Speaker 1: The guys from paying.
Speaker 2: They've kind of showed me how much the equipment matters.
Speaker 2: I just love that I can hit any shot.
Speaker 3: I kind of want we're gonna be able to tell
Speaker 3: some fun stories about what goes on here to help
Speaker 3: golfers play better golf.
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Ping proven Grounds podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Shane Bacon, joined as always by Marty Jerts, and
Speaker 2: we've got doctor Paul Wood with us to go over
Speaker 2: the new G four forty irons. Paul and I want
Speaker 2: to start here because beauty matters a lot in terms
Speaker 2: of golf clubs, and these irons are beautiful. Are these
Speaker 2: some of the most aesthetically pleasing irons you've made?
Speaker 1: I would say so. I would say so. I know
Speaker 1: Marty's been designing irons for longer than I have, Particularly
Speaker 1: in a game improvement iron, it's a lot harder to
Speaker 1: make a bigger iron look sexy, and I feel like
Speaker 1: we've done a really good job with it and packed
Speaker 1: it on in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Marty's showing it off over there. Marty, I mean,
Speaker 2: you talk about game improven irons, and of course you
Speaker 2: know you can look at a blueprint iron and it
Speaker 2: looks very clean. Yeah, these look clean and normally, as
Speaker 2: Paul said, that that doesn't fit in a category all
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean one thing Shane we've talked about a
Speaker 3: lot is you know, you know, to make an iron
Speaker 3: look like this, so it looks like it doesn't have
Speaker 3: much of a cavity look to it. The cavity's kind
Speaker 3: of covered a lot of times. What would happen if
Speaker 3: you put a cover on it or structure there, geometry there,
Speaker 3: it would inhibit something that we're trying to do with it,
Speaker 3: which is to get the face to flex. So Paul,
Speaker 3: I think we should start there. Tell us a little
Speaker 3: bit about the face flexing, how we've kind of infused
Speaker 3: some distance into this iron category.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great place to start. And like you said, a
Speaker 1: lot of the things we do for performance, there's a
Speaker 1: trade off with the looks and sound and feel. So
Speaker 1: a lot of the we want to get the face
Speaker 1: to flex. If we want this iron to go far
Speaker 1: and to go high, the more we can get the
Speaker 1: face to flex the better. So a bigger cavity, a
Speaker 1: thinner face. But all those things make it want to
Speaker 1: look like a big cavity back iron, and they make
Speaker 1: it want to sound like a cowbell. So what's great
Speaker 1: with the pure flex badge is it's got I mean,
Speaker 1: you can see on here. It's a nice thick badge.
Speaker 1: It's got some depth to it. It fills the cavity.
Speaker 1: It looks amazing. But what we're trying to do is
Speaker 1: avoid it inhibiting the face flexing. So that's what the
Speaker 1: pure flex refers to. This one has four different little
Speaker 1: facets that can all flex independently. It allows the face
Speaker 1: to do its job and flex. And then it's those
Speaker 1: vibrations after the impact. Those are the ones that cause
Speaker 1: the sound. Those are the ones we're trying to damp down.
Speaker 1: So that initial big vibration that is impact, we want
Speaker 1: to let that go. The ones after impact are the
Speaker 1: ones we want to damp out.
Speaker 2: Paul, you talk a little bit about flex, you and
Speaker 2: you said, you say four. There's there's basically four parts
Speaker 2: of that that flex. Is that what you're saying exactly?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So each part can kind of move independently, and
Speaker 1: so it just allows the whole face to bend and
Speaker 1: flex and this thing stays out of the way.
Speaker 2: Is the point of that When you're talking about a
Speaker 2: game improvement? Iron is that for somebody that's maybe not
Speaker 2: hitting in the center of the golf club every time.
Speaker 2: It allows the club to still, you know, react or
Speaker 2: in a way where the ball might go in at
Speaker 2: least in the area they're hoping it goes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know, just like a metal would you know,
Speaker 1: the waste to increase bull speed and get the face moving.
Speaker 1: The more the face is bending and the less the
Speaker 1: ball is squishing, the more energy stays in the collision,
Speaker 1: and the more speeds you get, So the more we
Speaker 1: can get face moving, the better.
