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 I kind of want.
Speaker 2: We're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about
Speaker 2: what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Pink Proving Grounds Podcast. I am
Speaker 1: Shane Bacon. That is Marty Jerts and Marty. We got
Speaker 1: a great guest and we also have kind of a
Speaker 1: live experience here at the PGA Show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is fun.
Speaker 2: You get all the sounds, the feels, the bright lights
Speaker 2: of the PGA Show.
Speaker 3: We're here with John K. Solhin.
Speaker 4: Good to be here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've been a bit avid listener and I'm happy
Speaker 5: to actually be on the show now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're on the other end of that, Johns.
Speaker 4: A lot of pressure. John.
Speaker 1: I asked you this question to kick it off. Are
Speaker 1: you have you frequented podcast guest a lot or is
Speaker 1: this one of your first ones?
Speaker 4: This is my first podcast?
Speaker 1: You feeling nervous? Are you excited about it?
Speaker 5: Hello? I guess a little un usually not nervous about
Speaker 5: a camera, but it's a pretty good podcast, So.
Speaker 4: I got a lot to live up to.
Speaker 1: It elevated.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's been some good talent on here.
Speaker 1: Well, we wanted to give it a kind of your
Speaker 1: journey to where you're at right now. I mean there
Speaker 1: was a lot of pressure, I'm sure in that world
Speaker 1: as well. At what age did you start to get
Speaker 1: the sense that maybe you'd want to get in the
Speaker 1: family business.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you talk talk about pressure.
Speaker 5: I would say there was pressure when I was young
Speaker 5: that everyone assumed I was a good golfer. So and
Speaker 5: I would say I did not handle that pressure very
Speaker 5: well on the golf course.
Speaker 1: Were you a good player when you're.
Speaker 5: Young, like better than average, but nothing spectacular? So like
Speaker 5: pretty good junior, but like nothing spectacular? And then I
Speaker 5: would say yeah, as I started interning at Paying kind
Speaker 5: of fell in love with the business, was like, this
Speaker 5: is what I want to do. And then it was
Speaker 5: the weird experience to me was right out of college
Speaker 5: when I started working there, you know, having the Solheim
Speaker 5: last name, I'm working with people who had been there
Speaker 5: for twenty years, and they're instantly coming to me asking
Speaker 5: me what they're.
Speaker 4: Supposed to do.
Speaker 5: You've got all this experience. I'm the new guy here,
Speaker 5: so there. I guess I never saw it as pressure
Speaker 5: at that point, but it was I guess enlightening to
Speaker 5: me just how it actually worked like.
Speaker 2: That, Jock K, what have talk us through your journey,
Speaker 2: like like maybe some of the projects or departments you
Speaker 2: worked on is both an intern And then when he
Speaker 2: started going on full time.
Speaker 4: How long is the podcast?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we got we got, we got plenty of time,
Speaker 2: but at high level.
Speaker 5: Break run down, so like really cool. When I was
Speaker 5: in high school and college, I'd come in to work
Speaker 5: the summers, got to work like side by side with Carston,
Speaker 5: my grandpa. Yeah, like multiple summers. He always had like
Speaker 5: an assistant. He was a lot to work for. So
Speaker 5: his assistants would get a summer assignment, they'd get a breather.
Speaker 5: I'd come in and by the end of the summer
Speaker 5: I was wiped out. He was hard to keep up with.
Speaker 5: He always had something to go on the go, got
Speaker 5: to travel with them, but really learned a ton just
Speaker 5: from him and his attention to detail and just like
Speaker 5: what was important what wasn't important in business and in
Speaker 5: golf club development.
Speaker 4: So that kind of.
Speaker 5: Fueled the fire of Hey, I love golf club design.
Speaker 5: I want to be in the golf business. So I
Speaker 5: went to school, got a mechanical engineering degree and then
Speaker 5: got hired onto Ping right out of school. Was like
Speaker 5: a putter designer at first, So learned how to do
Speaker 5: CAD and was designing putters. You go, if you know,
Speaker 5: Ping like ISO Pure putters was my first project. So
Speaker 5: it was our first insert putter. So it was pretty
Speaker 5: exciting to be involved with that. And then to me
Speaker 5: just kind of magical designing a product and you know
Speaker 5: the time it takes.
Speaker 4: It takes, you know, a year or whatever.
Speaker 5: And then actually we came to the show and launched
Speaker 5: it right and just I just remember being so giddy.
Speaker 5: I'm not quite as giddy at the show anymore, but
Speaker 5: I've just back then on how exciting it was to
Speaker 5: launch this new series of insert putters.
Speaker 4: So I had a kind of a.
Speaker 5: Career in engineering, continue to design putters, and it wasn't
Speaker 5: that long. I got an NBA during like my first
Speaker 5: five years of work. While I was working, and then
Speaker 5: I became the VP of engineering. Ran engineering for ten years,
Speaker 5: and then I got a signed to run our Japan
Speaker 5: office Pingolf Japan. Went there for about four years, ran
Speaker 5: that came back and then I would call that was
Speaker 5: like the transition time. Doug Hawkin was the president before me.
