the year
Speaker 1: their scorecards of how they played certain holes, and he
Speaker 1: would match players depending on how they'd play certain holes
Speaker 1: in all shot. And as I was looking at his computer,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, my friends don't do this, and maybe
Speaker 1: eventually we'll get to this point. But I mean, again,
Speaker 1: there that's out there. I mean, you can obviously lean
Speaker 1: on this if you have the appropriate information and you
Speaker 1: know what you're doing. And like you said, we're going
Speaker 1: to get closer and closer to the tour player, probably
Speaker 1: sooner than later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we already have a solution for this. It's called
Speaker 2: My Game Insights. So if you're a member of our
Speaker 2: ping communities called ping Nation, you log in and you're
Speaker 2: you you've used Arcos for for uh three or three
Speaker 2: or more rounds. You can go in there and connect
Speaker 2: uh your Arcos data into Ping and we have algorithms
Speaker 2: that will go in there and and look at your
Speaker 2: data and determine if you have a you know, a
Speaker 2: right miss tendency on your driver, determine if you have
Speaker 2: a gapping issue, and we'll provide those insights to you,
Speaker 2: the golfer, in very much the same way tour players do.
Speaker 2: So uh, if if you're an Arcos user uh and
Speaker 2: and and have our product, connect to your accounts and
Speaker 2: check out my Game Insights. Is It's really cool. It's
Speaker 2: it's the uh it's the beginning of that journey.
Speaker 1: Crazy. So a scary thing to always do, but we
Speaker 1: did it. I asked people on Twitter for some questions
Speaker 1: about thinking, so I went through and made sure I
Speaker 1: pulled the appropriate and I'm gonna start with this one,
Speaker 1: A very smart question. I've never thought about this for
Speaker 1: Philip asked general question about dealing with a fitter. Should
Speaker 1: you tip your fitter.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I tell you what. Uh, If I would
Speaker 2: say this, maybe if you get your clubs and you're
Speaker 2: playing better golf, maybe reserve that tip until you're out
Speaker 2: there lowing your scores and and uh and your your
Speaker 2: clubs and your fitting lived up to it.
Speaker 1: Wait till the food arrives. How you tipped the waiter?
Speaker 2: I like that. It's very smart.
Speaker 1: Do I this is a question I asked you a
Speaker 1: little bit about this. But do I get fit for
Speaker 1: the swing I have or the swing I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get to?
Speaker 2: That's a great question. I think golfers should look at
Speaker 2: fitting as a never ending journey. Right, So, just like
Speaker 2: I talked about myself, I schedule a fitting at least
Speaker 2: once a year. Okay, I think your everyday golfer should
Speaker 2: kind of do the same, you know. Uh, But that
Speaker 2: is a that is a you know, a very great question.
Speaker 2: And I think just like we looked at a little
Speaker 2: bit when you were hitting your irons, uh, and you
Speaker 2: know you want to play that little cut. It's like, hey,
Speaker 2: where should we go with this? Should we fit me
Speaker 2: into this color code that's going to embrace that or
Speaker 2: something that you can kind of change you know, lean
Speaker 2: into being more aggressive with your technique. So a lot
Speaker 2: of times you want to kind of go right in between.
Speaker 2: Okay uh, And that's again, like I talked about one
Speaker 2: of the advantages. Maybe you maybe you're a slice of
Speaker 2: the ball. Let's go ahead and put you in that
Speaker 2: CG shift to straighten it out in the in the
Speaker 2: draw position. But as you work on your path, as
Speaker 2: you take lessons uh and improve your mechanics, you can
Speaker 2: now have that ability to change it yourself. So I
Speaker 2: think that question really depends on how much effort you're
Speaker 2: going to put put into working on your game, improving
Speaker 2: your swing, improving your mechanics, right, I think it comes
Speaker 2: down to that situation for that question.
Speaker 1: There's like an open mindedness. I feel like that comes
Speaker 1: into this world, you know when you go when when
Speaker 1: you go to get fit, to have an to have
Speaker 1: an open mind to try stuff that you're you know
Speaker 1: you're probably not going to go with, but just to
Speaker 1: see what it does, to see how the ball flies,
Speaker 1: to see how much further you can hit a seven
Speaker 1: iron versus what you think you're probably going to get
Speaker 1: fit into. I feel like if you're going to go
Speaker 1: into this world, if you're gonna go to ping and
Speaker 1: get fit, try everything. I mean, why not. You're there
Speaker 1: for a certain amount of time. I think it's worth
Speaker 1: at least seeing the different opportunities and options out there
Speaker 1: to see maybe again, even if you don't go this way,
Speaker 1: you can at least see what's available.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I think that's a great that's a great point, Shane.
