Speaker 1: The guys from PING. They've kind of showed me how
Speaker 1: much the equipment matters. I just love that I can
Speaker 1: hit any shot.
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 3: Well, welcome to the first episode of the Ping Proving
Speaker 3: Grounds Podcast. I'm Shane Bacon, joined by the vice president
Speaker 3: of Fitting and Performance Marty Jertsen. You might have heard
Speaker 3: the name. You might have to see him play and golf tournaments,
Speaker 3: made cuts in major championships in his career, and he's
Speaker 3: also built a whole bunch of golf clubs that you've
Speaker 3: played over the years. But before we kind of get
Speaker 3: into what we're going to talk about today, Marty, I
Speaker 3: want to hear about you. I want to find out
Speaker 3: a little bit more about you and how you got
Speaker 3: into this business, how long you've been at PING, and
Speaker 3: what you've done over your years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Shan, I feel like I'm in a very lucky
Speaker 2: spot to combine what I'm passionate about along with my
Speaker 2: technical skills. So I grew up in Arizona, Phoenix area. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a little suburb globe, Arizona, Okay, a little small mining town,
Speaker 2: and the fact that it was a mining town is
Speaker 2: important because that's when I kind of learned about, you know,
Speaker 2: copper mining and going back to the connection to ping,
Speaker 2: we knew that from the supply chain, some of the
Speaker 2: copper that was mine there went into brillium copper irons.
Speaker 2: They wanted to playing irons out of globe. So I
Speaker 2: grew up in that little small town love golf. Played golf,
Speaker 2: kind of turned it into my only sport, you know
Speaker 2: about high school timeframe, and I was always kind of
Speaker 2: a tier below some of the best players that grew
Speaker 2: up in Arizona, the Charlie Belgians and the chess reviews
Speaker 2: of the world. So I was always just below them,
Speaker 2: not quite good enough to play D one golf or
Speaker 2: if I did, you know, they weren't too excited about me,
Speaker 2: you know, study engineering. So I went to the Corraail
Speaker 2: School of Mines, awesome school in Golden Colorado, played D
Speaker 2: two golf and was able to ski and do engineering
Speaker 2: and then got a little bit better at golf.
Speaker 3: What year did you feel like you kind of switched
Speaker 3: like it switched on for you in college.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I started school in ninety eight and then
Speaker 2: year two thousand is when I kind of just got better. Okay,
Speaker 2: you know, I was playing a lot of amateur tournaments
Speaker 2: up there. I won the Colail Stadium, I played in
Speaker 2: the USGA pub links that did chess, actually won out
Speaker 2: of San Antonio, and that's where I was like, oh man.
Speaker 2: And I was playing the Colorado Open one year and
Speaker 2: one of my buddies was like, hey, what are you
Speaker 2: gonna do when you graduate? You know, are you gonna
Speaker 2: go work in an oil and gas job on an
Speaker 2: oil rig like the rest of your guys or colleagues,
Speaker 2: or this could be your office and we're staying this
Speaker 2: beautiful course, sunning alp up in veil, and I'm like
Speaker 2: that sounds pretty good. That was the moment I was like,
Speaker 2: maybe I should try playing professional golf. And that kind
Speaker 2: of made my decision literally right there, or remember being
Speaker 2: on that range. I made that call.
Speaker 3: So you get in, I mean, you go try to play, yep,
Speaker 3: and how many years did you try to play?
Speaker 2: Not that long? And I think I was wise for
Speaker 2: doing that.
Speaker 3: I have a similar story in terms of my many
Speaker 3: tour golf experiences, but my first ever Mini tour round,
Speaker 3: I shot sixty eight. I finished Birdie Birdie here in Phoenix,
Speaker 3: and I was in like thirty eighth place I shot
Speaker 3: sixty eight. I was like on Cloud one hundred, you know,
Speaker 3: and you go, oh, I'm five back. Okay, maybe this
Speaker 3: isn't what I'm what I should be doing.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Gateway Tour. You know. I did Monday
Speaker 2: into my very first I think it was a buy
Speaker 2: dot Com time, you know, corn Fair event today, and
Speaker 2: I was like, oh man, this is going to be easy.
Speaker 2: I got this thing made. But I went to Q
Speaker 2: school and I just kind of petered out, you know,
Speaker 2: too much pressure on myself and all that stuff. And
Speaker 2: I made the call right away to quote unquote retire
Speaker 2: from trying to chase the game professionally as my full
Speaker 2: time deal. And then I started working at Pining kind
Speaker 2: of part time work in manufacturing, and kind of through
Speaker 2: a friend of a friend, got in got in the door.
