Speaker 1: The guys from Ping.
Speaker 2: They've kind of showed me how much the equipment matters.
Speaker 2: I just love that I can hit any shot I
Speaker 2: kind of want.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about
Speaker 1: what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.
Speaker 3: Hello everybody, Welcome back to the Ping Proving Grounds Podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm Shane Bacon. That is Marty Jerts and Marty. How
Speaker 3: we doing great?
Speaker 1: Shane loving it in the office and try and solve problems.
Speaker 3: I just by the way, Marty, I just got a
Speaker 3: new PLD in the mail, and I went with the mallet.
Speaker 3: I went a little bit more mallet style. I had
Speaker 3: a little bit more of a blade one in the
Speaker 3: previous iteration stamping on the bottom. Have kind of a
Speaker 3: little bit of a equation, if you will, with like
Speaker 3: my kids and my dog's names on the bottom of it.
Speaker 3: But this is something I really believe in. I went
Speaker 3: out today. You know, I've got the putting green in
Speaker 3: the backyard. I went out there. I set up for
Speaker 3: a ten footer. I feel like, you gotta make the
Speaker 3: first putt with a new putter.
Speaker 2: You I made it.
Speaker 3: I made it in But you know, it's like you
Speaker 3: can't miss the first putt with a brand new, beautiful putter, right.
Speaker 3: You gotta make that thing to give it the good
Speaker 3: vibes you need as you go forward.
Speaker 1: Yep, I saw. I was at the range last night.
Speaker 1: I saw a guy in the range. He is the
Speaker 1: best scratch golfer at my club, and he was he
Speaker 1: bought a new fancy cheft and he was screwing it
Speaker 1: in and he's all excited, and I was. I was
Speaker 1: sneaking over there to see how that first shot went.
Speaker 3: You need to hit the first drive with the new driver. Well,
Speaker 3: you need to hit the first wedge. You need to
Speaker 3: clip it. I remember I had a friend of mine
Speaker 3: one time. He hold out with a new wedge, brand
Speaker 3: new wedge in the bag, hold out, first swing with it.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, never hit another good shot with it. Last
Speaker 3: lasted like four months in his bag.
Speaker 2: He said. I I exhausted the good.
Speaker 3: Swing the first time out, and that thing never produced
Speaker 3: another positive. But hopefully the putter will will produce it.
Speaker 3: It's one of the more beautiful ones I have ever had.
Speaker 3: But Marty, today I wanted to jump in and dive
Speaker 3: into an issue with a lot of golfers. An issue
Speaker 3: maybe the golfers don't even understand they have. And this
Speaker 3: isn't just everyday players. This is a professional golfer issue
Speaker 3: as well, and it's you know, it really kind of
Speaker 3: goes back to the rules of golf. We can have
Speaker 3: fourteen clubs in our bag. That's the maximum allowed in
Speaker 3: a golf bag to compete and play in tournaments. And
Speaker 3: I'd say, you know, everyday players abide by this rule
Speaker 3: for the most part. I mean, occasionally you might see
Speaker 3: somebody with sixteen or seventeen clubs, and then maybe they
Speaker 3: have a desert club if they're out in Arizona. But
Speaker 3: fourteen clubs is the number, and when you only get
Speaker 3: fourteen sounds like a lot. If I went upstairs and
Speaker 3: ask my wife, who's not a golfer, does fourteen clubs
Speaker 3: kind of cover, you know, the basis of a golf round,
Speaker 3: she'd probably go, yeah, of course, that sounds like a ton.
Speaker 3: But as golfers, we know that fourteen typically means there's
Speaker 3: a space in our bag that has a hole. And
Speaker 3: so I wanted to dive a little bit into that
Speaker 3: because gapping isn't just a golfer issue, but it's a
Speaker 3: company issue and it's something Peeing has spent a lot
Speaker 3: of time trying to solve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Shane, I think I think you introduced the topic great,
Speaker 1: which is like what is gapping? Like what does it
Speaker 1: mean to the everyday golfer? What does gapping mean? Like
Speaker 1: it might mean like you have even space between your irons,
Speaker 1: like some people might think that. Some people might think
Speaker 1: it's like, well, which wedges do you play? You know?
Speaker 1: I think what we should do is like define it
Speaker 1: a little bit and you let it off. It's like
Speaker 1: you got fourteen club It's an optimization issue. Right when
Speaker 1: I put my engineering hat on it. It's like you
Speaker 1: got your driver that's designed to do pretty much one thing,
Speaker 1: which is go very like as far as possible while
Speaker 1: being mindful of distance. We'll talk about that sometimes distance
Speaker 1: verse accuracy. Then you have your putter, which that's doing
Speaker 1: its job and with rare exceptions people with two drivers
Speaker 1: or two putters, you got twelve clubs in between. How
Speaker 1: do you slice and dice those to help you play
Speaker 1: your best golf?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: I think that's a good definition. Like what gapping is.
Speaker 1: We called it set makeup or bridge bridge fitting or
Speaker 1: what have you. And then yeah, I think You're right.