Speaker 5: He was kind of whatever at his sunset of his
Speaker 5: career and he retired. I took over in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 5: became the CEO. I think in twenty two. Maybe it
Speaker 5: was the beginning of twenty three. To be honest, I
Speaker 5: don't know what the difference at PING is between president
Speaker 5: and CEO, but now I have both titles and that's
Speaker 5: what I'm enjoying doing right now.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask about the experience of Japan. First
Speaker 1: of all, where'd you live? Where were you based out of?
Speaker 5: So I was a Tokyo as Abujuban was where my
Speaker 5: apartment was. Our offices were kind of on the northwest
Speaker 5: side of Tokyo.
Speaker 4: So I had like a.
Speaker 5: Fifty minute train commute forty five minute to two hour
Speaker 5: car drive depending on traffic to work.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I was right in the heart of Tokyo.
Speaker 4: It was an awesome experience.
Speaker 1: Did you speak Japanese?
Speaker 5: I got Rosetta Stone before I. Yeah. That was back
Speaker 5: like when you bought disc right, So.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And then I did have a tutor, like I would.
Speaker 5: I stuck with it, so once a week I'd have
Speaker 5: the tutor come over, I would say, what I learned
Speaker 5: is I thought like after a year into it, it would
Speaker 5: start to get easy and snowball. I got a year
Speaker 5: into it, and I would say, did pretty well for
Speaker 5: that year, and then just got to a point where
Speaker 5: I was like, it's just getting harder and harder. So
Speaker 5: I remember the conversation with my Japanese tutor. I'm like,
Speaker 5: no new stuff. I just you've taught me a lot.
Speaker 5: I just want to get good at what I know.
Speaker 5: And I've kind of realized I've hit my peak and
Speaker 5: I just want to get better at that. So I
Speaker 5: stuck with it the whole time I was there, but
Speaker 5: kind of after a while, I was like, I'm not
Speaker 5: going to be able to write it. I'm I can
Speaker 5: read the alphabets they have.
Speaker 4: But I can't read the kanji.
Speaker 5: I knew maybe a hundred symbols at the time when
Speaker 5: I was there, But so I can get by if
Speaker 5: you don't speak Japanese. I can make it sound like
Speaker 5: I do speak Japanese, and I can tell the taxi
Speaker 5: cab and order food and all that. But we get
Speaker 5: in a business setting or whatever, and I'm catching twenty
Speaker 5: percent of it.
Speaker 4: Or something like that.
Speaker 2: John K tell us a little bit about like what
Speaker 2: you learned in your time in Japan the business side,
Speaker 2: and then just helping grow our brand because when you
Speaker 2: went over there, you know, our market share is nothing
Speaker 2: close to what it is today, and what were some
Speaker 2: of the big changes you make and things you learned
Speaker 2: on the business side there.
Speaker 4: So I learned a ton.
Speaker 5: I would say, like, our market share was under one
Speaker 5: percent when I got there. We had we had gone
Speaker 5: through we had distributors there. We had multiple distributors. I
Speaker 5: would say that none of them were doing great. They
Speaker 5: in the heyday of the eighties, we did very well
Speaker 5: in Japan, and then just by not investing in that marketplace,
Speaker 5: we had lost a lot of market share. So it
Speaker 5: was about five years before I went there. We started
Speaker 5: our own company there and just hadn't really taken off.
Speaker 5: I would say the observations I had is we were
Speaker 5: doing a lot of the same is what our Japanese
Speaker 5: competitors were doing. And I remember talking to the team,
Speaker 5: I'm like, but we're not a Japanese company, like the
Speaker 5: consumer can see, we're faking it. This is not who
Speaker 5: we really are. And I'm like, we've got the best
Speaker 5: players in the world playing our clubs. We have a
Speaker 5: great market share in the US and Europe. We just
Speaker 5: need to leverage that, and we need to tell we're
Speaker 5: a US company. Our ads need to be in Japanese.
Speaker 5: They need to be able to understand it and everything.
Speaker 5: So I would say we just changed our focus. So
Speaker 5: like the first point where we had success, I think
Speaker 5: it was back it was a G ten driver, you
Speaker 5: could correct me if I'm wrong. Where we went to
Speaker 5: the heavier head. We went to the counterbalance shaft and
Speaker 5: the heavier head. Now what the Japanese consumer wanted to hear,
Speaker 5: They were all about total weight light. Yeah, and I said,
Speaker 5: you know what, We're gonna double down on it. We're
Speaker 5: gonna market heavyhead. So we went on movie head, which
Speaker 5: means heavyhead, big huge kanji. And that's right when we
Speaker 5: started to get traction. We was like, this is what
Speaker 5: we are. We do it for performance reasons, and we
Speaker 5: started to gain traction and we've been gaining market share
Speaker 5: there ever since.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a cool story. So staying more authentic to
Speaker 2: our brand.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: On the physics side, so what you're seeing in.