Speaker 1: What year is this?
Speaker 2: This around two thousand and three, okay, so kind of
Speaker 2: got in the door. And when I decided to hang
Speaker 2: it up from playing full time, which was which was quick,
Speaker 2: I started. I moved into the design group here and
Speaker 2: started shadowing under some of the other engineers and kind
Speaker 2: of learning the trade, you know, and that's how we
Speaker 2: bring on new engineers. Now, it's kind of this apprenticeship
Speaker 2: model of studying under some of the more senior designers.
Speaker 3: So when did you feel like you had this let's
Speaker 3: call it a vision of building golf clubs, because I mean,
Speaker 3: I know, you start off on a certain level and
Speaker 3: you're trying to work your way up, but not everybody's
Speaker 3: going to be able to kind of think their way
Speaker 3: through that business and actually kind of conceptualize golf clubs
Speaker 3: in general. How did that begin for you?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It wasn't like I went to college thinking, oh, right,
Speaker 2: be a golf club designer. I was kind of intimidated
Speaker 2: by how do you even get in the industry? I mean,
Speaker 2: and I knew the industry and the grand scheme of
Speaker 2: things is relatively small compared to the oil and gas
Speaker 2: or automotive or aerospace where most you know, mechanical engineers go.
Speaker 2: So you know, I kind of got lucky, you know,
Speaker 2: and then once I got in the door here, there
Speaker 2: was so much opportunity your colleagues that, you know, like
Speaker 2: that's where the curiosity about making golf clothes better really
Speaker 2: flourished is being in this environment. Being inside, you know,
Speaker 2: is where it is really where you know, for me,
Speaker 2: I've flourished and being able to ask questions or explore
Speaker 2: a certain area I was curious about.
Speaker 3: It's it's wild walking around the grounds here at pain
Speaker 3: because you run into somebody that's been here for thirty
Speaker 3: nine years, and nineteen years and fifteen years and forty
Speaker 3: years in some cases. It's that environment that kind of
Speaker 3: lends itself to people wanting to stay around.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the culture is awesome here, you know,
Speaker 2: and I think you, Shane, you're going to since that,
Speaker 2: you know, spending time here, being around here, meeting employees,
Speaker 2: whether it's in production, whether it's in engineering, whether it's administrative, marketing,
Speaker 2: what have you. It's it's that culture and it's not
Speaker 2: we're not rested on, you know, things we've done in
Speaker 2: the past where we're loyal to our heritage, we know
Speaker 2: what God is here, we know our core principles, but
Speaker 2: we're not afraid to take chances, try things that are
Speaker 2: going to fail. And that's that's exactly what we do
Speaker 2: here on the proving grounds, which is where we're sitting today.
Speaker 3: And you continue to play and you're still very good.
Speaker 3: And how old are you now?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Forty two? You're forty two? Have you?
Speaker 3: I know, once you turn thirty, just lose track of
Speaker 3: what age you are well, And that's I mean, I
Speaker 3: get confused. I've been off by two years at times before,
Speaker 3: which is very sad. You still play and you're still
Speaker 3: very competitive, and you played in multiple major championships, You've
Speaker 3: made a cut in a major champions You've played in
Speaker 3: PGA Tour events. Are you better now at your age
Speaker 3: than maybe you were it twenty one twenty two? Trying
Speaker 3: to chase it?
Speaker 2: Definitely? And I think, yeah, I think about that a lot,
Speaker 2: like why am I better now? I got a family,
Speaker 2: I work forty plus hours a week and all these things, and.
Speaker 1: Your boss is near, say sixty hours, it's.
Speaker 2: Sixty seventy eighty hours a week. I have done that
Speaker 2: at times. You got a big design deadline, you got
Speaker 2: to you gotta ramp it up a little bit. But
Speaker 2: I'm just way more efficient with my practice, my training. Obviously,
Speaker 2: I have access to some knowledge here that we're going
Speaker 2: to share on this pod, so that to the everyday
Speaker 2: golfer of some things that can be helpful from a
Speaker 2: performance equipment training, when green reading, what have you. I
Speaker 2: just have embraced like just trying to learn more about
Speaker 2: this sport, every single aspect, every aspect of it, whether
Speaker 2: it's design, training, fitness, equipment, strategy, stats, And I've tried
Speaker 2: to just kind of it's kind of like compound interest.
