WEBVTT - Episode 27: In the Archives (Feat. Rob Griffin) 0:00:00.400 --> 0:00:02.400 The guys from Ping. They've kind of showed me how 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:05.120 much the equipment matters. I just love that I can 0:00:05.200 --> 0:00:06.600 hit any shot I kind of want. 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:08.520 We're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about 0:00:08.520 --> 0:00:10.640 what goes on here to help golfers play better golf. 0:00:11.480 --> 0:00:14.040 Welcome back to the Ping Proving Grounds podcast. I'm Shane Bacon. 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:16.640 That is Marty Jertsen, and this is a very very 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:18.640 important thing to tell you off the bat. If you're 0:00:18.640 --> 0:00:22.520 listening to the podcast, pause the podcast for a moment 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:25.040 and then open it back up on YouTube, because I 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:28.280 will say, Marty, it's gonna be a visual medium. Today. 0:00:28.720 --> 0:00:32.440 Rob Griffin is with us. We are in the archive room. Rob, 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:35.080 this is where I would say the magic happens, but 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:37.599 the magic has been happening for a long time. How 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:40.480 long have you been at Ping and how many golf 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:42.720 clubs do you feel like are in the archive room 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:43.160 right now? 0:00:43.280 --> 0:00:47.839 Well, I've been at Ping since nineteen eighty six. I 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:51.319 did leave for three years, but I came back. And 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:54.880 when I started, I was the company's photographer, so I 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:59.760 shot all kinds of stuff for the company, tour events. 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:01.280 I thought I was going to shoot a lot of 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:03.960 tour events turned out. I was shot more product okay 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:08.400 than anything. But then I left in two thousand and two. 0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:11.600 I came back in two thousand and five. My hair 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:13.720 had turned white, so they said I could be the historian. 0:01:15.200 --> 0:01:17.720 That was all it took. On the rest today, Yeah, 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:19.840 it's gotten a little wider. You can do. You can 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:21.880 get the archive room, you can have that. What what 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:23.680 are the club's day back to? I mean you're talking 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:25.680 like I was looking around as before we got going, 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:28.320 and I was picking out clubs I played when I 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:30.840 was a junior golfer. What year are some of these 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:31.720 clubs dating back to? 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:35.600 Well as far back as maybe late fifty eight, nineteen 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:36.200 fifty nine. 0:01:36.480 --> 0:01:37.160 Unbelievable. 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:39.640 And how many there are in here? I don't know. 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:41.880 Exactly, but you can guess. 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:45.559 I guess, yeah, there's more than a few thousand, okay. 0:01:46.360 --> 0:01:49.800 And we actually have three other rooms over in another building, 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:53.000 and in one of those rooms is full of clubs. 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:54.720 So there's what year do they push you? Do they 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:57.080 push you to that room like on an office space situation. 0:01:57.280 --> 0:02:03.240 Oh yeah, but that's over there where there's no there's 0:02:03.280 --> 0:02:04.520 no heater cooling. 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:05.840 That's right, Okay, Okay, you don't want to be there 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:06.280 in the summer. 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:07.680 You don't want to be there in the summer. But 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:10.320 that's where most of the wooden woods are actually, which 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:12.480 is not a good maybe not the best thing, but 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:14.160 that's where most of the wooden woods. 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:17.640 Are rob I think one thing that US engineers have 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:20.320 heard a lot of stories about through the family, through 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:24.760 John Solheim when we're working on product development, is about 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:29.680 Carston the originator. Give a little insight to the listener 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:32.480 about him, maybe some of the fun pro I mean, 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:34.880 I love looking at some of the from fun prototypes 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:39.560 that he made or welded together, tried, you know, had 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:42.440 his technicians go make real quickly. Give us a little 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:46.640 insight into Carston and what made him tick. Well. 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:49.480 Carsten's whole thing was he was trying to make the 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:54.240 game of golf easier for the average player. That was 0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:57.360 his whole goal in life was to build a golf 0:02:57.360 --> 0:03:01.080 club that would make the game easier to play. He 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:04.720 was a great problem solver, always trying to think how 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:09.320 to improve his golf club or design a new putter, 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:13.960 things like that. So you know there's a driver up 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:19.000 here that's the square stainless steel square driver, and you 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:21.400 know he just wanted to see how will that work? 