Speaker 5: The US here at the PGA show is what you
Speaker 5: see in Japan, it's the same thing.
Speaker 4: Maybe a little different, but the core is the same.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Another follow up question for you, John k is how
Speaker 2: do you kind of along that vein how do you
Speaker 2: kind of stay authentic to like our culture and our
Speaker 2: heritage while not letting that hold us back from innovating
Speaker 2: or thinking differently.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, so that's I mean to do that
Speaker 3: in your leadership role.
Speaker 4: Definitely do a great job with that tough balance.
Speaker 5: Like I saw, like when I first became president, and
Speaker 5: I think I was here and everyone, you know, what's
Speaker 5: on your agenda, what you're gonna do, And I'm like, well,
Speaker 5: the biggest thing is to not screw up. And you know,
Speaker 5: we've got a great company here. We've had, you know,
Speaker 5: at the time, fifty five years, sixty years of success, Like,
Speaker 5: let's not mess that up. So we got a lot
Speaker 5: of good things going with that. Said, we'd had had
Speaker 5: some bad years. We had a tough years where I
Speaker 5: think we just got a little slow on whether it's
Speaker 5: adjusting to the industry like where you know, where we're
Speaker 5: doing retail at all sorts of things. We were late
Speaker 5: with metalwoods and titanium and stuff like that. So I
Speaker 5: would say it's been a balance of like hanging on
Speaker 5: to our heritage, and our heritage has always been about
Speaker 5: performance and better performing product and then leveraging that to
Speaker 5: make us better and to make us change and embracing change.
Speaker 5: So I would say we had kind of gotten very
Speaker 5: just content with where we were and not not falling
Speaker 5: for that contentment and always challenging to do more so
Speaker 5: without breaking the whole machine in the process.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: You come into this position, you worked, as you said,
Speaker 1: you interned for your granddad. Do you look at yourself
Speaker 1: in terms of a leader more like your dad or
Speaker 1: more like your granddad.
Speaker 5: And why a little bit of both, neither of them
Speaker 5: or whatever. So like, so I would say it's like
Speaker 5: just as a company, ages or whatever, like the next
Speaker 5: generation of management is always a little different. So Carston
Speaker 5: definitely was that entrepreneur, you know, risk taker, did everything.
Speaker 5: Like I remember coming to the engineering department and being like, Okay,
Speaker 5: I'm going to design putters and they're like, well, Carston's
Speaker 5: on vacation, so we're not really doing anything.
Speaker 4: He was never on vacation.
Speaker 5: He was traveling in Europe or whatever, and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 5: we're waiting for him to get back, and I'm like, really, like,
Speaker 5: there's nothing to worry. It's like, well, I might be
Speaker 5: exaggerating a little bit, but it was very much like, hey,
Speaker 5: we need to wait for him to give us next
Speaker 5: direction on what to do. And then I think my
Speaker 5: dad came in loosened that up. What my dad I
Speaker 5: think is really good at is like the super fine
Speaker 5: points of the design. Like I was still because I
Speaker 5: was always like, We've got this great design, and he
Speaker 5: would always find ten things wrong with it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'd be.
Speaker 5: All upset, and then we do what he said and
Speaker 5: then it's better, And I'm like, so it took me
Speaker 5: like ten years to realize that's actually a pretty good
Speaker 5: management skill, the strength of saying no and making people
Speaker 5: go back to the board. So I would say, I'm
Speaker 5: I'm more of an enabler, like a team builder, set
Speaker 5: the vision and get you know, the guys like Marty
Speaker 5: get the team on the bus, really pushing them and
Speaker 5: leveraging all their talents.
Speaker 4: And I feel like I'm a pretty smart guy.
Speaker 5: Myself, but I realize if I get more smart people
Speaker 5: with me, we can do more than what I saw
Speaker 5: when it was just Carston because I guess I'm not Carston,
Speaker 5: so like I need that big, strong team and we're
Speaker 5: trying to do more. We got way more irons than
Speaker 5: we used to have. We got more woods technology. We
Speaker 5: were taken so much technology and information. With all the
Speaker 5: player testing we do, we've got a lot of data
Speaker 5: to process on a daily basis.
Speaker 4: That Marty builds all the apps.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we all software douts. There's software at the software yeah,
Speaker 3: John K.
Speaker 2: One thing I've really liked about your leadership style has
Speaker 2: been super inspirational to the employees is how hams On
Speaker 2: you've been. You know, you were a designer, then you
Speaker 2: were a VP of Engineering, and then you were I
Speaker 2: remember you took a did a project engineer. You jumped
Speaker 2: in there and were doing the tactical work running A
Speaker 2: and T during COVID. We're all helping build clubs here
Speaker 2: down there doing loft and live. I wasn't doing that.
Speaker 2: I gotta admit that.
Speaker 3: You you so you get your hands dirty.
Speaker 2: Do you think that's come natural to you or are
Speaker 2: you making like a conscious effort, like, you know, let
Speaker 2: me go, he get my hands dirty.