Speaker 2: You know, over all that time you just kind of
Speaker 2: added up. And even though I'm practicing less than ever,
Speaker 2: I am probably you know, still better than I've ever been.
Speaker 3: Yeah, find an efficiency when you do have the time
Speaker 3: away from the kids, in away from work to actually
Speaker 3: spend forty five minutes on the driving range doing something
Speaker 3: that's actually got to be effective because we've all spent
Speaker 3: you know, spent two hours on the range. You have
Speaker 3: absolutely no idea what you did those two hours.
Speaker 2: Yes, what are you doing? Actually having too much time
Speaker 2: is a bad thing, you know. I think you can
Speaker 2: get better with less time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that whole perfect practice makes perfect in general. So
Speaker 3: for people that don't know me, I mean, I've been
Speaker 3: in the media world. I've worked a lot of golf
Speaker 3: jobs in my life. I mean I've I've picked the
Speaker 3: range in East Texas.
Speaker 1: Back in the day, I.
Speaker 3: Watched golf carts. I've worked in a pro shop, I've
Speaker 3: been outside service, I've i caddied both professionally. I caddied
Speaker 3: for SMELLPJ friends of mine. My first ever caddy job
Speaker 3: was here in Phoenix at Papago. We made the cut,
Speaker 3: by the way, it was a very very good moment.
Speaker 3: And out of college, cadid at Saint Andrew's. But yeah,
Speaker 3: my journey has always been kind of my adult journey
Speaker 3: has been in and around golf.
Speaker 1: I mean my whole life. I was a writer out
Speaker 1: of college.
Speaker 3: I wrote for the student newspaper in two Soon I
Speaker 3: went to University of Arizona, tried to play, as I mentioned,
Speaker 3: did Gateway Tour, got my amateur status back as I
Speaker 3: learned very very quickly that professional golf is very very hard,
Speaker 3: and you've got to shoot low scores all the time.
Speaker 3: You can't go out there and shoot sixty five once
Speaker 3: in a while. You've got to shoot a lot of
Speaker 3: sixty fives. And so got into the media space, was
Speaker 3: a writer, and then kind of got into the TV side,
Speaker 3: And yeah, I mean been podcasting and doing these types
Speaker 3: of things over the last few years, and very very
Speaker 3: excited to be a part of the Ping family with
Speaker 3: the Proving Grounds podcast and our kind of you know,
Speaker 3: our ability and our goal here is to share as
Speaker 3: much information as we can with people listening, because golf
Speaker 3: can be hard to understand, not just in terms of
Speaker 3: playing it, but how fast it's growing and how much
Speaker 3: information and technology is involved in and around the game,
Speaker 3: and trying to simplify that is a very hard thing
Speaker 3: to do for people that are at home going wait,
Speaker 3: what does all this mean? And what are you guys
Speaker 3: talking about. I'm just trying to find a good driver exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's making the complex simple because our
Speaker 2: products got more complex, got more nuanced, we're more targeted
Speaker 2: who we're designing for. But I think you hit the
Speaker 2: nail on the headshand we how do we simplify that message?
Speaker 2: And we're gonna be able to tell some fun stories
Speaker 2: about what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we're gonna tell stories. We'll interview players.
Speaker 3: We'll have some interviews coming up very soon with some
Speaker 3: of the players and asking them their journey not just
Speaker 3: through golf, but kind of in their experiences with ping
Speaker 3: and how it's gone and you know, things we've learned,
Speaker 3: and golf clubs they've used, and maybe things that have
Speaker 3: changed in their game simply by proving things here on
Speaker 3: the grounds. And that's something I wanted to ask you.
Speaker 3: You hear the turn proving grounds and obviously you see
Speaker 3: it on the podcast.
Speaker 1: What does that mean here at Ping?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so proving grounds is exactly where we're sitting today.
Speaker 2: So we're sitting on the test field. This is our
Speaker 2: driving range. We've evolved this a lot over the years.
Speaker 2: I think the early days we had ultrasonic sensors out
Speaker 2: on the range that measured where the balls were landing.