Speaker 3: Shane, I like to think about our iron designs to
Speaker 3: simplify it for our fitters and our consumers, is we
Speaker 3: have the irons where you the player brings the speed right,
Speaker 3: this is blueprint T blueprint as I two thirty. I
Speaker 3: two thirty has a little flex in the face get
Speaker 3: the ball up in the air. Then we have an iron,
Speaker 3: our irons where we're gonna supplement the speed with the
Speaker 3: club design. And that's right where the four to forty stands.
Speaker 3: This kind of fun little demo. If you if you
Speaker 3: push your thumb in the middle there, do you see
Speaker 3: how much that badge is flexing up? Paul tell the
Speaker 3: story of how we kind of discovered what the badge
Speaker 3: was doing. Right a few years ago, we ran that
Speaker 3: test on the ping Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we've you know, so we've known for a
Speaker 1: while we if we make the facest thin as we
Speaker 1: can will maximize ball speed. So we tried, let's just
Speaker 1: take the badge out completely and you know, put our
Speaker 1: fingers in our ears because the thing sound super loud.
Speaker 1: But then you can start to really quantify like what
Speaker 1: happens on ping Man when the badge is there, and
Speaker 1: then you just pop it out, keep exactly the same swing,
Speaker 1: see what's changing where things are moving, and then you
Speaker 1: start adding things back in and go what can we
Speaker 1: add back in to damp out the sound to make
Speaker 1: it look better. That doesn't touch performance. That's the trick.
Speaker 2: When you look at G four forty, who are you
Speaker 2: looking at in terms of a player. What's the player
Speaker 2: that's going to look at these irons and put them
Speaker 2: in the bag.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty wide group. I mean, I think you know,
Speaker 1: it's game improvement for a reason, Like most of these
Speaker 1: customers are people looking to get better at the game.
Speaker 1: Most of these players, like Marty said, don't have a
Speaker 1: ton of speed. I think that would be a big
Speaker 1: distinguishing factor. If you're hitting your seven nine two hundred yards,
Speaker 1: you probably don't need this set of ions. But for
Speaker 1: the other ninety nine point nine percent of golfers out there,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty good spot. But I mean the range
Speaker 1: of handicaps anything from total beginners to certainly single figure
Speaker 1: handicap golfers. And we've had some tour players play the
Speaker 1: gis I work for a lot of people, they're not
Speaker 1: too big.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's kind of a little bit of
Speaker 2: what we talked about in terms of look is you know,
Speaker 2: they look great. So if a player was gonna maybe
Speaker 2: throw up maybe a big four iron in the back
Speaker 2: or something like that. I mean, Marty, you were telling
Speaker 2: me you were testing these irons out and your seven
Speaker 2: irons are going two ten. I mean you can get
Speaker 2: some major distance. Probably not something you're really looking for
Speaker 2: in terms of what you might play, but when you
Speaker 2: think about what these irons are capable of doing, I mean,
Speaker 2: you can hit them a pretty long ways. The one
Speaker 2: thing I wonder about is spin. You know, when you
Speaker 2: think about a game im proven iron, something like the
Speaker 2: G four forty, how do you you know if you
Speaker 2: get to hit the ball kind of low, and you're
Speaker 2: not hitting the ball super far, how do you still
Speaker 2: make those iron spin?
Speaker 3: So when I was I was hitting them earlier today, Shane,
Speaker 3: and I was still it flew like yeah, two five,
Speaker 3: two ten with the seven iron, which I don't need
Speaker 3: that much distance per se with my seven iron, but
Speaker 3: my spin rate was still like sixty five hundred, which
Speaker 3: is only a few hundred rpm down from where I
Speaker 3: normally am with my blueprint irons. So I think that's
Speaker 3: a very big component of the four forty iron design
Speaker 3: right now. There's a lot of irons in the market
Speaker 3: for the high handicapped golfer where there's kind of this
Speaker 3: low spin epidemic a little bit where golfers are you know,
Speaker 3: kind of might look good in the indoor fitting bay
Speaker 3: that your iron's going a little bit further on your simulator,
Speaker 3: but they go play golf and their spin rate with
Speaker 3: the seven irons forty five hundred or something. We've definitely
Speaker 3: seen that. I've seen that when I've played in pro ams.