Speaker 5: So I get there are times where I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I got to get my hands dirty. I would say
Speaker 5: it is kind of just a natural thing. Like when
Speaker 5: COVID hit and we had we had, you know, more
Speaker 5: golf clubs on order than we could build that one.
Speaker 5: I was like, I remember talking to our CFO and
Speaker 5: I'm like, well, I'm just gonna go down and start
Speaker 5: helping build them. I think everybody can do that, And
Speaker 5: he looked at me like I was crazy, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 5: like a lot of these people they started in production.
Speaker 5: They can just we can go back and work in production.
Speaker 5: And I'm liking, to be honest, those engineers, I think
Speaker 5: they'd get a lot out of building a club and stuff.
Speaker 5: So I really push for that. And I was like, well,
Speaker 5: I'm not going to ask people to do it if
Speaker 5: I'm not willing to do it myself. And I would
Speaker 5: say the people go to they they love doing it.
Speaker 5: You interact with the people. I think there's something about
Speaker 5: touching that product and like going, this putter is gonna
Speaker 5: have a putt to win a club championship someday when
Speaker 5: you just think about the customer arts going to and
Speaker 5: how you're gonna make their day. So yeah, I definitely
Speaker 5: like to be involved in getting my hands dirty, so
Speaker 5: to speak. And to me, it's very rewarding what we
Speaker 5: do calling golf clubs and stuff, so I never feel
Speaker 5: like it's like just getting dirty for the sake of
Speaker 5: getting dirty. Every role we have at the company is
Speaker 5: providing value, so it's exciting to me to go provide
Speaker 5: value in whatever role it is.
Speaker 1: John K we talked about the PG Show a little bit.
Speaker 1: You talked about kind of the first time you saw
Speaker 1: your putter at the show. What is it like coming
Speaker 1: here every year, the development of it, and not just
Speaker 1: the development of the show, but the involvement in ping
Speaker 1: at the PG Show over the years.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So to me, it is like right when we
Speaker 5: like to launch products, so it's great timing for that.
Speaker 5: I'd like to think all the PGA pros, our reps
Speaker 5: have already hit them with our new product and taking
Speaker 5: their orders or whatever, so we're not writing a tonnel
Speaker 5: orders here. But it is great to see the whole industry.
Speaker 5: You know, golf'spin on quite a run as of late,
Speaker 5: so it's nice to be, you know, within a healthy industry.
Speaker 4: Everybody's doing well.
Speaker 5: We see a lot of great faces, a lot of friends,
Speaker 5: a lot of people I wouldn't normally see run into
Speaker 5: at the show, so it's great for a lot of things.
Speaker 1: Is it a young person's show these days, or do
Speaker 1: you feel like you still have the energy to kind
Speaker 1: of run through it at the same clip maybe you
Speaker 1: had a decade ago.
Speaker 5: It's definitely tiring. I would say, for whatever reason, my
Speaker 5: back has gotten better with age. Okay, my back used
Speaker 5: to kill me. Interesting, interesting and whatever. We're kind of
Speaker 5: getting towards the end of the day here and I'm
Speaker 5: still feeling pretty good. So I don't know's I would
Speaker 5: think anyone could do it, but it is taxing to
Speaker 5: my We had a little meeting ahead of time, and
Speaker 5: I thanked everybody for their efforts because everybody's going to
Speaker 5: be tired when they're getting on that plane to go home.
Speaker 4: And so it's a lot of work to be here,
Speaker 4: you know what.
Speaker 1: I compare this a lot, and it's probably a bad comparison,
Speaker 1: but the PGA show is almost Mini Vegas. Everybody shows
Speaker 1: up and they're excited, and you know, everybody's they got
Speaker 1: their new outfits and they're so excited to get here.
Speaker 1: And then you go to the airport on Friday afternoon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're kind of droopy and everything is a little bit
Speaker 1: more tired.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you get a lot of peother here. It's go,
Speaker 4: go go.
Speaker 5: I like to kind of turn it down earlier or whatever,
Speaker 5: because coming West coast to East coast the time change.
Speaker 5: I got to make sure I get my sleep or
Speaker 5: otherwise I'm want to be a train wreck and I'm
Speaker 5: want to be in front of a camera.
Speaker 3: So just keep part of it. John K.
Speaker 2: How's the PJ show changed since you first started coming there.
Speaker 4: That's a good question.
Speaker 5: I would actually say it's more more focused on what
Speaker 5: the PGA Show is for. So I would say when
Speaker 5: I first started coming, there were way more gigantic screens,
Speaker 5: loud stuff, multi story, just a lot of fluff and
Speaker 5: hocus pocus type stuff, just like who could do bigger
Speaker 5: and better boosts or whatever. I feel like the big
Speaker 5: golf equipment brands have all kind of scaled back from that,
Speaker 5: and it's a good mix of you got those brands
Speaker 5: as well as you've got all the call apparel, all
Speaker 5: the other stuff. So as you're a PGA pro, you
Speaker 5: can really come here and get you know, what can
Speaker 5: you stock in your pro shop that's unique to you
Speaker 5: that your members are going to like. So to me,
Speaker 5: I think it's gotten a little more balanced on what
Speaker 5: we're here for the PGA member and what they're going
Speaker 5: to have in their pro shop, and how do we
Speaker 5: make the show speak to that.