Speaker 1: I think not a lot of people know like what
Speaker 1: to do or how to solve it, or you know what,
Speaker 1: what does your fitter do? You know, when you're trying
Speaker 1: to solve these problems. So there's there's like a lot
Speaker 1: of self experimentation that happens when you're trying to figure
Speaker 1: this out.
Speaker 3: When you talk about gapping, Marty, and you talk about
Speaker 3: an average golfer, an everyday player versus a professional golfer,
Speaker 3: are the gaps different for those two groups?
Speaker 1: Yeah? No, that's a great point. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that the faster swing speed players you're gapping is more
Speaker 1: about how far do you carry the ball? Like your
Speaker 1: PGA tour player, Man, they're doing their calculations. It's all
Speaker 1: about Okay, I gotta what's the cover you're solving for
Speaker 1: that cover number where you want to pitch the golf ball,
Speaker 1: And it's a lot about carry. The slower you are
Speaker 1: in clubhead speed, the more it is about your total gaps, right,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like carry plus roll. So we've even
Speaker 1: built our tools like that. And one fun thing, Shane,
Speaker 1: we've kind of noticed in our in our you know,
Speaker 1: data analysis that we've done, is that there's a good
Speaker 1: way to kind of figure out what your optimal gap is,
Speaker 1: which is if you ever go on a launch monitor
Speaker 1: going for a fitting, and we and a lot of
Speaker 1: our competitors fit with a seven iron. You take whatever
Speaker 1: your ball speed is in your seven iron in miles
Speaker 1: per hour, so yours minor close to the same, where
Speaker 1: like one thirty ish, so one hundred and thirty miles
Speaker 1: an hour with our seven iron. You divide that by
Speaker 1: ten and that's thirteen. That's a good spacing between your irons.
Speaker 1: And that works whether you're a tour player or if
Speaker 1: you hit your seven iron shorter, you're like eighty miles
Speaker 1: an hour seven iron eight yard gap is good if
Speaker 1: your Tony Fenow thirteen and a half yards is like
Speaker 1: a good gap. So it's kind of a cool, fun
Speaker 1: little trick you can do.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean, so you guys have done studies and
Speaker 3: tried to figure out the exact number between clubs, because I.
Speaker 2: Think when you know a.
Speaker 3: Vision how far your golf clubs go. You know, people
Speaker 3: love round numbers, right, they love something in it and
Speaker 3: a zero. I know, tour guys people like yourself really
Speaker 3: understand how far a stock club goes. The everyday player
Speaker 3: probably struggles a little bit more in that department, ay,
Speaker 3: because they don't hit it as consistently and be maybe
Speaker 3: they just don't understand how far they hit certain golf clubs.
Speaker 3: They might in their brain think I hit it, if
Speaker 3: I hit it perfect, it goes this distance.
Speaker 2: But maybe what your average would be.
Speaker 3: But thirteen yards that seems to be the number that
Speaker 3: you'd like to really kind of hammer when you're talking
Speaker 3: about gappy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if your ball speed's one thirty, which is us
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So that's the thing we hear. Okay,
Speaker 1: ten yard gaps is good, fifteen is good. Whatever it
Speaker 1: scales to your speed, and that's a good way to
Speaker 1: kind of just get to that number kind of quick,
Speaker 1: you know. But Shane, one fun thing we've done is
Speaker 1: to try to figure out, well, you know, where are
Speaker 1: people on the golf course, where are they hitting most
Speaker 1: of their shots? Because if you're trying to optimize your
Speaker 1: bag and you're like, okay, it sounds convenient to have
Speaker 1: evenly spaced gaps for all these twelve clubs, Well that
Speaker 1: might not be where you are playing a lot of golf.
Speaker 1: And so we did this really fun thing in the
Speaker 1: last couple of years where we used our data partnership
Speaker 1: with Arcos, which provides like en course play tens of
Speaker 1: millions of shots. We have access to of golfers of
Speaker 1: all all different skill levels, playing all different types of
Speaker 1: courses all over the world. We could go in and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: where are these golfers playing, where are they hitting these
Speaker 1: different clubs on the course, and should we design tighter
Speaker 1: spacing where they are the most. That was kind of
Speaker 1: like our hypothesis, right, And so that was a really
Speaker 1: fun exercise we did and we went through.
Speaker 3: So Okay, for somebody like me, right, I have always
Speaker 3: battled with the kind of high and low. So my
Speaker 3: gapping issue is either I'm adding a longer club. So
Speaker 3: I mean, I've always been a big kind of two
Speaker 3: iron guy. I love the idea of two iron and
Speaker 3: three iron, but I feel like I'm going to hit
Speaker 3: a hell of a lot more wedges than I'm ever
Speaker 3: going to hit a two iron or three iron in
Speaker 3: around the golf. So for me, I've always been a
Speaker 3: four wedge setup guy. I like having the pitching wedge,
Speaker 3: the gap wedge of sandwich, and the lob wedge because
Speaker 3: as you said, you're diving into information, you're diving into data,
Speaker 3: you're setting all this stuff, and you're seeing that those
Speaker 3: golf shots for somebody with my distance are going to
Speaker 3: be in those scoring areas. So that's where it should
Speaker 3: be maybe tighter versus a four or five iron.