Speaker 2: So when you when you're saying that, I mean that's
Speaker 2: an iron that let's say you're hitting a six iron
Speaker 2: into a green that's laying on the front of the
Speaker 2: green and rolling off the back of the green like yeah,
Speaker 2: getting no, No, there's no capability of actually stopping that
Speaker 2: on the grounds.
Speaker 3: We like to call it stopping power, right, which which
Speaker 3: is we can quantify this a bunch of different ways.
Speaker 3: It's kind of your peak height, your land angle, combination
Speaker 3: of those things. We have a lot of great fitting
Speaker 3: tools for this. But that was a big priority in
Speaker 3: the four forty is Hey, yeah, we want this thing
Speaker 3: to compete from a distance standpoint. It is actually really
Speaker 3: good to help somebody hit a seven iron instead of
Speaker 3: in you know, instead of a six iron from that spot.
Speaker 3: But let's still have that ball be able to stop
Speaker 3: the ball on the green. So Paul tell us a
Speaker 3: little bit about like kind of the engineering meat and
Speaker 3: potatoes that allows that to happen in the four to
Speaker 3: forty iron.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you know, one of those things is being
Speaker 1: able to go really thin in the face, and obviously
Speaker 1: by doing that we get more bull speed. More ball
Speaker 1: speed is more distance. The other major thing we've done
Speaker 1: in this iron, said, is to bring the center of
Speaker 1: mass down, and that's a theme with the whole g
Speaker 1: four to forty line. And there's a trade off. As
Speaker 1: you move the center of mass down, you're getting that
Speaker 1: center of mass more in line with where impact is,
Speaker 1: you're getting a better energy transfer and again more distance.
Speaker 1: Like you go a little higher, the trade off often
Speaker 1: is with forgiveness, and so as you're moving mass down,
Speaker 1: it's going slightly counter to moving mass out sometimes and
Speaker 1: it all depends where you're starting from. So we've spent
Speaker 1: the last sixty five years engineering forgiveness into the irons.
Speaker 1: We can afford to make a little bit of a
Speaker 1: trade off, go down in center of mass and still
Speaker 1: have the most forgiving iron out there, but relative to
Speaker 1: the G four to thirty, this goes just that little
Speaker 1: bit higher, which, as you know, we can get stopping
Speaker 1: by from spin or we can get it from height
Speaker 1: or both, and we're doing a little bit of both with.
Speaker 3: The sign YEP.
Speaker 2: I mean, is this feedback you guys get from people
Speaker 2: that play paying I'd love for the ball to spin
Speaker 2: a little bit more with the game improvement level iron.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it depends who you talk to. I
Speaker 1: think the average consumer doesn't frame it like that. They
Speaker 1: want they say, I want to I want to be
Speaker 1: able to hit it further, but still have the ball
Speaker 1: stop on the go, and they're not necessarily articulating it
Speaker 1: in terms of Yeah, so we do as much interpreting
Speaker 1: what that means to us in terms of launching spin.
Speaker 1: But yeah, exactly. I think that's something we've heard that
Speaker 1: when they're buying the irons, they want them to be competitive,
Speaker 1: and like Marty said, our goal here is not to
Speaker 1: make the longest seven iron, but we want to make
Speaker 1: a long seven iron that is the most functional on
Speaker 1: the course and helps you stop in it all.
Speaker 3: So, Paul brings up a very good point. If you
Speaker 3: increase ball speed alone and keep the same initial launch
Speaker 3: in same spin rate, you're going to achieve a higher
Speaker 3: peak height in more stopping power. It's one of the benefits.
Speaker 3: It's like hybrids. Generally, if you tested a hybrid versus
Speaker 3: a long iron, it will launch the initial launch will
Speaker 3: be slightly lower, quite often interesting, but it will end
Speaker 3: up going way higher. So people perceive that it launches higher,
Speaker 3: but it's really more about the peak height in the
Speaker 3: stopping power, right, Paul.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what you see is when you look up, how
Speaker 1: high is the ball in the sky, You're not seeing
Speaker 1: the launch angle as much.
Speaker 2: How about the new length progression with the g irons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we have. We've basically squeezed slightly longer gaps
Speaker 1: between from starting at the seven iron, seven and six,
Speaker 1: six and five, five and four and the whole goal
Speaker 1: there was you know, we know that talking of feedback
Speaker 1: from this customer, most of these players struggle to get
Speaker 1: the distance out of a five iron or a four
Speaker 1: iron that they would like or maybe they used to get.