Speaker 1: Do you still walk the floor.
Speaker 5: If I get time to That's the one thing I
Speaker 5: kind of want to do a lot of times. I
Speaker 5: don't even have time to do it, but and I
Speaker 5: want to go for the little knickknacks. But I see
Speaker 5: I see all the other stuff all the time. I
Speaker 5: want to see what that's the Uh, what's a unique
Speaker 5: thing that I could say, Oh, I saw that at
Speaker 5: the show.
Speaker 1: It's funny, Marty. I like the I like going and
Speaker 1: checking out the headcover. Companies can always have so many
Speaker 1: cool headcovers over that way, you know.
Speaker 2: Inventor's Corner and some someone poured their last two years
Speaker 2: of their life and make it some little training aid
Speaker 2: and some of them are good. I've picked up some
Speaker 2: some cool little training aids over there over the years.
Speaker 1: I've got an easy one for you, John K. What's
Speaker 1: your favorite ping club of all time? You can say
Speaker 1: the putter you built. That's fine, that's an easy way
Speaker 1: out of this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, those early ISO Pure putters. I would say my
Speaker 5: favorite pin club of all time. Hmm, how about G
Speaker 5: four thirty Max ten K Driver.
Speaker 1: There you go, Oh, there you go, transition into the
Speaker 1: new stuff. I'm gonna say that might be my favorite
Speaker 1: pink club of all time.
Speaker 5: I've had it for a couple of months now, and
Speaker 5: I'm getting older, so everything had slowed down. So it
Speaker 5: was very nice to see ball speed back up, just
Speaker 5: the up substantially, in just all hitting all the fairways.
Speaker 4: I want so to me.
Speaker 5: I guess I've never had a big tie to an
Speaker 5: old product. I've been the guy who kind of easily
Speaker 5: switches a lot of times. I've been in the driver
Speaker 5: and I'm like, I can't hit anything better, but I'm
Speaker 5: gonna try it. I put it in the bag and
Speaker 5: I'm like, sure enough. I like G four twenty five.
Speaker 5: I didn't think I could hit it better, and I
Speaker 5: got the G four to thirty Max, and I'm like,
Speaker 5: that one's for me, and interesting, like I tried. I
Speaker 5: wanted to play the G four thirty LST and I'm like,
Speaker 5: I just it doesn't work as good for me. So
Speaker 5: I went with the Max and I thought I couldn't
Speaker 5: hit any better, and now I'm in the max ten
Speaker 5: k and loving it. I've had some putters, Like as
Speaker 5: a junior, I putted with a B sixty three a lot.
Speaker 5: My dad designed that putter, So I would say, like
Speaker 5: the sentimental value. If I could find that old putter
Speaker 5: that I spent years with, I bet it's at my
Speaker 5: dad's house, that would be something I'd be like, Okay,
Speaker 5: this is this is one that now I look at
Speaker 5: it though, it's all way heel shafted, and I'm like,
Speaker 5: that was a lot that I was putting with down there.
Speaker 5: But but for back in the I made a lot
Speaker 5: of putts. All my memories from back then are good memories,
Speaker 5: and they they made a lot of putts.
Speaker 3: In the ten k.
Speaker 2: From a fitting standpoint, you've gone a little bit longer
Speaker 2: at length because the drivers I did.
Speaker 5: Get from listening to one of these podcasts, I was,
Speaker 5: I was like, you know what, I gotta I gotta,
Speaker 5: I gotta try the length. So I like literally came
Speaker 5: in the next day lou Bebee, who like is my fitter.
Speaker 4: I'm like, hey, we gotta try.
Speaker 5: And I actually went longer, and I went a half
Speaker 5: inch longer and settled on a quarter inch longer. Yeah,
Speaker 5: beautiful and loving it because I got a little more
Speaker 5: clubhead speed and ball still going in the fairway.
Speaker 4: And it's a big deal.
Speaker 5: One club in on every hole is a big deal
Speaker 5: game change.
Speaker 1: I mean, Marty probably knows the answer to this, but
Speaker 1: I mean you're probably saving three, four or five strokes
Speaker 1: around if you just simply had one shorter club in everything.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, Yeah, that's uh, that is huge in
Speaker 2: terms of that compound interest when you get that ball
Speaker 2: further down the fairway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's fun to have all the fun fitting.
Speaker 2: Tools to be able to help everyday golfer kind of
Speaker 2: make those decisions. Now, John k you've been influential in
Speaker 2: kind of having us rethink our iron strategy and having
Speaker 2: like a very pure blade iron.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: I think we launched the Blueprint iron. Tour players were
Speaker 2: kind of asking us for something like that. We kind
Speaker 2: of had to really spend a lot of time diving
Speaker 2: in with the tour players. Now, those irons have been
Speaker 2: very good for the low single digit handicappers like yourself.