Speaker 2: We have weather stations you can see right over there
Speaker 2: as an antonometer, real time weather station. We're collecting tons
Speaker 2: of data all the time. I think we look over there,
Speaker 2: we have our player test going on. So if you're
Speaker 2: an employee at Ping, you get scheduled on your outlook calendar,
Speaker 2: show up at the range at eleven o'clock. You better
Speaker 2: not be late, get warmed up, bring your golf shoes,
Speaker 2: and we focus you in on a specific test design.
Speaker 2: Right That's where we validate our new product designs over there,
Speaker 2: so we runt tons of player testing. We have decades
Speaker 2: worth of data from player testing, and it's everything we
Speaker 2: do on the R and D side as well. So
Speaker 2: we have our ping putting lab that we use not
Speaker 2: only to fit players from a putting standpoint, but we
Speaker 2: run a lot of tests in there. We have a
Speaker 2: putting robot in there covers our robot like our ping
Speaker 2: man robot. And we have the bay there. We call
Speaker 2: that kind of the flight in collision depot. Okay, so
Speaker 2: that's where we can hit golf. We can hit balls
Speaker 2: on our robot to validate our new product designs. We
Speaker 2: have a machine you took a look at it called
Speaker 2: the sling Man, so that we can use that to
Speaker 2: test aerodynamics of golf balls, right, which is really fun.
Speaker 2: And the and our our ding Man, which is our
Speaker 2: durability machine, is where we make sure our products durable.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So all of these little pieces kind of go into
Speaker 2: the proving grounds. We have the Gold Putter Vault.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: We have ping works where we build all of our
Speaker 2: tour players equipment uh in Ping works in our R
Speaker 2: and D area. So all that umbrella here is where
Speaker 2: we're sitting. So is where we test and develop new
Speaker 2: product We test and develop new fitting tools. Where we
Speaker 2: test and fit with our tour players, and we try
Speaker 2: things out, we prove them. We're not afraid to fail here,
Speaker 2: and we have a culture of learning and that keeps
Speaker 2: driving the innovations.
Speaker 3: Marty, you mentioned tour players a couple times, but I
Speaker 3: mean the average golfer is not a tour player, and
Speaker 3: PING is speaking to the average golfer more than it
Speaker 3: is somebody that can play like Victor Hovelin. When you
Speaker 3: guys have employees come through and you're testing out in
Speaker 3: new equipment, how important is it to get a five
Speaker 3: handicap and a handicap and a fifteen handicap here on
Speaker 3: the proving grounds to hit some golf shots and see
Speaker 3: what a regular in theory golfer looks like versus maybe
Speaker 3: a tour player.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Shane, that's crucial. Like for example, I mean, what
Speaker 2: would the point of Victor Hoblin hitting? Are our lightweight
Speaker 2: SFT driver? Right? We have to get the golfer archetype
Speaker 2: that's going to fit into that product. And we have
Speaker 2: the entire spectrum of skills and handicaps that are employees
Speaker 2: here at PING. You know the eight hundred plus employees.
Speaker 2: We know different handicap groups. We have them all measured
Speaker 2: in our three D motion capture system. We know people
Speaker 2: who are over the top and they're not even going
Speaker 2: to work on it and try to fix it. So
Speaker 2: if we're developing a product targeted for them, we can
Speaker 2: cherry pick that group of golfers, get them down the
Speaker 2: range and prove it with them. Make sure make sure
Speaker 2: the product that we're designing for meets the requirements and
Speaker 2: is going to be better than its precessor.
Speaker 1: There's history involved here.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's twenty twenty three and you're looking at
Speaker 3: very very new equipment and drivers that you know, if
Speaker 3: you looked at it in nineteen eighty people would have
Speaker 3: like blown their minds seeing some of the new equipment.
Speaker 3: But I mean it's been a big part of the
Speaker 3: history of ping here in terms of fitting players for
Speaker 3: exactly what they need. And that's really the essence of
Speaker 3: what this company has been about.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, it's that marriage of great designs in a
Speaker 2: perfect fitting. Right. It's almost like you know a ven diagram, right,
Speaker 2: you got great designs and then you have great fitting
Speaker 2: where you can play your best golf is where you
Speaker 2: marry those two.
Speaker 1: You guys want to live in that in that overlap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you want to marry that together. And that's what
Speaker 2: we want every golfer to have access.