Speaker 1: So doing everything we can to help that customer get
Speaker 1: a little more functional gaps. So what we've done is
Speaker 1: you've gone from five eighths inch length and comments to
Speaker 1: three quarters. It's not a huge change, but it adds
Speaker 1: up once you get to like the six sign the
Speaker 1: five to four, and that's just enough. A little bit
Speaker 1: of extra length is giving you just a little more speed,
Speaker 1: a little more height, a little more distance. And now
Speaker 1: if we gave that length progression to Marty, you'd start
Speaker 1: to get gaps that are too big, yeah, because you
Speaker 1: have so much speed to start with. But in the
Speaker 1: hands of someone who's the core audience for this, that
Speaker 1: just helps go from not enough gap to functional.
Speaker 3: So we've got a half inch increment in length from
Speaker 3: seven iron and up. Then now three quorders, and we've
Speaker 3: also seen Shane We've talked about on the pod a lot.
Speaker 3: Even with the tour players playing a lot of high
Speaker 3: lofted fairway woods and things of this nature, that length
Speaker 3: progression helps blend also a little bit with either hybrids
Speaker 3: or high lofted fairy woods.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, a hybrid's a little bit of a jump
Speaker 1: from where the irons are, and then the ferry woods
Speaker 1: quite a bit more. Again, so this just helps bridge
Speaker 1: that gap a little more.
Speaker 2: I mean, Marty, I was wondering about blended sets. I mean,
Speaker 2: it feels like this could play into some of the
Speaker 2: players out there that are leaning towards a blended set.
Speaker 2: I mean, I know that's been extremely popular for the
Speaker 2: last few years with ping in particular, is not just
Speaker 2: sticking to one iron in your bag, but potentially going
Speaker 2: two and three different irons in your bag.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. I think we really design our two thirty
Speaker 3: blueprints to kind of be super easy to do with that.
Speaker 3: But the four forty, like a four or five iron,
Speaker 3: would be an awesome kind of blended set because the launch,
Speaker 3: the height, and now the look and feel. I mean,
Speaker 3: every year we launch a g iron, I think they
Speaker 3: get better looking, and this is gonna be the best
Speaker 3: looking yet obviously.
Speaker 2: I mean in the summer, and by the way, when
Speaker 2: it gets kind of hot here in Arizona, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: imagine you throwing like the three iron in there that
Speaker 2: goes about two eighty five and never even have to
Speaker 2: head driver. I could see that right up your alley.
Speaker 2: But I mean that is one of the benefits of
Speaker 2: having so many options. I mean, when you think about
Speaker 2: the options, and you stated earlier, I mean kind of
Speaker 2: going through some of the irons that Ping has, is
Speaker 2: you could lean into something like that even if you
Speaker 2: were a great player in Paul, I know you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 2: I mean it's not exactly specific to a certain golfer
Speaker 2: out there, but multiple golfers could play multiple irons, but
Speaker 2: potentially lean into the four forty.
Speaker 1: Like, like we said, they're not that big, they don't
Speaker 1: look they don't have a huge bulky top rail. They
Speaker 1: looked apart. So I think there's a lot of golfers
Speaker 1: who could try them and find they work really well.
Speaker 3: Paul, Let's talk a little bit about some of the
Speaker 3: things we've learned about this customer from our Arcos data.
Speaker 3: In our Arcost partnership. You know, what are some of
Speaker 3: the insights we've seen that have helped informed decisions we've made,
Speaker 3: whether it's groove design or finish or where are they
Speaker 3: on the are they in the rough from a certain
Speaker 3: spot or the fairway? From our ARCOS data, can you
Speaker 3: give it? Tell us a few examples here?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, now you're speak in my language. This is.
Speaker 2: For those all.
Speaker 1: I'm a mathematician, so this is my kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So in our Arcost data set, you've got this wonderful
Speaker 1: experiment of thousands of players playing these kind of irondsets,
Speaker 1: and we just look at where are they going on
Speaker 1: the course, what are they doing? And like you said,
Speaker 1: some simple things we can do or look at. Okay,
Speaker 1: for everyone paying playing G four to thirty irons, what
Speaker 1: are their average gaps? You know, where are they short?