Speaker 2: Avid golfers. Tell us a little bit about you know,
Speaker 2: your thoughts on Blueprint ess, Blueprint te and just our
Speaker 2: whole like better player iron family right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So to me, I think we've made a lot of
Speaker 5: improvement there.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 5: We've got an awareness issue out in the field or
Speaker 5: whatever because I play Blueprints and I you know, I'll
Speaker 5: have a caddy or people I'm playing with and they're like,
Speaker 5: I didn't know ping made a blade.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I'm like, yeah, we've been doing it for a while now.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: But to me, you know, one, it's listening to the
Speaker 5: tour player and then you know, I grew up, you know,
Speaker 5: playing bigger irons and stuff like that, and I think
Speaker 5: it was more just out of a like I wanted
Speaker 5: to test it myself. So the original Blueprints, I just
Speaker 5: had a set made up, went out and played like
Speaker 5: back to back rounds, and I'm like a scratch golfer.
Speaker 5: I don't shoot under par a whole lot, but I
Speaker 5: think I had back to back under par rounds and
Speaker 5: I'm just like, this is a game changer for me.
Speaker 1: Was it like a workability thing? Was it just comfort
Speaker 1: with the look of the iron?
Speaker 5: Do you feel so my game, my miss is left
Speaker 5: and on an iron, like a big forgiving iron. It's
Speaker 5: left and long, so you kind of close the face
Speaker 5: down and all of a sudden, you're you're.
Speaker 4: Kind of in the wrong zip code.
Speaker 5: And if you go look at a lot of golf courses,
Speaker 5: you look what's left and long, A lot of times
Speaker 5: there's no golf course nasty.
Speaker 1: Bunkers, especially in Arizona.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so so to me, the miss with the blueprint
Speaker 5: is short, straight, Okay, So to me and I, you know,
Speaker 5: unless there's a bunker right in front of the green
Speaker 5: or whatever, it's usually a pretty easy chip from right
Speaker 5: on the front of the green. So to me, that's
Speaker 5: what I just started like looking at like my Arcos
Speaker 5: data and stuff, and I'm like, yeah, this is this
Speaker 5: is better. My location to pin is closer. So I
Speaker 5: became a believer and then that got me, you know, going, well,
Speaker 5: now I understand why the tour players are doing this
Speaker 5: because when you do, you know, kind of hit a
Speaker 5: pretty small space on the face like MOI definitely has
Speaker 5: a lot of value. But if you control those misses
Speaker 5: and if the smaller head help gives you better misses,
Speaker 5: I think it makes a lot of sense. So now
Speaker 5: I'm super excited with Blueprint T and Blueprint S because
Speaker 5: now we've got two compact irons, one with the s
Speaker 5: with a little higher MOI. And it's crazy how many
Speaker 5: tour players, non paying staffers and ping staffers are quickly
Speaker 5: gravitating to that. So I'm really excited, and I think
Speaker 5: that one has a lot of place in the marketplace.
Speaker 5: I think a lot of golfers are gonna benefit from the.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or doing mixed sets.
Speaker 2: We see a lot of that on tour, like Corey
Speaker 2: Connors playing blueprint as four and five iron then going
Speaker 2: to the t and it's fun now to have that
Speaker 2: iron and the I two thirty.
Speaker 3: All with the same lofts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and design them to be blended because it's such
Speaker 2: a big deal. You can either play them all the
Speaker 2: way down or blend them, which is super fun. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I've never I've had the same feedback John k. You know,
Speaker 2: I think a couple of accounts came by and said,
Speaker 2: when are you guys gonna stop making those boxy irons?
Speaker 2: And I show them the blueprints.
Speaker 1: They're like, WHOA, yeah, we did it at Yeah, I
Speaker 1: need to ask what is in the bag? What does
Speaker 1: your bag look like right now?
Speaker 5: So I've got the Max tank driver, I've got our
Speaker 5: LST three woods, which is awesome. So I play at
Speaker 5: I five thirty four iron if we even that's not
Speaker 5: out yet, is it? No, that's no, But I've had
Speaker 5: it for a while. That club is awesome.
Speaker 1: You somebody, you know, somebody paying then get it early, so.
Speaker 5: That club's yeah, that club's super flexible. I hit it
Speaker 5: off the tee a lot now. And then I've got
Speaker 5: so another four iron four I heard through of blueprint
Speaker 5: t and then I've got s one fifty nine wedges.
Speaker 4: I've got a.
Speaker 5: Fifty so I get pretty precise bent to forty nine,
Speaker 5: and then I've got a fifty four to fifty four
Speaker 5: and a fifty eight bent to fifty nine, and then
Speaker 5: an answer four K putter.
Speaker 4: I didn't know it had a name, and then I
Speaker 4: just found.
Speaker 5: Out we call an answer four K apparently because my
Speaker 5: middle name with the K, so it's an answer head.