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:23.880 And I know when he was working on that with 0:03:24.520 --> 0:03:28.400 Greg Schmidt, one of our engineers, Greg told him, he says, Carson, 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:33.120 that's going to cow bell and sure enough it did. 0:03:33.160 --> 0:03:36.200 But Carson said, no, it's okay, let's let's try it anyway, 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:40.240 and they tried it, and sure enough it made a 0:03:40.280 --> 0:03:42.320 cow bell sound. It was pretty loud. 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:43.920 I mean, but I mean you're talking about a square 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:47.400 driver that was built in the nineties, yeah. 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:49.520 Or probably sometime in the early nineties and. 0:03:49.560 --> 0:03:51.160 The early nineties. So, you know, you think about the 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:53.320 innovation of golf and how we go through these ebbs 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:55.840 and flows with certain designs. I mean, Marty's been, you know, 0:03:56.160 --> 0:03:58.640 so influential in that over the last twenty twenty five years. 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:01.680 But some of the things that you have on these ricks, 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:04.600 I mean, you're showing me an upside down putter from 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.400 years ago. A lot of the ideas were just simply 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:08.600 will this work or will this name? 0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:11.320 Yeah, let's see what happens. You know, Alan even told 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:13.920 me one time that when Alan had an idea, Carson 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:16.280 would ask him, have you tried doing it? Just backwards 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:19.080 of that, have you tried doing that? One hundred and 0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:20.960 eighty degrees just to see what happens. 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:26.840 Yeah, I think Carston was the originator of what we're 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:33.040 still doing today, which is trying things fail and learn 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:37.080 from your failures, right, And he really started us on 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:40.479 that journey, rob And it is fun to look at 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:42.800 all the well you could call it a failure, but 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:46.000 quote unquote, you know, failures that are learnings that we've 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:47.920 you know, continued to build upon. 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:48.320 Right. 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:52.880 Oh, absolutely, no, I mean, he he wasn't He wasn't 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:55.200 afraid to fail. He wasn't afraid for something. 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:57.920 Not to work. How did the process of starting an 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:01.160 archive room begin? Because I can only imagine you had 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:03.520 a lot of these things laying around somewhere and you 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:06.400 might as well display what you're saying, seventy years of 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:07.880 golf clubs in this room, right. 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:14.279 Well, the way the original idea of this started in 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:18.520 the mid nineties and we had a historian. Her name 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:23.240 was don Wingert, and she had actually been John's assistant 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:28.320 administrative assistant for a while quite a while, and so 0:05:28.360 --> 0:05:30.920 she became the first historian and she did a lot 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:34.880 of great work. I fall back on stuff that she's found, 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:38.600 and she kind of did the initial organization of it, 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:41.640 and a lot of the putters that I have are 0:05:41.680 --> 0:05:45.000 because she went up to shipping and grabbed a bunch 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:45.520 of putters. 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:48.560 You know, we need this for the archive, right, like. 0:05:48.920 --> 0:05:51.440 These white putters over here, which we didn't sell very 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:55.000 we hardly ever sold. I'm almost positive that she went 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:57.039 up to shipping and then we're up there and she says, 0:05:57.240 --> 0:06:01.320 I'll take all those stuff like that. She really got 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:03.240 to start, you know, She's the one that got it started. 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:07.200 So much of what I have done since then, I've 0:06:07.240 --> 0:06:10.160 fallen back on stuff that she had done. 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:12.040 Rob. 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:14.760 I think one of the one of the things that 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:16.960 a lot of people don't know about is how influential 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:22.760 Louise was in uh the entire company, especially some of 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:27.760 the the the naming of the answer putter. She was 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:34.640 a lab technician for for in the research industry, well dynamics. 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:37.760 Actually she worked for Convert and she worked in the 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:40.680 wind tunnel and her job title. 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:42.680 Was computer, just computer computer. 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:47.240 She was a math whiz, and so her job was 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:49.800 to take the data that these engineers got from the 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:53.200 wind tunnel and to somehow or other condense it into 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:56.039 something they could really use. And that was you know, 0:06:56.080 --> 0:06:59.800 that's one of the jobs she had. And then later 0:06:59.880 --> 0:07:02.719 on when they were in New York, she actually worked 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:06.200 for a government agency, the Dairy Board or something like that. 