Speaker 1: You know, where they starting to fall off in terms
Speaker 1: of they don't hit the four iron anywhere near as
Speaker 1: far as they think they do. Are we seeing miss
Speaker 1: tennancies left and right? A big one, like you mentioned,
Speaker 1: is where are they hitting from? So we can look
Speaker 1: at how often are they in the fairway, how often
Speaker 1: are they in the rough? How often are they are
Speaker 1: for tea. I mean, one thing that we talked about,
Speaker 1: which is when you think about it, it makes sense,
Speaker 1: but we'd never really thought about it, was like, with
Speaker 1: a seven iron in hand, you're almost equally likely to
Speaker 1: be in the fairway, in the rough or hitting off
Speaker 1: of tea because there's a bunch of path threes out
Speaker 1: there that you may well be hitting a seven iron
Speaker 1: you're not. You know, nobody hits every fairway and the
Speaker 1: average golfer hits maybe half of fairways. So it makes
Speaker 1: a ton of sense that we need that iron to
Speaker 1: be functional, not just from the fairway where we do
Speaker 1: a lot of testing, but out of the rough, which
Speaker 1: then brings in well, you know, that makes it really
Speaker 1: important to have the best groove profile we possibly can
Speaker 1: off of tea. We need to know how it performs,
Speaker 1: like high on the face as well as in the
Speaker 1: middle of the face, all that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 1: has been great for that, and when you're aggregating over
Speaker 1: one hundred million shots in the database, some really interesting
Speaker 1: stuff pops out.
Speaker 2: Paul, we talk a lot about sound in terms of
Speaker 2: golf clubs, and I feel like most of the time
Speaker 2: we focus that the conversation around woods and drivers. How
Speaker 2: important is sound when you're designing a new iron.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd argue it's every bit is important, if not
Speaker 1: more important in some ways. It just like with mental woods.
Speaker 1: Everyone has their tastes, what sounds good, what doesn't. But
Speaker 1: you're it's not just what's pleasing, right. If it was
Speaker 1: just about making a pleasing sound, we'd make it, make
Speaker 1: a perfect a note or something right. It's more about
Speaker 1: matching up the expectations of what you think is going
Speaker 1: to happen and what happened to inform the next shot. Right.
Speaker 1: So we're using that feedback when we're making the next
Speaker 1: golf shot. Right. You want to know, like do I
Speaker 1: get some information about where I hit that on the face?
Speaker 1: Do I does the sound match up with my expectation
Speaker 1: of what just happens. So it's not just a like dislike,
Speaker 1: it's actually helping you play about a golf interesting.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a part of feel, right, like sound
Speaker 2: is a part of your feel.
Speaker 1: Sound and feel pretty much interchangeable, and often when people
Speaker 1: say feel they mean sound right and vice versus. So
Speaker 1: it's the fascinating topic and totally different wing of engineering,
Speaker 1: but a lot of it's psychology but a lot of
Speaker 1: it's what you describe a sound isn't necessarily matching the
Speaker 1: physics of the sound. When you say it's loud, that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean decimals. That might mean frequency, or it
Speaker 1: might mean you know how much the sound is ringing out.
Speaker 1: And that's odd job to figure out. When you say
Speaker 1: I don't like it it's loud, what does that actually
Speaker 1: mean in the physics?
Speaker 2: What are you trying to actually tell me? I mean, already,
Speaker 2: this is a big thing you've talked about in terms
Speaker 2: of practice. You know, you're practicing without stuff in your
Speaker 2: ears because sound is such an important part of when
Speaker 2: you're actually playing golf, Like you play play golf against
Speaker 2: your buddies. You don't have air pods in right, And
Speaker 2: I mean when you're practicing, if you're not listening to
Speaker 2: the golf shot, you might not be getting exactly what
Speaker 2: you're trying to get out of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good home experiment if you want to
Speaker 3: see if you can feel the difference between two clubs
Speaker 3: or two putters, put noise canceling headphones on and try
Speaker 3: to discern a field difference and you'll find out for
Speaker 3: yourself that. Yeah, it's probably mostly sound that you just
Speaker 3: driving your field.