Speaker 5: It's a PLD putter with an answer for hozzle. So
Speaker 5: I'm a little more open closed. So went in and
Speaker 5: did the whole PLD fitting and beautiful. That was a
Speaker 5: cool thing too, because I'm more used to seeing like
Speaker 5: the numbers from track Man and Foresight on the launch
Speaker 5: monitor with a driver, but now used to seeing numbers
Speaker 5: with a putter and when I did that PLD fitting experience,
Speaker 5: I'm like, oh, there's like numbers at show. This cutter
Speaker 5: is better for me and I'm hitting it more consistent.
Speaker 5: So that's all the confidence I needed to get it
Speaker 5: out on the green and make some putts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean putterfitny. You gotta fall in love with
Speaker 2: the look of it. But then layer on the science. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like the marriage of art and science.
Speaker 2: So that iping we you know, just that incentive to
Speaker 2: you know, try to maximize someone's repeatability is super cool
Speaker 2: that we're doing in there.
Speaker 3: Now, what about your lob wedge. What grind do you have?
Speaker 5: I do have a custom grind there, so it's the
Speaker 5: standard soul and then it's got the dish like the
Speaker 5: it grind.
Speaker 4: Ah yeah on that and that gives me.
Speaker 5: It gives me what I like for a full shot
Speaker 5: ground impact wise in that bunker and full disclosure week.
Speaker 5: Part of my game is my short game the bunker.
Speaker 5: I go back to the old eye two days when
Speaker 5: I was a kid and I didn't have a.
Speaker 4: Short game issue, and it gives me that same.
Speaker 5: Feel in the bunker when I get the dish with
Speaker 5: the dish, just that nice Crisp comes out and has
Speaker 5: some spin on it, So that's been a good combo
Speaker 5: for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nice, John Cam.
Speaker 1: How much golf are you playing right now? Do you
Speaker 1: get to play once a week? You get to play much?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I feel like people within the
Speaker 1: golf industry either play a lot or they don't play
Speaker 1: much at all, you.
Speaker 5: Know, So I play way more. My kids have gotten
Speaker 5: a little older, so I don't have as much commitments
Speaker 5: on the weekends and stuff. Uh. I've got one pretty
Speaker 5: into it. He goes to school at Saint Andrews, gets
Speaker 5: out on there quite a bit. He was just at
Speaker 5: home for Christmas and stuff, and we got some golf
Speaker 5: in together. My youngest son plays a little bit, and
Speaker 5: then my girls they do other sports. So but I
Speaker 5: would say I play once or twice a week, so
Speaker 5: I get a fair amount of golf in. But sometimes
Speaker 5: I'll go three weeks without playing. But then I'll make
Speaker 5: like I'm playing twice this week or whatever, and then
Speaker 5: I think of twice the next week.
Speaker 4: I already got it all.
Speaker 5: Scheduled, so I gotta It's golf season in Phoenix, so
Speaker 5: there's there's a decent amount of golf coming.
Speaker 1: Up if you're gonna play play Now, Marty, what are
Speaker 1: you a week? I've never really asked you this. How
Speaker 1: often are you playing the eighteen holes of golf? I
Speaker 1: feel like you're a practicer.
Speaker 2: I'm a practicer, and then I'll go play like I'm
Speaker 2: Some people at my course are like, I never see you. Well,
Speaker 2: I go out at dark and I play like four
Speaker 2: or five holes. I hit a bunch of t shots
Speaker 2: and I'm out of there.
Speaker 3: But it's all.
Speaker 1: Work or you played? Do you play much?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: Is there much casual golf in your life?
Speaker 3: Not a ton, I'm not.
Speaker 2: I just prep for the tournaments and the occasionally I'm
Speaker 2: a sundowner.
Speaker 3: I go out at sundown.
Speaker 5: That's why I'm kind of cause I get that at
Speaker 5: the golf course too. We never see you, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 5: I play earlier. I play earlier, but I'm not a practicer. Yeah,
Speaker 5: because those premium tea times. I'm like, well, that takes
Speaker 5: up your whole day. I like, gotta I gotta get
Speaker 5: two things in of the day or whatever. But I
Speaker 5: don't practice a ton. Fortunate enough, we do a lot
Speaker 5: of like player testing it thing, so I, you know,
Speaker 5: make myself available to that, so that'll get me hitting
Speaker 5: balls not every day, but twice a week or whatever
Speaker 5: at work, So.
Speaker 4: That gets me swinging.
Speaker 5: And then you know, once a week or maybe twice
Speaker 5: a week out on the golf course.
Speaker 4: But earlier late.
Speaker 1: When your son decided to go to Saint Andrew's. How
Speaker 1: excited not just as a dad but as a of
Speaker 1: for were you that you got to potentially go over there?
Speaker 5: You know, yeah, I love you. So we went and
Speaker 5: visited him in September for the first time. My wife
Speaker 5: plays a little bit of golf, but not much. She's like, well,
Speaker 5: what are we gonna do. We're in Saint Andrews. And
Speaker 5: I looked at her, like.
Speaker 3: You do one thing.