Speaker 2: We have a lot of golfers come in here. They
Speaker 2: have their mindset on, Hey, I want to play our
Speaker 2: blueprint and iron or I fifty blames and they'll leave
Speaker 2: with I two thirties and they love it. They love it.
Speaker 2: The feedback is fantastic. Or some players are I two thirties,
Speaker 2: they'll leave with our our you know, G four to
Speaker 2: thirty iron right and uh, and so that's a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. I think that's a very good point. Be
Speaker 2: very open minded, uh when you go in for your fitting,
Speaker 2: because the very skilled and trained fitter will kind of
Speaker 2: spectrum you a little bit. They'll test you into different things. Right,
Speaker 2: They'll put you in a shaft that's too stiff, kind
Speaker 2: of on purpose, so you can kind of feel what
Speaker 2: that's like and then bring it and then bring it back.
Speaker 1: A lot of questions about this, and we've covered it
Speaker 1: a little bit, but most golfers don't have a repeatable swing,
Speaker 1: you know, most golfer's handicaps. I'm assuming you're somewhere around
Speaker 1: fifteen without that. I've always wondered if fitting actually matters
Speaker 1: for those level players.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think fitting is a spectrum. So if you're
Speaker 2: a less skilled golfer, less repeatable golfer, you can lean
Speaker 2: on more static fitting. We call it right your build,
Speaker 2: your height, your wrist of floor. Ninety five percent of
Speaker 2: people fit into within plus or minus two degrees of
Speaker 2: their static fit using our color code system. So why
Speaker 2: is that important? If you're a less repeatable golfer and
Speaker 2: we give you the right color code based on your
Speaker 2: fitting based on how you're built, now you're going to
Speaker 2: make less compensations as you work on your game. Okay.
Speaker 2: And then if you're a more advanced player, you might
Speaker 2: already know your lyingle and your color code. We can
Speaker 2: get down more into the weeds. So we want to
Speaker 2: have fitting solutions for both the less skilled player and
Speaker 2: the super lead advanced player.
Speaker 1: I thought this was a great question from Ryan McCoy.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, there's so much data out there
Speaker 1: to look for. What are the questions you should be
Speaker 1: asking your fitter to make sure they're not just trying
Speaker 1: to present you with the newest, hottest equipment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's an awesome question. So I think looking
Speaker 2: at dispersion is a big one. So I think we
Speaker 2: could break that into Okay, are you looking at your driver?
Speaker 2: Maybe your irons or your wedges? Right, So on a driver,
Speaker 2: you want to look at ball speed, not smash factor,
Speaker 2: because the launch monitor is all measure club ed speed
Speaker 2: a little bit differently. So we would make sure that
Speaker 2: we generally don't are not a fan of looking at
Speaker 2: smash factor. Like ball speed is king and then you
Speaker 2: want to get to the right optimal launch and spin,
Speaker 2: and then you want to look at things like dispersion.
Speaker 2: And that's something very important for everyday golfer. Don't just
Speaker 2: look at your one single best hit, look at the grouping.
Speaker 2: So have your fit say, hey, what's my statu area
Speaker 2: look like? What's my consistency look like? There's these little
Speaker 2: numbers on most of the launch matters, it's called plus
Speaker 2: or minus. We are looking at that.
Speaker 1: I think you're hitting a seven, so you're hitting seven
Speaker 1: and one fifty but you hit one one sixty. Look
Speaker 1: more at the consistency. Don't think you hit seven r
Speaker 1: on one sixty because you ripped one exactly.
Speaker 2: You want to start looking at those groupings, how tight
Speaker 2: things are, How consistent is that spin in irons. It's
Speaker 2: a really big deal. Not just to look at distance.
Speaker 2: You want to look at peak height. You want to
Speaker 2: look at landing angle and we at ping. Provided all
Speaker 2: of our fitter is a really good guideline for what
Speaker 2: is a good spin rate. We see a lot of
Speaker 2: golfers out there that don't spin their irons enough. And
Speaker 2: it might look good when you're on the simulator, Hey
Speaker 2: I'm in this iron a mile, but when you go
Speaker 2: to play golf, they can't stop it. They don't have
Speaker 2: good gapping and things of that nature. So looking at
Speaker 2: peak height, landing angle, dispersions, consistency of spin are really
Speaker 2: important factors.