Speaker 2: Marty. I'm excited for your family to to to send
Speaker 2: us notes about how they come to you. And you've
Speaker 2: got the air canceling things in the SIEM trying to
Speaker 2: hit different.
Speaker 3: Show and research over here.
Speaker 2: I promise you you have done it. If anybody's done,
Speaker 2: it's been you. Paul.
Speaker 3: Let's talk a little bit about the shafts. So it's
Speaker 3: part of going longer in the long irons. You know,
Speaker 3: some that we've had a few versions of was a
Speaker 3: shaft technology called AWT, which stands for a sending weight technology.
Speaker 3: A lot of the shafts out there are actually heavier
Speaker 3: in the long irons and then get lighter in the
Speaker 3: short irons. AWT kind of does the opposite tell us
Speaker 3: about the genesis of that chef family in the in
Speaker 3: the new AWT three point zero.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this has been fun. Like you mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: typically when you're designing a set of sea steel shafts, right,
Speaker 1: the longest shaft, which would be the longest iron, would
Speaker 1: be the heaviest, and as you start chopping that shaft down,
Speaker 1: it would be the lightest. So it makes sense that
Speaker 1: in the early days all iron shafts were descending weight.
Speaker 1: As you went from the three iron to the wedge,
Speaker 1: they got lighter, But actually, when you look at the
Speaker 1: whole rest of the set, the lighter shaft in the
Speaker 1: bag is the driver yep, where we're trying to squeeze
Speaker 1: as much speed out of it as possible and get
Speaker 1: the ball up in the air. The heaviest shaft in
Speaker 1: the bag is your wedg shaft, where we're trying to
Speaker 1: be all about control, we're not trying to squeeze out
Speaker 1: more speed. So just intuitively, and I think ascending weight
Speaker 1: was your idea in the first place.
Speaker 3: Right, Descending weight didn't make sense.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and then we had that conversation in whatever two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine or something. It just makes sense to
Speaker 1: try to blend the weight of the shaft for what
Speaker 1: you're trying to do, which is in the long iron
Speaker 1: you want to get more speed and get the ball
Speaker 1: up in the air. A lighter shaft helps with that,
Speaker 1: and in the wedge you're trying to get more control,
Speaker 1: more precision, and the heaviest shaft helps her that. The
Speaker 1: challenge is it's not easy to make steel shafts in
Speaker 1: this ascending weight fashion. I think we did a good
Speaker 1: job with our first AWT, but it's really hard to
Speaker 1: make them all feel similar. In AT two, we did
Speaker 1: a great job making them making them feel great, and
Speaker 1: so that's been hard to beat for a long time.
Speaker 1: This is the year we finally feel like we have
Speaker 1: a new shaft that's new and improved over AWT two.
Speaker 1: So we've just extended that ascending weight technology. Now it's
Speaker 1: on average about a three gram difference from shaft to shafts,
Speaker 1: so like going from the six to the seven is
Speaker 1: a three gram difference, whereas in the a ET two
Speaker 1: it's about two grams. So we kept it simple there
Speaker 1: and just what that means is we've been out to
Speaker 1: blend that even better. So particularly in the long irons there,
Speaker 1: they still have the stiffness that you need, but they're
Speaker 1: lighter than they are in the previous year in the
Speaker 1: previous irons, so they're easier to get the ball up
Speaker 1: in the air. Our testing shows more ball speed, higher
Speaker 1: launch just helps with more distance in the long irons.
Speaker 2: Paul, it's twenty twenty five and yet we can't get
Speaker 2: away from the I to the wedge. You think about
Speaker 2: it continuing to be a part of the family. I
Speaker 2: know it's a part of the four to forty as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, So one of the bits of research, in fact,
Speaker 1: partly inspired by our Arcos research, partly inspired by consumer research,
Speaker 1: is this customer in general is telling us they really
Speaker 1: want more help in bunkers with their sandwidg Well, what
Speaker 1: better club as they've been out there than the itwo soundwarch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so there's a lot of aspects of the Sandwidge
Speaker 1: in this set that are inspired by I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: it's a complete recreation of the ITO, but as you
Speaker 1: look down at it, you'll see some of those features
Speaker 1: that made it so good. In the bunker, we've incorporated
Speaker 1: some of the shaping of the head. That's the necking
Speaker 1: of the hozzle, you know, that has a distinct look,
Speaker 1: but it's there for a reason. It goes through the
Speaker 1: sand better than a traditional hozzle. So we've incorporated those
Speaker 1: to maximize how easy it is to get these shots
Speaker 1: out of the bunker.