Speaker 1: That's exactly the hypothesis, and we're still working to try
Speaker 1: to figure that out exactly right, Like, you know, you
Speaker 1: might not hit that that driving iron a ton or
Speaker 1: depend on your particular golf course. You may play your
Speaker 1: home course where it's like, yeah, you got to chip
Speaker 1: it off. You might be hitting your little stinger driving
Speaker 1: iron off eight of the t boxes. I know one
Speaker 1: of my courses at my home course is like that,
Speaker 1: Like that's a very important club on that particular golf course.
Speaker 1: But this data analysis what it allows to do, Shane,
Speaker 1: And we're kind of sharing my screen here to look
Speaker 1: at a chart that shows where golfers are on the
Speaker 1: golf course and then what clubs did they hit from
Speaker 1: those different distances. Okay, And what's fun to see here
Speaker 1: is you see that it kind of looks like a
Speaker 1: camel shape to it.
Speaker 3: Right at Campbelback Mountain, exactly one of those big humps.
Speaker 1: You see there is centered right around a hundred and
Speaker 1: forty to one hundred and fifty yards. You see this
Speaker 1: enormous spike and this has broken down, Shade. We broke
Speaker 1: this down into players who hit their driver like one
Speaker 1: seventy to two o four, two five to two twenty four,
Speaker 1: two twenty five to two thirty nine, and then two
Speaker 1: forty and further and all those players you see the
Speaker 1: same big spike at like one hundred and forty five yards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the sweet spot.
Speaker 1: That is the sweet spot. And so we've actually run
Speaker 1: the analytics and you hit over fifty percent of your
Speaker 1: iron shots. So that's say, let's call it your five
Speaker 1: iron through pitching wedge or four through pitch, whatever that is.
Speaker 1: You hit over fifty percent of those shots between one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty and one hundred and sixty five yards, right,
Speaker 1: And so what does that mean to equipment or how
Speaker 1: you should set up your bag? We is the club
Speaker 1: company paying man. We better designed you to have some
Speaker 1: tight spacing in that area, right.
Speaker 3: Marty, have you ever thought or has anybody ever messed
Speaker 3: around with like half irons in that department where I
Speaker 3: mean you're thinking like an eight and a half iron
Speaker 3: or a nine and a half iron, I mean obviously,
Speaker 3: so it's not something that we've seen on the market.
Speaker 3: But have there ever been as you're diving into these
Speaker 3: types of analytics and you know, if you're not seeing
Speaker 3: this and you watch this on YouTube, you can see
Speaker 3: what Marty is talking about in terms of this distance
Speaker 3: to whole distribution. But I mean this chart really shows
Speaker 3: the one hundred and forty yard is kind of the
Speaker 3: sweet spot. Has there ever been any thought into like
Speaker 3: half irons for those lower you know, irons before you
Speaker 3: get to the wedges.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, one fun story about that is, you know,
Speaker 1: you may have heard of this one Like Lee Westwood
Speaker 1: plays two U wedges. He's played two gap wedges, and
Speaker 1: he's kind of funny. You know, he writes his yardages
Speaker 1: on the back of the clubs for his wife who's
Speaker 1: caddying for him, and so he has two gap wedges
Speaker 1: and so he's like, oh, well, which which U wedge
Speaker 1: should I hit? So he's kind of figured out how
Speaker 1: to do that. What we've done is instead of saying, hey,
Speaker 1: eight iron, eight and a half iron is you know,
Speaker 1: over a long period of time, the industry and we've
Speaker 1: certainly done. It is you start squeezing in more wedges, right, So,
Speaker 1: like in our new G four to thirty iron set,
Speaker 1: you go to pitching what you go to hitching wedge,
Speaker 1: then we go to a forty five degree, then a
Speaker 1: fifty degree. So you really try to like tighten up
Speaker 1: that spacing because we've seen that as a big problem. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, as folks want to go in they get
Speaker 1: fit for irons, they go further, which is generally a
Speaker 1: good thing as long as they're going high and landing steep.
Speaker 1: That's fine. Like have somebody hit an eight iron instead
Speaker 1: of a seven is a good thing as long as
Speaker 1: they land it steep. But the problem is is as
Speaker 1: you start straining in those lofts. You know, we found
Speaker 1: even on our g iron designs, we created bigger gaps
Speaker 1: right in here where golfers needed the most. So we
Speaker 1: fixed that and we fixed it by adding another club
Speaker 1: to the bag. Really and so it's kind of like
Speaker 1: that half iron approach chain.