Speaker 3: To tell me about the story about this place because
Speaker 3: you look around here and you see a range, and
Speaker 3: you see a lab, and you see all of this stuff,
Speaker 3: and it seems like it's just continually expanded because this
Speaker 3: is where you know, what, are we two hundred yards
Speaker 3: away from the first ever building? How has this expanded
Speaker 3: in your time here?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Just a lot of time, technology, a lot of technology.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think we're looking at a brand new
Speaker 2: short game area that we just built a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago. So that's brand new, and we want to
Speaker 2: have an area that we could prove our wedges to
Speaker 2: develop a game like fitting protocol that we have people
Speaker 2: folks evaluate their shortcame right. So we're constantly upgrading the
Speaker 2: facility and the technology. The putting lab was not even
Speaker 2: built when I started here, right, So we developed the
Speaker 2: putting lab. Camera technology, we've added launch monitors have come
Speaker 2: a long way since we first started kind of developing
Speaker 2: product and advancing all the technology that's at the proving grounds.
Speaker 2: So we're constantly upgrading the facility. Technology is always advancing
Speaker 2: our three d motion capture system is only about a
Speaker 2: decade old, and we've used that to generate a ton
Speaker 2: of insights. But with that we've had to have new
Speaker 2: skill sets of employees. I think the people is what
Speaker 2: makes the difference here at the proving grounds and with
Speaker 2: our company. We've developed this culture where the people are cure.
Speaker 2: You come in, you go play golf on the weekend,
Speaker 2: you have a frustration with a certain issue, you come
Speaker 2: into the office on Monday morning, and you're motivated to
Speaker 2: go solve that problem, right, And that's the culture here.
Speaker 3: It's interesting because we've talked to a lot of employees
Speaker 3: over the last couple days in terms of that mix,
Speaker 3: because you want to have a plus handicap golfer that
Speaker 3: has played at the highest level, and you also want
Speaker 3: to have people that don't play golf at all, and
Speaker 3: you want to mix that in terms of what you're
Speaker 3: going to get out of the best possible employees.
Speaker 1: Is that mix.
Speaker 3: You talk about a ven diagram of really two different camps.
Speaker 3: And so you're going to go out and play golf
Speaker 3: on Saturday and you come back on Monday and go
Speaker 3: this ball, did this weird thing off the face of
Speaker 3: my club?
Speaker 1: Let's figure out why.
Speaker 3: And you can lean on people that don't understand what
Speaker 3: a flyer is and don't understand what hitting a golf
Speaker 3: shot fat is, but they understand the science behind what
Speaker 3: you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have some great meetings where we have synergy.
Speaker 2: Some of our funnest meetings are PhDs literally, you know,
Speaker 2: aeronautical engineers PhDs and astrophysicists that are in a room
Speaker 2: with folks like me. I'm an engineer too, but I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm bringing in my golfer perspective, right, and the conversations
Speaker 2: we have are so healthy that they can take a
Speaker 2: look at it from a very what's called a first
Speaker 2: principle standpoint, like what is the physics of what's going
Speaker 2: on here? How can we get down to that? Having
Speaker 2: that level of understanding, then you got me on the
Speaker 2: other end, wearing my golf hat where I'm like, hey,
Speaker 2: I don't know why it happened, but let's figure it out.
Speaker 2: If this happens a lot, right, you know, and this
Speaker 2: is a big problem for the golfer.
Speaker 3: What are we trying to accomplish with this podcast? In
Speaker 3: your mind, what is the point of this and what
Speaker 3: are you hoping that the listeners get out of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would love to empower the listener, educate them
Speaker 2: on what goes on at the proving grounds, and help
Speaker 2: empower them on what's important for them to go look
Speaker 2: at when they're evaluating new equipment. Right, And I think,
Speaker 2: Shane you said it really goes make the complex simple,
Speaker 2: don't be intimidated by the fitting process. Give them some
Speaker 2: very important insights. What do you look for when you're
Speaker 2: going to evaluate new equipment? And then understand some of
Speaker 2: the cool you know, tools and technologies, get some really
Speaker 2: fun stories of how we solve those golf problems, like
Speaker 2: what's the engineering insight and then how do you evaluate
Speaker 2: that in the fitting process, and you know everything in
Speaker 2: between learning from our tour players and being able to
Speaker 2: interview some experts in some key areas and go deep
Speaker 2: on a few topics. I think we're gonna go We're
Speaker 2: gonna have fun going deep on some physics topics.