Speaker 2: Marty, It's always crazy to me as we go in
Speaker 2: the new technology new clubs at Ping, how you guys
Speaker 2: and everybody kind of behind the scenes will touch history.
Speaker 2: We'll go back twenty thirty years and find, you know,
Speaker 2: little nods that work in today's technology, in today's golf
Speaker 2: club's manufacturing, and you kind of think about the history.
Speaker 2: It never really goes away.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even even get into the length progressions. I mean
Speaker 3: Carston built that into the original itos was non linear lengths, right,
Speaker 3: It didn't make sense to him. He was he was
Speaker 3: charting things out. He was charting lofts versus length instead
Speaker 3: of club number versus length. So some of these ideas
Speaker 3: are you know, just kind of old ideas applied to
Speaker 3: modern Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, old ideas, but you could use all the technology
Speaker 2: now atay and make them sing.
Speaker 1: You know what.
Speaker 3: One of the big ones, Shane I'm excited about is
Speaker 3: bringing our kind of trajectory tuning lobe system to our
Speaker 3: fitting environment. So now with the AFS we call it
Speaker 3: ANFS three D and three D stands for three dimensional fitting.
Speaker 3: We can fit multiple color codes, are ligle, and do
Speaker 3: power spec in one fitting head. So customers are going
Speaker 3: to be able to play around with color code and
Speaker 3: it looks a lot better with the sleeve on it
Speaker 3: and be able to experience a power spec And actually
Speaker 3: with the four to forty we also have retro spec
Speaker 3: fitting heads in our AFS fitting cart. So Paul tell
Speaker 3: us a little bit about, you know, fitting for spin rates.
Speaker 3: Who might be a good candidate for retro, Who might
Speaker 3: be a good candidate for power Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, it's a great question. I mean we've seen this.
Speaker 1: You know. We build the standard specs of the gions
Speaker 1: to the middle of the bell curve, right, that's kind
Speaker 1: of the whole point. There's a population out there. We
Speaker 1: fit the middle of that bell curve. But then there's
Speaker 1: plenty of people on the two ends of that bell curve,
Speaker 1: and interestingly enough, like myself and my dad would be
Speaker 1: good examples off two ends of that spectrum. I hit
Speaker 1: the ball really high. I have a decent amount of speed,
Speaker 1: but I'm not like you guys. But I'm a good
Speaker 1: candidate for power spec because I'm hitting the ball high.
Speaker 1: I'm getting a lot of spin, and so actually i
Speaker 1: can increase distance quite a bit without losing stopping power
Speaker 1: because I'm at the high stopping power end of the spectrum.
Speaker 1: So power spec for me. He just brings it down
Speaker 1: a little, brings the spin down from high to medium,
Speaker 1: and everything's good. My dad's the opposite. He's very hands forward.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have a lot of speed, but the ball
Speaker 1: doesn't go high, and so for him, he actually like
Speaker 1: going up and loft actually helps him game distance even
Speaker 1: in a seven nine. Interesting, Yeah, because he's low low spin,
Speaker 1: low spin, like low enough launch angle that actually going
Speaker 1: up in loft is helping him gain distance. Now that's
Speaker 1: not always the case. Sometimes it's it's really a stopping
Speaker 1: PIW versus distance trade off. But there's plenty of people
Speaker 1: out there. When you talk a lot to coaches and
Speaker 1: you say how many players need to launch the ball
Speaker 1: a bunch higher, there'll be a lot of hands raised fall.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're you're screaming what we scream a lot
Speaker 2: on this podcast Get Fit. I mean it seems like,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a big part of this. I mean,
Speaker 2: you're you're explaining it as well, Marty. I mean it
Speaker 2: seems like there's no iron maybe that ping produces that's
Speaker 2: more important to get Fit than the four forty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I just love that we're not just fitting
Speaker 3: for langle, right, We're not just fitting for left right,
Speaker 3: we're fitting for spin because yeah, all these Paul's shallow.
Speaker 3: You rarely take a divot right with your irons right,
Speaker 3: So he just doesn't have as much shaffling in his dynamics.