Speaker 3: Do you what do you say to people that tell you, okay,
Speaker 3: this is this is too complicated. There are too many
Speaker 3: wedges in the bag. You guys are offering me too
Speaker 3: many you know, too many different tools for an area
Speaker 3: where I kind of hit a wedge all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think that's where you got to
Speaker 1: tell that data story, you know, and we're trying to
Speaker 1: you know, all of our fitters and our fitting network,
Speaker 1: we've showed them this data mind and they love it
Speaker 1: because it's one it's something you don't you can't really
Speaker 1: measure in a fitting, And I think that's where we're
Speaker 1: trying to develop these tools, which is like, hey, after
Speaker 1: you go get fit, you get fit with a seven iron,
Speaker 1: but when you go play golf, you're going to be
Speaker 1: having a lot of shots in this area, so you're
Speaker 1: gonna need clubs for that area. So I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of a you know, using the data and empowering
Speaker 1: and tell telling those stories and say uh and marrying
Speaker 1: those two things up quite quite frankly.
Speaker 3: Where do players have their biggest gap? Because I know
Speaker 3: you've showed some information about where they hit the most
Speaker 3: shots from. Where do you typically find that gap being
Speaker 3: the biggest issue for a player?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's in a couple areas. It's it's
Speaker 1: they don't have the right transition between their pitching wedge
Speaker 1: and you know, their gap wet sandwich. Whatever that situation
Speaker 1: is can cause a lot of problems for what we
Speaker 1: were just talking about. You know, I've Shane, I've played
Speaker 1: in pro ams around here in the Southwest section and
Speaker 1: we'll be playing like, you know, they could take my
Speaker 1: drive six times. And you know Arizona golf, you're always
Speaker 1: at like one thirty. You know, one thirty five. You're
Speaker 1: a Greyhawk like driving down there one thirty five. And
Speaker 1: I play with these ams and they play these strong
Speaker 1: lofted juiced irons where they're pitching wedge literally will go
Speaker 1: like further than mine. They'll go like one fifty five.
Speaker 1: Then their next club is a sandwich. They lay that
Speaker 1: bloop up in the air because they don't have the
Speaker 1: right spin loft. It goes like one hundred. So we're
Speaker 1: at one thirty all day and they got no club
Speaker 1: for one thirty.
Speaker 2: They don't even feel our gap here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't even realize that. So this is what
Speaker 1: our data is kind of validating, is like, hey, that's
Speaker 1: one real weak spot and then the other one, Shane,
Speaker 1: I think where is maybe more more obvious is you know,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you build the bag between
Speaker 1: your your lowest lofted three wood, your hybrids in your
Speaker 1: irons and getting the The gap at that point is
Speaker 1: both a distance gap, but it's also like a trajectory gap.
Speaker 1: It's like how high do you need to hit that
Speaker 1: golf ball? Right? So those are the two areas that
Speaker 1: I think people could use a lot of help with.
Speaker 3: Is that more often the case with tour players? You
Speaker 3: see it obviously when they're further away from the hole.
Speaker 3: I mean you're thinking about a player that has let's
Speaker 3: say they have four iron through wedges and maybe they've
Speaker 3: got a three wood.
Speaker 2: It's finding that tool.
Speaker 3: And you and I've discussed, you know the obviously, the
Speaker 3: popularity of the seven wood, and I mean the crossover
Speaker 3: world has has really, in my opinion, changed that space
Speaker 3: for me at least. I mean, I have a three
Speaker 3: iron crossover that I've been playing for years in different iterations,
Speaker 3: and it is huge for me because the versatility I
Speaker 3: find with it. It's not just that I can mash
Speaker 3: it and really get it out there if I need
Speaker 3: two fifty, but I can kind of hit that softer
Speaker 3: one with the crossover if I need to hit the
Speaker 3: two thirty five shot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think you're a good example of,
Speaker 1: like of what those tour players do. And you know,
Speaker 1: tour players quite often will travel with maybe you know,
Speaker 1: sixteen or seventeen clubs and two of them they'll be
Speaker 1: swapping in weekend and week out. You know, I think
Speaker 1: Victor at the Masters this year thirteen and fifteen, we
Speaker 1: built them a seven wood literally for those two sh
Speaker 1: some of those approach shots, and we saw them the
Speaker 1: entire tournament and on the weekend hitting it on the
Speaker 1: hitting on the green. He could obviously not do that, Shane.
Speaker 1: I mean, gus is built for lefties. I mean, you
Speaker 1: know that's a separate topic, right, but you'd be able
Speaker 1: to hit your high cut in there maybe with your crossover,
Speaker 1: but you got that ball above your feet and you
Speaker 1: need that seven woods. So yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: mixing and matching that happens weekend and week out that
Speaker 1: quite honestly, I think the everyday golfer doesn't need that.
Speaker 1: They don't need to be mixing those clubs. Maybe you're
Speaker 1: maybe you're not traveling as much and you're playing most
Speaker 1: of your golfer your home course. You can kind of
Speaker 1: optimize your bag with your fourteen clubs, right, there. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the tour players do some fun stuff. They'll play you know,
Speaker 1: seven woods short, you know, closer to hybrid length to
Speaker 1: get the spin down, to get more control, to hit
Speaker 1: more down on it.