Speaker 3: Some personal questions for you. You've been around for a while,
Speaker 3: what's your single favorite ping club ever made? And you can't,
Speaker 3: I mean, you can say the latest stuff, but I'd
Speaker 3: like you to get a little deeper in this history.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: I so I kind of trust my instinct on this one.
Speaker 2: I would say the answer putter, okay, because it's the
Speaker 2: most copy putter in golf, and it put us on
Speaker 2: the map as a brand. The answer putter, Gotta go
Speaker 2: with that one.
Speaker 3: You've been involved in a lot of clubs. You've been
Speaker 3: a lot of a lot of like innovative work. I mean,
Speaker 3: the Targulators are something you worked very hard on. Is
Speaker 3: there a club that you're the most proud of that
Speaker 3: you've been a part of in your time here at Ping?
Speaker 1: Who?
Speaker 2: Man? I think a couple fun ones come to mind.
Speaker 2: I mean my first one was fun. The Rapture Hybrid. Okay,
Speaker 2: the last driver I was.
Speaker 1: You were telling me.
Speaker 3: You were telling me the first time you saw the
Speaker 3: Rapture Hybrid and a store. I mean you were like
Speaker 3: almost like an author with their book, you know, and
Speaker 3: diplay stand aby it, pointing people towards the hybrid.
Speaker 2: Watching them look at it, watching them go hit in
Speaker 2: on that.
Speaker 1: I can get that for you.
Speaker 2: I still get goosebumps kind of thing about that moment.
Speaker 2: You know, that was really fun. The G four I
Speaker 2: worked on the G four ten driver in the G thirty.
Speaker 2: So I would say the G thirty was probably my
Speaker 2: favorite because that was when we brought in turbulators for
Speaker 2: the first time. That was a fun project to give
Speaker 2: folks two miles an hour club at speed for free.
Speaker 2: When I say for free, I didn't have to sacrifice,
Speaker 2: make it smaller or do anything else, and they look cool.
Speaker 2: Was really fun. And then we and that's really whenhere
Speaker 2: we brought that concept of three simple driver models to
Speaker 2: the market. We had an s FT we kind of
Speaker 2: brought that concept to the market that turns over and
Speaker 2: then we introduced the lst LS tech at the time
Speaker 2: is kind of what we called it in it not
Speaker 2: only did have turbu but it had this kind of
Speaker 2: scratchy face on it which reduced the spin and so
Speaker 2: that driver had a ton What really put us on
Speaker 2: the map in terms of being a driver company, and
Speaker 2: that's kind of what we're you know, we're very strong
Speaker 2: in drivers right now and that that kind of started it.
Speaker 3: What's the oldest club you currently have in your bag
Speaker 3: and what's the newest club you've put in your bag?
Speaker 2: Oldest club would be my potter. I gotta catch, I
Speaker 2: gotta catch long putter I've probably been using that thing
Speaker 2: like five years, okay, five or six years.
Speaker 1: Does it ever get taken out? Does it ever get
Speaker 1: part closet?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, okay, that thing goes in the closet. I
Speaker 2: think every every every player puts their putter in the
Speaker 2: closet for a little while. Uh so that thing, that
Speaker 2: thing's in there. And I had to make some modifications
Speaker 2: with with the anchoring rule and all that stuff to
Speaker 2: shorten it, tweak the liingole a little bit. But I
Speaker 2: got that thing pretty dialed. And then newest one in
Speaker 2: the bag, newest one G four thirty Driver and three wood,
Speaker 2: and I'm absolutely loving both of them. Driver is my favorite.
Speaker 3: Oh, I've been obsessed. I've been obsessed. I think I
Speaker 3: ten yards with the four thirty.
Speaker 1: It's so good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when you're you're so, what's going on in terms
Speaker 3: of things here at ping? You know what's coming down
Speaker 3: the pipeline. How hard is it not to always be
Speaker 3: tweaking the bag? How hard is it for you to
Speaker 3: be content with what you currently are playing?
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, it is tough. It is tough. I've tried
Speaker 2: to almost put a little rule for myself, like, hey,
Speaker 2: let's get fit early in the season. My season is
Speaker 2: like US opened locals generally speaking, until you know our
Speaker 2: section championship.
Speaker 3: You're thinking like maybe like late April, early May, basically
Speaker 3: through September.