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:13.320 And so, you know, she was very smart in terms 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:17.280 of Carston and Louise. I always tell people this that 0:07:17.520 --> 0:07:21.000 if Carston had married a different young lady, we probably 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:24.720 wouldn't be here today. She was that important to what 0:07:24.760 --> 0:07:26.960 we did. She came to work every day just like 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:30.600 Carston did, and she was more of the personal touch 0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:33.720 with the employees and things like that. And yes, she 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:37.480 named some of the putters, including the Answer famously, the 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:38.160 answer putter. 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:41.760 So is the story on that was it was drop 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:44.000 a letter to make it fit on the putter? Was 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:44.560 that how it went? 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:48.600 Yeah, so Carston, you know, Carston came home from the 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:55.400 La Open in January of sixty six and Arnold Palmer's 0:07:55.880 --> 0:07:58.640 putter was the most popular putter out there at the time, 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:02.320 the eighty eight oh two, and so Carston came home 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:04.440 and he told Louise he needed to find an answer 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:10.720 to Arnie's putter. So within days Carston had a drawing, 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:14.760 he had a sample and it was get He needed 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:18.520 to go to the engraver to have the plates engraved 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:21.480 to put the name on the putter. This started a 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:23.560 few days before he had to go, and he said, 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:25.040 you know, I need a name for my putter. And 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:26.640 she says, why don't you just call it the Answer, 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:29.240 because it's your answer to Ernie's putter. He said, well, 0:08:29.280 --> 0:08:33.320 that's no name for a putter, you know. So they 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:34.120 went back and forth. 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:38.080 One whiffs was considering what that name has done in 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:39.800 the lineage of pain exactly. 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:42.000 So they went back and forth a couple of days, 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:43.760 and then the morning that he was supposed to go, 0:08:44.160 --> 0:08:47.679 he had his appointment to go to the engraver. They 0:08:47.720 --> 0:08:49.560 woke up and you know, he said, you know, I 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:52.400 still need a name for this putter. And she said, 0:08:52.720 --> 0:08:55.120 I told you call it the Answer. And he goes, well, 0:08:55.280 --> 0:08:57.960 that's too long. It won't fit. And she said, we'll 0:08:58.040 --> 0:09:01.000 drop the W. It'll sound the same anyway. 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:02.400 And there you go, and there you have it. 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:06.080 Yeah, how do you low? So you're talking initially in 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:08.960 terms of archival stuff, it was go grab a club 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:10.960 and let's put this to the side so we don't 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:15.199 forget about this putter or this prototype. I'm assuming that 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:18.320 process is a little bit more computerized if you will 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:20.640 these days, how do you go about making sure every 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:23.320 club from ping is in the room, every new club 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:24.680 gets a spot in your room. 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.280 I placed an order just like a customer. Okay, that's 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:31.480 literally what I do, because I had tried other ways. 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:33.440 People would say, oh, yeah, I can get you that, 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:36.520 I can get you that, and it never it wouldn't 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:38.959 show up half the time. And so we just went 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:41.520 to the idea of just well, place an order just 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:42.160 like a customer. 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:43.880 And if you need a new driver, do you just 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:45.840 place two? Is that's kind of how it goes. You 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:48.080 just say I actually need two of those drivers for myself. 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:49.480 It's what I'm saying. I just I got to have 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:51.719 just an extra one just in case it doesn't quite work. 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:54.080 It's not how it goes. They keep an eye on that. 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:56.160 My badge doesn't let me walk out the door. 0:09:57.600 --> 0:10:00.160 Marty. When you look around this room, I mean you 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:02.480 see clubs that you designed. How cool was that to 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:05.640 kind of you know, see your clubs that you started 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:07.880 as you know, mocking on a paper and working on 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:11.320 a computer, to next to the square driver from the 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:14.079 nineties or the white putters that maybe didn't make the team. 