Speaker 1: I know you guys deal with both indoor and outdoor fittings.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about the benefits of both?
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, I think outdoor if you have a chance to,
Speaker 2: I think outdoor is the best because you're hitting off turf.
Speaker 2: But the tools forgetting fit indoors have gotten way better
Speaker 2: even in the last couple of years. Right now, there's
Speaker 2: golf balls that radar companies give it more signal to
Speaker 2: noise ratio like the RCT ball and things of that
Speaker 2: nature that can provide better ballistic data for indoor fit.
Speaker 2: Right I think one of the important things in an
Speaker 2: indoor fitting is kind of getting that lingle right, so
Speaker 2: you want to look at the spin axis of the shot.
Speaker 2: That's kind of a final thing that you want to
Speaker 2: look at outdoor fitting. You know, if you have a
Speaker 2: launch monitor that's measuring the full down range fight, that's
Speaker 2: a big benefit. But obviously not every facility has premium
Speaker 2: golf balls, so you're having to rely on the launch
Speaker 2: monitor to predict the flight. So I think we've come
Speaker 2: a long way. The industry has come a long way.
Speaker 2: Some of the tools we've built to do things like gapping.
Speaker 2: We've built some great tools for wedge fitting to upgrade
Speaker 2: the ability to do a good wedge fitting indoors. I
Speaker 2: think that's one of the biggest challenges in wedges. You
Speaker 2: want to get the timing of the sole interaction to
Speaker 2: the golf ball and the acoustics. We can even do things,
Speaker 2: and I think some great fitting facilities do this. You
Speaker 2: can evaluate how effective the grooves are on your wedges
Speaker 2: by introducing just a little moisture between the ball and
Speaker 2: the club face. So we'll do this here, which is
Speaker 2: quite fun, is have somebody bring in their gamer wedges
Speaker 2: and we'll say, okay, well there's outdoors. There's gonna be
Speaker 2: water and grass out there, so we're gonna do a
Speaker 2: little simulation. We'll just put a little sprits of water
Speaker 2: on the ball or the clubhead. You hit it and
Speaker 2: measure the spin. And quite often, let's say they're spinning
Speaker 2: their wedges like eight thousand, you put a little moisture there,
Speaker 2: their gamer wedges will drop in half. They'll spin like
Speaker 2: four thousand. But then you hit our glide four point
Speaker 2: zeros in our latest wedges, you put that water on there,
Speaker 2: the spin will stay exactly the same. So that's a
Speaker 2: way that you can simulate outdoor conditions indoors, which is
Speaker 2: quite fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you were telling me that basically every shot on
Speaker 1: grass has moisture. Basically every golf shot you hit on grass,
Speaker 1: when you guys really break it down frames per second,
Speaker 1: you're always going to see some level of moisture come up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not quite frankly, Shan, that was surprising, Like we
Speaker 2: had to use a you know, a high speed camera
Speaker 2: that was measuring like ten thousand frames a second.
Speaker 1: You guys have a camera that is one hundred thousand frames.
Speaker 2: For exactly but it was crazy. I mean, we had
Speaker 2: stand Utley and I mean one of the best short
Speaker 2: games of all time, and he's hitting pitch shots on
Speaker 2: a dry summer day out here and we're just getting
Speaker 2: some video with his camera. See how he's delivering, and
Speaker 2: look at all the microphysics of what's going on. And
Speaker 2: we opened up that video and while the club is
Speaker 2: approaching the ball, it's kind of landing on the grass,
Speaker 2: it's clipping the grass, so little clippings are coming up
Speaker 2: and getting on the face. This is before you make
Speaker 2: impact with the ball, and you could see the water
Speaker 2: droplet's getting squeezed out and getting between the ball and
Speaker 2: the club face. And he's like, yeah, I pured that chip.
Speaker 2: It's like a perfectly good chip. And so that really
Speaker 2: was an eye opener. Yes, anytime, except if you're hitting
Speaker 2: a ball off a tee, there's gonna be some level
Speaker 2: of debris.