Speaker 3: How much has that Crossover family helped in terms of
Speaker 3: gapping because we you know, you saw the popularity what
Speaker 3: was that probably early two thousands, this popularity boom of
Speaker 3: the hybrid, and then we started to see the driving
Speaker 3: iron become popular. But the issue with the driving iron
Speaker 3: for most players was they couldn't get it up in
Speaker 3: the air. What is the Crossover family done to kind
Speaker 3: of help in terms of that gapping?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think it's been great. It's been nice
Speaker 1: to have all these options in that space. So you got,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, you got irons that are gonna fly the lowest.
Speaker 1: Then we designed our crossover to be quote unquote you know,
Speaker 1: kind of not a driving iron because it does go higher. Now,
Speaker 1: skill player like yourself, you can still sting it down
Speaker 1: there and make it act like a driving iron. So
Speaker 1: you got irons, then you got crossovers that go a
Speaker 1: little bit higher, Hybrids that go higher than high lofted
Speaker 1: fairywoods that go the highest, right, So that's your spectrum
Speaker 1: of options. Then it's all about you know, fitting the
Speaker 1: right club to your course, your playing style, what you
Speaker 1: need to do. Can you hit it low on command
Speaker 1: or not. But that crossover has been a great option
Speaker 1: kind of between irons and hybrids, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people like that flat face because you can have more
Speaker 1: workability to it as well.
Speaker 2: Marty.
Speaker 3: One of the coolest parts about being involved with you
Speaker 3: guys at PING has been seen the innovation in terms
Speaker 3: of just kind of outward thinking, you know, thinking outside
Speaker 3: the box to help a player. And I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean you're in the putting lab right now. I
Speaker 3: mean it's a place where you can go in there
Speaker 3: and use technology to your benefit. But I was floored
Speaker 3: when you showed me this gapping app that you guys
Speaker 3: have been working on.
Speaker 2: And I know you're really proud of it.
Speaker 3: I mean we're not just talking about gapping because it's
Speaker 3: an issue. There's also technology that PING has worked on
Speaker 3: and now can throw it a player that not just
Speaker 3: Marty can help them in terms of their bag set
Speaker 3: up and keeping that gap number where it needs to be,
Speaker 3: but also not exhausting them out on the driving range
Speaker 3: when they're working through the bag.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean even a lot of us around the office,
Speaker 1: Like I've asked a lot of our engineers here, we
Speaker 1: have that we're at the proving grounds. We got track, man,
Speaker 1: we got tons of track, meaning we've got the range
Speaker 1: right there. Hey, how many of you guys have gone
Speaker 1: down and hit every single club in your bag right right,
Speaker 1: three or three to five good shots and jot down
Speaker 1: your numbers. I mean it's it's hard to do it. It
Speaker 1: takes a long time to do. I mean even the
Speaker 1: tour players sometimes that's like a big exercise to do
Speaker 1: a true quote unquote gapping where you're doing that your
Speaker 1: micro tweaking lofts, et cetera. So the problem we wanted solve, Shane,
Speaker 1: was like, how do we deliver gapping without exhausting the player,
Speaker 1: without putting all these different models and lofts and a
Speaker 1: three iron and a four and five iron and six iron,
Speaker 1: eight nine wedge all that stuff out with our fitting
Speaker 1: network out there, but still solve this problem of gapping.
Speaker 1: And so we did it. We did it by taking
Speaker 1: our fundamental physics knowledge to know, Okay, if I changed
Speaker 1: the loft in and iron by one degree, what does
Speaker 1: that do to ball speed? Launch and spin. What does
Speaker 1: that do to carry? And then we married that to
Speaker 1: like our our detailed gap testing that we do at
Speaker 1: the proving grounds. We merged those two things together to
Speaker 1: create a predictive tool. This is like magic. It's like
Speaker 1: you can go out hit a seven iron, you get
Speaker 1: your ball speed, launch and spin. You plug it into
Speaker 1: this app we made, which we call the Gapping App.
Speaker 1: It's out with our fitting network right now. It's kind
Speaker 1: of in in beta mode, but it's still it's still magical.
Speaker 1: It's definitely worth using. And you put in your seven
Speaker 1: iron numbers only and then like what club model you
Speaker 1: got fit into? So G four thirty, I two thirty,
Speaker 1: what have you? And the app will, with a very
Speaker 1: high degree of accuracy, predict how you're going to hit
Speaker 1: the rest of your clubs in your bag and it
Speaker 1: will tell you, hey, how high will I hit the
Speaker 1: four iron or the five iron or the four hybrid
Speaker 1: And you can go in there without hitting the four hybrid,
Speaker 1: the seven wood and the iron replacement, see what that
Speaker 1: would do to your trajectory. And that's specific to you,
Speaker 1: and it's specific to your temperature and elevation where you're
Speaker 1: playing golf, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I'd like, like, we did this, you
Speaker 3: and I did this when I was out in Phoenix,
Speaker 3: And I mean you throw in the area of the
Speaker 3: country you live in, yeap. I mean you can throw
Speaker 3: in kind of like the average temperature. It will predict
Speaker 3: it for you. And what I loved was you can
Speaker 3: kind of, as you mentioned, you can interchange things. I mean,
Speaker 3: you can change in what club you maybe want to
Speaker 3: hit or or maybe what you're thinking about changing in
Speaker 3: your bag, and it will kind of figure out the
Speaker 3: numbers for that. And it's just really smart because I
Speaker 3: do think you know, as a golfer that has been
Speaker 3: lucky enough to get fit a decent amount throughout his
Speaker 3: life and a lot of different circumstances, going to a
Speaker 3: fitting can feel intimidating. Yeah, for a lot of golfers.