Speaker 2: Yep, okay, exactly through September. So in the winter I'll
Speaker 2: tinker around with all kinds of stuff, you know, go
Speaker 2: out there in the winter. But then I kind of say, hey,
Speaker 2: this time of year around you know, March April timeframe,
Speaker 2: let me get my clubs dialed and not and give
Speaker 2: myself permission to tweak them a little bit, but let's
Speaker 2: not stray too far. And we have a lot of
Speaker 2: tour players that are like that. They'll come in at
Speaker 2: the beginning of the season and get pretty well dialed.
Speaker 2: They'll make a little micro tweaks throughout the year, but
Speaker 2: they won't do anything too exotic or too crazy.
Speaker 3: What's the wildest thing a tour player has asked to
Speaker 3: have built over the years of you being here in
Speaker 3: terms of a club loft, Maybe something that you would
Speaker 3: have never in a million year's thought where player might
Speaker 3: be interested in having in their bag.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's a good question, I think. I mean.
Speaker 2: We were talking to Christian Pana, our tour rep the
Speaker 2: other day about high loft at fairwy woods, and we've
Speaker 2: built like Daniel Chropra built in elwood ellwood, like lobwood
Speaker 2: yel for lob that he used in the major championships
Speaker 2: to gouge it out of the rough. So I was
Speaker 2: a little bit shocked by that.
Speaker 1: I mean, is that, like, what what's the loft on
Speaker 1: an elle?
Speaker 2: I think that thing had thirty loft right and in
Speaker 2: kind of a knife's edge, and but he I remember
Speaker 2: he hit it out of the rough and could just
Speaker 2: gouge it out there. So that one was kind of shocking.
Speaker 2: But we've had a lot of interesting requests over the years,
Speaker 2: but it comes from their own friction, like hey, I'm
Speaker 2: out playing the rain, I see this happened, or what
Speaker 2: have you? Hey, help me solve that problem.
Speaker 3: You mentioned playing the US Open at wing Foot back
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty and you said players are hitting some
Speaker 3: thirty two percent of the fairways. Yeah, and you were
Speaker 3: thinking yourself, more loft on a wood helps, you know what.
Speaker 1: I feel like, that's that's a thought.
Speaker 3: Maybe not every golfer would have and that instance, but
Speaker 3: you know, you mentioned l wood in seven Woods and
Speaker 3: even nine Woods at times for tour players, it's so
Speaker 3: interesting how you can change and tweak your bag slightly
Speaker 3: depending on the golf course and what that golf course
Speaker 3: is asking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I mean wing foot, you get in the
Speaker 2: rough there?
Speaker 1: Holy, I find your off ball first?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, correct, hopefully.
Speaker 1: There's a spot there. Yeah, exactly, good caddy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you know, the PG the majors are next level,
Speaker 2: even for the tour players. You get to a major
Speaker 2: and they have to do things very different that the
Speaker 2: everyday golfer. You'll never even need that, you would never
Speaker 2: even need to be in that type of scenario, but
Speaker 2: you'll get. You get players like Victor Hovelin putting a
Speaker 2: seven wood in the bag for two holes at Augusta
Speaker 2: this year, and they were awesome. You know, on thirteen
Speaker 2: and fifteen. He hit him like when I was watching,
Speaker 2: it seemed like every round and he hit on the
Speaker 2: green you know, a bunch of times and made a
Speaker 2: bunch of birdies on those two holes. If he would
Speaker 2: have been hitting his normal driving iron, he'd be toasted
Speaker 2: on those two holes.
Speaker 3: So interesting to watch the tour players switch week to week. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously they have so many information about their
Speaker 3: golf games. And they can gain some information about what
Speaker 3: works best for golf courses in particular. But I always
Speaker 3: find that so fascinating. You always we creep up closer
Speaker 3: to the open and everybody move into that drive and Iowa, everybody's.
Speaker 1: Trying to get sound low and find the fairway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, a lot of times it's it's
Speaker 2: the three wood hybrid, driving iron, seven wood, nine wood.
Speaker 2: They're just mixing and matching, depend on the conditions and
Speaker 2: occasionally they're changing the bounce in or grind on their
Speaker 2: on their wedges right specific to those conditions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very very interesting.
Speaker 3: As you can see, we're outside, it's nice, it's it's
Speaker 3: it's relatively warm in Phoenix. You can check out everything
Speaker 3: if you follow Ping on social. All these clips will
Speaker 3: be on video and things like that, and also on YouTube.
Speaker 3: That is Marty Jerts and I'm Shane Bacon. This is
Speaker 3: the Ping Proving Grounds Podcast.