Speaker 1: Or even iron off a t even if you're just
Speaker 1: it's just like a little nod there.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, I guess if yeah, an iron off a tee,
Speaker 2: if you were to kind of brush the grass a
Speaker 2: little bit. So it's going to depend on your angle
Speaker 2: patch a little bit. But yeah, there's gonna be in there,
Speaker 2: and that's why the gurus and the finish and things
Speaker 2: of that nature. But going back to your question about
Speaker 2: indoor fitting, you can introduce that to evaluate. Hey, I
Speaker 2: think I mean me, as a golfer, I want my
Speaker 2: spin to be the same with regardless of the conditions,
Speaker 2: because then you're gonna have that more predictability. And that
Speaker 2: shot that the tour players hate is that you're hitting
Speaker 2: that pitch shot and it slides up the face, right. Oh,
Speaker 2: they hate that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all hate that all terrible. Max Davis
Speaker 1: had a good question about shaft selection. It's one of
Speaker 1: the biggest factors in getting properly fit, yet it might
Speaker 1: as well be rocket science for most people. How can
Speaker 1: people be made aware of the importance without bogging them
Speaker 1: down in terms of the specifics when you talk about shafts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, shaft fitting is tough because it's very individual. How players,
Speaker 2: thousands of them. I mean, there's thousands of different options exactly.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we've tried to simplify this. I think the
Speaker 2: high level on schaft hitting is that your clubhead speed
Speaker 2: get you in the ballpark for what flex to play,
Speaker 2: But how you transition it, uh in that change of
Speaker 2: direction is really a key to making sure you're gonna
Speaker 2: love the feel of that shaft. Shane, I'm sure you've
Speaker 2: kind of had had some shafts in your life that
Speaker 2: have been maybe a little stiffer in the butt section
Speaker 2: that you like because of how you transition it right,
Speaker 2: kind of a little more aggressive transition, uh than a
Speaker 2: louiou stays in or somebody somebody of.
Speaker 1: That don't swing it like Louis Well, you just you use.
Speaker 2: So transition a little bit different than you know. But
Speaker 2: I think that's the key to shafts. So we we've
Speaker 2: had designed a bunch of fitting charts that we provided
Speaker 2: to our fitting network that says, Okay, if your transitions
Speaker 2: like this, your your your swing speeds like this, and
Speaker 2: then the question is do you do you need to
Speaker 2: use the shaft to hit the ball a little bit
Speaker 2: higher a little bit lower and provide really good decision
Speaker 2: matrix there and then We have another app we've made
Speaker 2: you know, more apps and software called the Shaft App
Speaker 2: that our fitters have access to to make the complex easy.
Speaker 2: It it data minds through all the shafts that we've
Speaker 2: measured here at the proving grounds on our equipment, and
Speaker 2: then it it marries it to algorithms that we've developed
Speaker 2: through our motion capture system and all the fittings that
Speaker 2: we do at the proving grounds. In it provides the
Speaker 2: top three shafts that you should start with and try right,
Speaker 2: and we kind of use that as your starting point
Speaker 2: in the fitting process to break through. I agree. I
Speaker 2: mean keeping up with all the shafts out there and
Speaker 2: reading up on them and figure out this is supposed
Speaker 2: to do this, this is supposed to do that. I
Speaker 2: got to try all these million shafts. We want to
Speaker 2: make the complex simple. Let's boil that down to the
Speaker 2: top three, go try them and kind of iterate from there.
Speaker 1: It feels like that's the theme here is the information
Speaker 1: is abundant. I mean, we've talked about it. There's so
Speaker 1: much stuff out there that we can learn about every
Speaker 1: single golf swing. And what you guys at PING are
Speaker 1: really trying to do is to make it as simplified
Speaker 1: as humanly possible for somebody coming in. And that's shafts,
Speaker 1: and that's wedges, and that's putting, and that's gapping, and
Speaker 1: that's everything. It's how can we put it on a
Speaker 1: one sheet and you can actually look at it and
Speaker 1: understand it and don't need a PhD to understand it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And things have gotten a lot more complex
Speaker 2: from the days where we just made an eye to
Speaker 2: iron and to fit everybody right. Now we have irons
Speaker 2: that have totally different loft configurations. We have irons where
Speaker 2: the face flexes a lot, irons where the face is
Speaker 2: more stable. So those those little gapping scenarios become very nuanced.