Speaker 3: I mean there's a lot going on. There's track man,
Speaker 3: there's technology, you have a fitter in front of you.
Speaker 3: There's so many things happening. And to think, all right,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be here hitting you know, twenty lob wedges,
Speaker 3: and then I'm gonna hit twenty sand wedges and then
Speaker 3: I'm gonna hit pitching wedge and gap wedge and to
Speaker 3: think about how much time, effort and then consistency in
Speaker 3: the golf swing that's got to get you all the
Speaker 3: way through driver to go in here and just be
Speaker 3: able to hit what is it, ten or fifteen seven
Speaker 3: irons and then basically be dialed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it takes so much of the pressure off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is a weird thing to think about,
Speaker 1: but actually you nailed it in that our app that
Speaker 1: we're looking out here on the screen predicts how you're
Speaker 1: gonna hit all these clubs with more accuracy than you
Speaker 1: going yourself and hitting them you would have to hit
Speaker 1: them yourself like fifty or one hundred times, right, because
Speaker 1: we're it's kind of like you know, artificial intelligence, Like
Speaker 1: we know based on the length, the model, the loss
Speaker 1: and the environmental conditions with our ball model, like with
Speaker 1: a higher degree of accuracy. So we have engineers around
Speaker 1: the office that are going out hitting their seven iron
Speaker 1: plugging it into our app and you could download this
Speaker 1: PDF report and it gives you all your yardages and
Speaker 1: they're going to Plague Golf and using that put it
Speaker 1: in their yardage book and it's like spot on and.
Speaker 3: You and you even have I mean to people that
Speaker 3: aren't looking at the screen. I mean, you should check
Speaker 3: this out. It's very much worth your time. But there's
Speaker 3: even a simplified version of this app, where again you
Speaker 3: can go to the simplified version and make it even
Speaker 3: easier on yourself and that will help you get as
Speaker 3: dilled as you can in terms of your gapping issue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're trying to build Toolshane that are you know,
Speaker 1: kind of fast, quick and easy, and then very advances
Speaker 1: like the gapping app. We will use that with our
Speaker 1: tour players to get down into the weeds, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. But yeah, you can go in. Our
Speaker 1: fitters can go in use our copilot gapping tool. You
Speaker 1: pick which iron model you just put in about how
Speaker 1: far you hit your seven iron, Do you hit a high,
Speaker 1: medium or low? And you get set makeup, and then
Speaker 1: it'll give you a couple options like this is a
Speaker 1: fast wing speed player, This is like your speed three
Speaker 1: wood three hybrid or three crossover four through pitch right
Speaker 1: and that well, you know, or you could go back
Speaker 1: and put in uh, you know, g series iron. You
Speaker 1: hit your seven iron one twenty two a little lower,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get a totally different second figure ration recommendation
Speaker 1: like we see you know, three wood, seven, wood five,
Speaker 1: hybrid six through pitch right. So it's really cool. Gapping
Speaker 1: does not have to be intimidating, you know, and we've
Speaker 1: we've created some really cool tools to do this super accurately.
Speaker 2: Marty, How does something like this come about?
Speaker 3: Like, you know, I mean again, I find it fascinating
Speaker 3: that it feels like you guys have a real passion
Speaker 3: for solving the problem. Let's solve the inconsistency and the stroke.
Speaker 3: Let's get a putter in your hand that you actually
Speaker 3: need to use. Let's make sure that you're using the
Speaker 3: right grips and the right shafts, all of those things
Speaker 3: that we feel like we've you know, we've kind of
Speaker 3: conquered that in the golf space. How does something like
Speaker 3: the gapping app come about from idea to actually seeing
Speaker 3: on a screen?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's such a great question, Shane. I think it's
Speaker 1: a combination of a few things. One, we want to
Speaker 1: help people play their best golf. Two, we go out
Speaker 1: and we we go to a lot of conferences. We
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time with our fitters and we
Speaker 1: look at what are they struggling with, Like what is
Speaker 1: hard to do? But then what is important for the golfer, right,
Speaker 1: And there's that intersection point. So doing gapping out there
Speaker 1: is a there's a big friction point for our customers
Speaker 1: and our fitters, like they're just how do we do it?