Speaker 3: My father in law is very similar to your dad.
Speaker 3: It sounds like like like a decent amount of shaffleing.
Speaker 3: And so you're not going to change those swings. You
Speaker 3: got to fit the club to those And because we
Speaker 3: custom build all of these here, we we loft and
Speaker 3: lie themall so it's it's no extra cost to get
Speaker 3: to get your iron styled in and fit your spin window.
Speaker 3: And we have a lot of great fitting tools and
Speaker 3: co pilot and charts and things of that nature to
Speaker 3: help guide our fitters.
Speaker 2: Marty, I love that you guys all know each other's
Speaker 2: golf swings. It's very it's like kind of cute, you know.
Speaker 2: You're like, I know how you swing, and I don't
Speaker 2: know how far Marty hits it. And it feels like
Speaker 2: it's across the board. Everybody kind of knows everybody's golf game.
Speaker 1: I mean, why we're right here where we do the
Speaker 1: play testing, and quite often you'll be out and I'll
Speaker 1: be doing my playtest and Marty stood next to me
Speaker 1: doing his, and then suddenly I feel a little more
Speaker 1: self conscious about my swing. But it's it's kind of fun.
Speaker 1: You do you know you might have three tests going
Speaker 1: at the same time and you'll you'll watch each other
Speaker 1: doing the tests and hitting good shots, hitting bad shots.
Speaker 2: How does player testing work for game improvement Irons? Because
Speaker 2: obviously if you think about something with the blueprint, you'd
Speaker 2: go to tour players. I mean you go to Victor
Speaker 2: Hoven and say, how does this look? How does this feel?
Speaker 2: Things like that. Who are you approaching in terms of
Speaker 2: testing out a game improven iron?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question. So we still will utilize
Speaker 1: people like Marty, but but obviously he's not the target market,
Speaker 1: but will utilize the fact that he has a super
Speaker 1: consistent swing and we can look at differences. You know,
Speaker 1: we're testing out two shafts and we want to know
Speaker 1: what's the true difference between those shafts. We get more
Speaker 1: repeatable data from a tour player or someone like a Marty,
Speaker 1: but we do as much of our like final testing
Speaker 1: as possible with the target audience, So people of the
Speaker 1: swing speed range, the handicapp range, and you you more data.
Speaker 1: It's it's often a little bit noisier data, but you
Speaker 1: need to test with the real people.
Speaker 2: They are going to use that right so well, So exactly.
Speaker 1: We'll do both, but we end up testing a wider
Speaker 1: pool of players with game improvement because the swings are
Speaker 1: less repeatable.
Speaker 2: The G four forty Iron, as we mentioned off the top,
Speaker 2: it looks awesome obviously. It seems like it's got a
Speaker 2: lot of opportunity for a widespread group of players. And
Speaker 2: I mean it's not just as you mentioned, not just
Speaker 2: the player that hits it short. It could be for
Speaker 2: any player out there that might be looking for something.
Speaker 2: And as you said, there're spectrums as well for different
Speaker 2: types of players.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one and every every year, Like we we're very
Speaker 1: proud of all the clubs we do, but there's always
Speaker 1: a bit of a favorite in there. Of which one
Speaker 1: do we think we really nailed it this year? You know,
Speaker 1: I think you could argue with the four thirty line
Speaker 1: the Driver was that with the four forty. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of us feel like the Iron is the superstar.
Speaker 2: Here, Marty, you feel that way.
Speaker 3: It's hard to hell, man, it's always hard to pick
Speaker 3: a favorite.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, you're always gonna lean driver. I
Speaker 2: see you over there.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go around a limb. I think the hybrid
Speaker 3: actually okay, because interesting they're I mean, you can't pick
Speaker 3: a favorite kid, Yeah, but the Hybrid launches a little higher,
Speaker 3: goes a little bit higher. I think we're gonna We're
Speaker 3: Hybrid is gonna be the little mini sleeper of the
Speaker 3: line in my personal opinion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that is for months to come to
Speaker 2: really figure out which which clubs everybody's favorite, But for
Speaker 2: now we have some really really good ones. Uh, Paul,
Speaker 2: We always appreciate the time the irons look great, and
Speaker 2: we always appreciate the insight.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: This is the Pink proven Grounds Podcast.