Speaker 5: We're going to see her son and we're gonna play golf. Yeah,
Speaker 5: Like she did not get that. And then I'm like
Speaker 5: we did. Like we had a trip to Mexico and
Speaker 5: she's like, well, where do you want to play golf
Speaker 5: in Mexico. I'm like, I don't need to, that's not
Speaker 5: Saint Andrews.
Speaker 4: Like we could go to the beach, we could do
Speaker 4: those sort of things. So yeah, I was excited.
Speaker 5: We had We played King's Barn in the old course,
Speaker 5: the last time we were there, we played in pouring
Speaker 5: rain and wind at the old course. So I was
Speaker 5: like under par on the way out down win and
Speaker 5: you couldn't even tell. Yeah it was, but created a
Speaker 5: great memories. Yeah it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah so cool, John K? What are you doing outside
Speaker 3: of work these days?
Speaker 2: I remember, you know, before you moved to Japan, you
Speaker 2: were doing triathlons. I'd come into work, Shane and John
Speaker 2: K would have already rode ridden his bike sixty you know,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, oh boy, okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, those were the days.
Speaker 5: I still would say, I've got like the workout bug.
Speaker 5: I would say, it's gotten a little bit more like golf.
Speaker 5: Focus on trying to do things to maintain the golf swing.
Speaker 5: If anything, speed it up a little bit. Still get
Speaker 5: the cardio in, but have it. My knees don't love
Speaker 5: running anymore, so I kind of had to slow that
Speaker 5: down because I'm like, I I don't want to be
Speaker 5: the have.
Speaker 4: Knee issues, So.
Speaker 5: I like so golf, I would say, is a big
Speaker 5: like spare time thing. Still got one kid at home,
Speaker 5: so I'm doing my park to shuttle him back and
Speaker 5: forth to his uh practices and whatever. Pickups or take
Speaker 5: him to school, so that sort of stuff. And yeah,
Speaker 5: just to join some family time and yeah, playing golf and.
Speaker 1: Outside a lot of work outside of this podcast obviously,
Speaker 1: which I know you consume a lot. You're a podcast listener,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing, and you're a book reader. You a little bit.
Speaker 4: Just finish the Elon Musk book.
Speaker 3: How was it?
Speaker 4: Uh, it was good. It was good to me.
Speaker 5: I Uh. It was actually my pastor at church that
Speaker 5: recommended it to me, and I was like, Okay, I
Speaker 5: read it, I got done with it. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 5: I read it, but I don't think I want to
Speaker 5: do all this stuff. He's like, no, it's not like
Speaker 5: the example of what to do. It's like all the
Speaker 5: stuff you could do and what costs. So to me
Speaker 5: it was pretty powerful because like he you know, puts
Speaker 5: it in NonStop, but also kind of like level setting
Speaker 5: of that.
Speaker 4: There could be a too much or whatever and what cost.
Speaker 5: So but I thought it was a great read, super
Speaker 5: interesting because we're like living through it right now and
Speaker 5: we're still like in the middle of Tesla SpaceX and
Speaker 5: all this stuff. So it's like the book's already out,
Speaker 5: but it's not finished. So that was interesting. And then
Speaker 5: I'll just like I'll listen to podcasts that people send
Speaker 5: to me. I do listen to like some Joe Rogan
Speaker 5: podcast here and there. Just got some interesting stuff on there,
Speaker 5: and it's.
Speaker 1: Always kind of guest depend it. Right, It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like there's the massive podcasts, you know, you
Speaker 1: kind of are scrolling through and it's like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: want to hear what this.
Speaker 4: Podcast is great?
Speaker 5: Like I love listening to this one and taking a
Speaker 5: bunch of stuff here, Like by the chipping, I've become
Speaker 5: a much better chipper.
Speaker 4: Listen.
Speaker 3: That's right, thank you.
Speaker 5: Take the math in my head of I need that
Speaker 5: negative angle of attack. I've been trying to sweep it
Speaker 5: and the grounds just getting in the way. And now
Speaker 5: I'm like, the ground's not in the anymore.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, that last last night he wore a shirt,
Speaker 2: he had a jacket, he unzipped it, he had a
Speaker 2: spin loft.
Speaker 3: He's like, where are you gonna point the spin loft?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: So this is open for on brand for Joe right there,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make a shirt for the open form and
Speaker 1: get dial John K. We really appreciate you doing this
Speaker 1: and appreciate the time, appreciate everything you do at Pinging
Speaker 1: with the brand. It's been very cool to see the
Speaker 1: recent developments. I mean just in terms of the irons
Speaker 1: that you talked about. The new wedges are so great,
Speaker 1: the driver's awesome. So thanks for the time and thanks
Speaker 1: for everything you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me on a great path.
Speaker 5: We've got great product this week we're introducing, and then
Speaker 5: the future looks very bright. We got a great pipeline,
Speaker 5: we've got great people working on products, so stay tuned.
Speaker 1: The boss Man, John k. This is the Pink Proven
Speaker 1: Grounds Podcast