Speaker 1: And so I thought a lot about, well, let's provide
Speaker 1: four irons and five irons and have the golfer hit
Speaker 1: them and see where they could they you know, can
Speaker 1: they still keep the ball there? Can they still reach
Speaker 1: a landing angle? And we tried that. We try that's
Speaker 1: what the proving grounds is. We try to do that
Speaker 1: with people, and hey, we ran into those problems. They
Speaker 1: get hey, tired, takes too long, can't get enough good
Speaker 1: fore irons, like, so we experiment with these things. And
Speaker 1: then the other angle, Shane, is that we want to
Speaker 1: build a tool that lets the everyday golfer get access
Speaker 1: to what the tour player can do. Tour players on
Speaker 1: the range they got trackmen, they got foresight, they're hitting
Speaker 1: all their balls, they're micro tweaking all their clubs, they're
Speaker 1: doing it. Now, the every day golfer might not be
Speaker 1: able to do that. They might not be the elite
Speaker 1: athlete that the tour player is. So this gapping tool
Speaker 1: allows you to have the tour level service like to
Speaker 1: the everyday golfer. So I think it's the intersection of
Speaker 1: all those things come together to try to solve the
Speaker 1: biggest pain points for our fitters and for our end customers.
Speaker 3: I'm a golfer. I'm listening to this. I don't know
Speaker 3: if I have a gap at issue or not, Marty.
Speaker 2: I just don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't quite know my bag, I don't quite know
Speaker 3: my carry distance. What do you say to those peop people,
Speaker 3: how can they do some personal investigation to try to
Speaker 3: best figure out where they might have a hole, if
Speaker 3: they have a hole, and how best to kind of
Speaker 3: attack that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's a lot of great like stats
Speaker 1: tracking apps, so I think that's becoming more and more popular.
Speaker 1: So you know, we partner with Arcos. That's a great
Speaker 1: one that's you know, smart technology and captures all that
Speaker 1: data in the app and it allows you to overcome
Speaker 1: I think, like what you highlight, Shane, like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I have a gap. A lot of people don't,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: I mean you mentioned the pro am player that's sitting
Speaker 3: there going They don't realize that they have fifty yards
Speaker 3: of no golf club where you need that fifty yard.
Speaker 1: The most, totally totally. So that's where little that's where
Speaker 1: technology I think can be used in the right way.
Speaker 1: Like not all the numbers are valuable all the time,
Speaker 1: but that is a great one, right, that is a
Speaker 1: great one. Highlighting it numerically, getting that little little subtle edge.
Speaker 1: You'd be like looking at your sleep tracker and noticing whatever,
Speaker 1: some pattern of your behavior that you might not have
Speaker 1: noticed otherwise, you know what I'm saying, So that that'd
Speaker 1: be a that'd be a first place to start. Get
Speaker 1: some type of en course tracking if you can. Number two,
Speaker 1: go see one of Go see a pink fitter that's
Speaker 1: using our gapping app. Get your seven iron numbers and
Speaker 1: plug them in there, and then just look at what
Speaker 1: our recommendation is relative to your bag, and then you
Speaker 1: might be have some insights that it could be fun
Speaker 1: and you'll have some findings by just taking a look
Speaker 1: at doing that exercise. Only.
Speaker 3: One of my big other pieces of advice Marty in
Speaker 3: this world is always just be open minded. Just be
Speaker 3: a little open minded about the golf bag. It's easy
Speaker 3: to feel like you're dialed to what you use I'm
Speaker 3: always gonna have a three would I'm always gonna have
Speaker 3: a three iron, you know. And I mean I think
Speaker 3: the moment you kind of let go of that, that
Speaker 3: that must.
Speaker 2: In your golf game.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean I always have found one of
Speaker 3: the coolest parts about professional golfers, Marty, is their ability
Speaker 3: and their openness to tweaking. You know, they're always tweaking stuff.
Speaker 3: They're always trying out new putting strokes and new putters
Speaker 3: and new clubs and different ideas because the goal at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, how can I shoot the
Speaker 3: lowest score? How can I shoot the lowest possible number?
Speaker 3: And I feel like the pro golfers so open minded,
Speaker 3: yet the everyday golfer maybe struggles a bit with opening
Speaker 3: their mind up to some of these things.
Speaker 1: That's a great point, Shane. We see it here. It's
Speaker 1: like because in part of gapping, it's like, hey, do
Speaker 1: you know I hear this question A lot fidder will
Speaker 1: ask the player, hey, do prefer hybrids over fairway woods? Right?
Speaker 1: And if you ask that to the player, they're not
Speaker 1: gonna be open minded, you know. But we so many
Speaker 1: golfers leave the proving grounds playing a hybrid instead of
Speaker 1: a long iron and say, you know, hey, stay playing
Speaker 1: a five hybrid instead of five iron, or a seven
Speaker 1: wood instead of that four iron, and they love it.
Speaker 1: Or on the other side of the bag, Shane what
Speaker 1: sometimes we'll if a golfer is going to conform to
Speaker 1: the fourteen clubs, we'll take that four hybrid out and
Speaker 1: lead they leave with a chipper and now they love chipping.
Speaker 1: Like so you can solve chipping. So gapping is not
Speaker 1: only about your your your fairywood's hybrids and and not
Speaker 1: hanging on to hey, I need a foreign in my bag,
Speaker 1: but it could be also on the other end of
Speaker 1: the bag. And we've had so many golfers love the
Speaker 1: chipper and then you know, it's a it's a question
Speaker 1: of optimizing those twelve clubs between driver and putter of
Speaker 1: what what what gives to add that chipper, And we've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of golfers be ecstatic about that decision.