Speaker 2: For example, our G four to thirty hybrids they go
Speaker 2: long ways. So in our algorithms, in our recommendations, we
Speaker 2: see this a lot. On the LPGA tour is we'll
Speaker 2: have some gals who are playing a five iron and
Speaker 2: then they play a five hybrid, and that's not a mistake.
Speaker 2: It's because our G four to thirty hybrid goes far.
Speaker 2: It's meant to gap with the G four thirty irons,
Speaker 2: But if you're playing the I two thirty iron, it
Speaker 2: is totally fine to play a five iron in a
Speaker 2: five hybrid, right, Those are going to provide good gapping.
Speaker 2: And that's because those irons go very different distances, very
Speaker 2: different trajectories.
Speaker 1: So basically summarizing all this, get fit is what you're
Speaker 1: telling me.
Speaker 2: Make sure you get fit. Yeah, get fit. I think
Speaker 2: the big thing is don't be intimidated. I think it
Speaker 2: can be very intimidating or to have in your head,
Speaker 2: Hey I'm not good enough to get fit. Well, I
Speaker 2: mean it's even if you're you're just getting into the game.
Speaker 2: You want to get those those macro level specs, the length,
Speaker 2: the color code based on your body type. So you're
Speaker 2: not making compensations as you're working on your game. Okay,
Speaker 2: So even if you have those thoughts in your head,
Speaker 2: you know, don't be intimidated by the process and make
Speaker 2: sure you get fit regardless of your skill level. And
Speaker 2: we're going to have different levels of fitting offered by
Speaker 2: trained to our fitting network depending on your on your skill,
Speaker 2: and we're going to scale the complexity as you get
Speaker 2: better at this game.
Speaker 1: What do you guys ask players before they come in
Speaker 1: or is there something you can fill out? You tell
Speaker 1: them what type of player you are, handicap misses things
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, so yeah, we we we ask players about
Speaker 2: where they play golf. Do you travel a lot or not?
Speaker 2: You know, some golfers play the same course most of
Speaker 2: the time. Others are travel around playing a variety of
Speaker 2: different conditions. Uh, that's a big factor where you live.
Speaker 2: I mean, we fit golfers that fly in from Denver
Speaker 2: aspen Veil, and they need totally different fittings than a
Speaker 2: golfer lives here or lives at sea level. The wind's
Speaker 2: gonna affect it differently, there's gonna be different lift and drags,
Speaker 2: so your environmental conditions are are quite different. And then, Shane,
Speaker 2: this is really fun. If a golfer is keeping track
Speaker 2: of their stats, uh, specifically arcos, we can look at
Speaker 2: their data before the history before they arrive, before they
Speaker 2: get here and and uh and we'll have findings uh
Speaker 2: and and insights from their game before they get here
Speaker 2: to get a major jump start. And again that's exactly
Speaker 2: like tour players are fit right there.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I have a three and a half year
Speaker 1: old son. How early is how early should I be
Speaker 1: getting Henry fit? Like now, now, get them dialed get
Speaker 1: them in, get him fring them down, and let's go.
Speaker 2: Three a half is the age. That's a good example
Speaker 2: of At that age, we might not need to measure
Speaker 2: his transition type. We need to know how tall he is. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's good to know.
Speaker 1: So as we summarize get fit, pay attention to everything,
Speaker 1: be open minded, and be excited about you're getting new clubs.
Speaker 1: When that box arrives, it's your golf clubs. It is
Speaker 1: like one of the great feelings for a golfer in
Speaker 1: this world is when you actually have stuff that you
Speaker 1: spend time getting fit for that you know is specific
Speaker 1: for your golf swing and your swing speed, and you
Speaker 1: get to take that out and really use it and
Speaker 1: then see how effective it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean I still get excited when I
Speaker 2: and I'm and I got and I got a new
Speaker 2: five wood, you know, half inch short, our new tow
Speaker 2: or two point oh black. You know, I got the
Speaker 2: housle position, a certain setting. I'm like, I love that
Speaker 2: feeling the ping box at the front door.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're talking next level excitement. It's adult Christmas
Speaker 1: all the time. It's like when you go on that
Speaker 1: first day on the golf trip It's like when you
Speaker 1: land and have the first drink and you go, I
Speaker 1: finally made it. I got a seven with the other day,
Speaker 1: and I was very excited about that.
Speaker 2: I'm Shade Baking.
Speaker 1: That is Marty Jertsen and this is the Ping Proving
Speaker 1: Grounds podcast