Speaker 3: I was just recently on a golf trip to North Carolina.
Speaker 3: One of my buddies, who I think he's a six handicap, uh,
Speaker 3: one of my best friends.
Speaker 2: His chipper, the grip is already wearing out. That's how much.
Speaker 3: He's using his chipper, and as you know Marty in
Speaker 3: North Carolina, on those crazy greensers, the chippers almost it's
Speaker 3: almost mandatory to be able to get the ball up
Speaker 3: and done because you know, I mean, if you're not
Speaker 3: using a chipper, using a seven iron, your hybrid. But
Speaker 3: I love the fact that there's a golf club out
Speaker 3: there now simply for that shot. And I know that
Speaker 3: it helps him out so much he's willing to sacrifice
Speaker 3: the spot in the bag to get the ball up
Speaker 3: and down around the greens.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Shane, And I'm my mind went right to
Speaker 1: that chart that we talked about earlier with the camel
Speaker 1: and the big humps. Yeah, and the big hump in
Speaker 1: club usage for your irons is like one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty five yards. Well, the other big spike is you're
Speaker 1: hitting your lob wedge or whatever a lot around the green.
Speaker 1: So that's exactly the case. Like that is probably, well
Speaker 1: not probably, that is almost certainly the most used club
Speaker 1: in his bag outside his putter. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The gapping for me is I have the crossover and
Speaker 3: you guys built me an awesome seven wood, and so
Speaker 3: now I've got Now I'm gonna be the guy that
Speaker 3: carries fifteen clubs to like a practice round here so.
Speaker 2: That I can now go.
Speaker 3: We'll see, we'll see is it a seven wood golf
Speaker 3: course or is it a crossover golf course. In terms
Speaker 3: of the gapping app, Marty, is that gonna be something
Speaker 3: that's now available. I mean, if you go to a
Speaker 3: pink fitter, is that something they can show you and
Speaker 3: actually implement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have tons of our fitting network here here
Speaker 1: in the U and around the world that have just
Speaker 1: started using it, where we still call it beta mode
Speaker 1: because we're just ironing out just a few little bugs
Speaker 1: here right right. Yeah, almost all of our fitters are
Speaker 1: using that gaping app. So go in ask your ping fitter, say, hey,
Speaker 1: I heard about I saw this cool gapping app. I
Speaker 1: want to get on it and use it. And if not,
Speaker 1: they'll sign up for it and get access to it
Speaker 1: and jump right on there and then eventually we'll have
Speaker 1: that available so you can go on our website, find
Speaker 1: a fitter and see who's using our co pilot tool,
Speaker 1: and go find your local fitter close by.
Speaker 3: Well, it's an interesting topic and I feel like it's
Speaker 3: something that we don't talk enough about. In golf, and
Speaker 3: as I set off the top, you know you and
Speaker 3: you said it perfectly about the pro am golfer. We
Speaker 3: spend so much time playing golf. You know, you spend
Speaker 3: so much time in your life. I always think about
Speaker 3: the adult that plays golf. Adults don't have a lot
Speaker 3: of hobbies. I'm already those hobbies. I feel like the
Speaker 3: older you get, you know, they fall out and you know,
Speaker 3: you're not collecting stuff anymore, and you're not traveling and
Speaker 3: getting pins.
Speaker 2: But you're still playing a ton of golf.
Speaker 3: And to not have a perfect golf bag for your
Speaker 3: game to at least help you in the best possible
Speaker 3: way shoot your best score and play your best golf
Speaker 3: is just simply, you know, kind of overlooking the important
Speaker 3: part of what you want to do with your free times.
Speaker 3: So the gapping is maybe a term you don't always
Speaker 3: hear in and around the game, but I feel like
Speaker 3: it's one of the most important things the everyday golfer
Speaker 3: can do to help them make golf easier, which we're
Speaker 3: all trying to do. And so kudos to you and
Speaker 3: the team for the gaping app and trying to attack
Speaker 3: this because I think it's really smart. And I think
Speaker 3: the more people hear about this, the more they might
Speaker 3: look in their own golf bag and.
Speaker 2: Go, oh, I do I do? I do have a
Speaker 2: thirty yard hole here?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I know exactly. And you know, if if
Speaker 1: nothing else, just be mindful of that cool data analysis
Speaker 1: we did too, which is hey, between that one twenty
Speaker 1: one sixty five, that's where you're hitting tons of shots.
Speaker 1: So be mindful of your gaps there. Use some technology
Speaker 1: to measure it if you can, or if you're open
Speaker 1: to that, and go in find a pink fitter. Check
Speaker 1: out that gapping app because it provides you that leverage,
Speaker 1: like as if you know you're getting that full service
Speaker 1: of a tour of a tour player.
Speaker 3: And if you're a driving range owner, let's put a
Speaker 3: green out there at one forty. Just put a target
Speaker 3: out at one forty.
Speaker 2: That's what we need going forward.
Speaker 3: I'm Shane Bacon, that's Marty Jertson, and this is the
Speaker 3: Pink prooven Grounds podcast