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:17.200 Yeah, it's it's incredible. And one of the funnest projects 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:20.560 I had where you know, coming into the archives and 0:10:20.679 --> 0:10:24.800 learning and getting the history was working on the Answer iron. 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:27.240 So we worked on a forged iron that had a 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:31.599 milled cavity in the back, multi material and the original 0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:35.000 answer iron we're looking at over here. Rob can kind 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:37.720 of tell the story of a little bit is getting 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:41.600 some forge blanks and then Carston and Allen I think 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:44.760 Alan worked on milling. 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:49.160 Yeah, Alan did all the milling on the forge. They'd 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:52.160 get the forge blanks for the sixty nine irons, which 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:55.480 was the first model that they did. We got the 0:10:55.600 --> 0:11:01.000 heads from golf Craft. Yeah, and golf Craft became titleist, 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:03.559 but they got the heads from golf Craft. They get 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:06.800 him here. Then Alan would mill out the cavities. It 0:11:06.840 --> 0:11:11.480 had a dual cavity that one did, and then you know, 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:14.120 to Carston's design and then they would send they had 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:16.200 to send the heads back to golf Craft to be chromed. 0:11:17.080 --> 0:11:18.880 Then they'd come back here and they'd weigh out the 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:21.120 heads and so they could put them into sets. 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:25.120 And that cavity made him more forgiving, giving higher moment 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:27.440 of nursia. That's what I loved about Carson is A 0:11:27.640 --> 0:11:30.280 he was not afraid to try some wild ideas and 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:34.439 B he thought from a physics based kind of first 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:38.400 principles approach. Uh, Rob, I want to go back to that, 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:41.679 Louise a little bit working in the wind tunnel, because 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:47.839 fast forward to golf club design. Yes, we I'm looking 0:11:47.880 --> 0:11:51.360 at the turbulator design that we developed in a wind tunnel, 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:54.280 right and having that kind of in our company DNA, 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:59.280 Carston and John wanted to test drivers for aerodynamics. They thought, 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:02.280 if we could make it mourerodynamic, golfer could swing it faster. 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:06.199 Tell us the story about developing woodwoods and testing the 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:07.640 driver aerodynamics. 0:12:07.880 --> 0:12:11.360 So, yeah, when Carson first decided he was going to 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:15.640 build his own wooden wood, you're right, he wanted it 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:19.079 to bey aerodynamic, Swing it faster, hit it farther was 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:22.640 his idea, of course, and so he checked into you know, 0:12:22.720 --> 0:12:25.040 he had worked on his design, then he checked into 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:27.920 having it tested in a wind tunnel. And there was 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:32.920 two problems. One was it was expensive. The second one 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:35.520 was the deal breaker, and that was it was going 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:38.200 to be several months before they could get him in 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:38.920 line to. 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:39.679 Have it tested. 0:12:40.520 --> 0:12:43.160 And also if he had to do a redesign is 0:12:43.200 --> 0:12:45.960 still going to be longer after that. So Carson was 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:49.600 not the most patient person in the world. So he 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:51.839 decided he had figured out how to do his own 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:54.960 wind tunnel testing. So what he did is he got 0:12:55.000 --> 0:12:59.000 ahead and he put a short shaft in it, and 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:02.040 he attached spring gauge to it, kind of like you'd 0:13:02.040 --> 0:13:06.600 weigh a fish with only probably a little higher tech 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:10.400 than that, but a spring gauge like a machinist might use. 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:14.400 And he got Alan and they got in the family 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:17.040 car and they went down to Bell Road down here, 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:21.720 which is a few miles north of here, and Allan's 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:24.520 job was to drive the car exactly one hundred miles 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:28.959 an hour. In those days, the only thing out there 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:32.440 was the horse track, So Alan's job was to drive 0:13:32.440 --> 0:13:35.440 the car one hundred miles an hour. Carston would hold 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:38.480 the club out the window with the spring gauge and 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:42.360 turn it and watch how the gauge moved, maybe make 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:46.000 some notes, I suppose, and then they come back work 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:47.360 on it a little more, and go back and do 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:50.040 it again. And so that's how he did his wind 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:53.480 tunnel testing. And you know, I asked Allan, they so 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:58.559 They did this in a Citron automobile, which Carston loves 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:02.200 Citron automobiles because they were such high tech cars for 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:06.280 the time, and the one that they used we believe 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:10.360 maybe had a Maserati engine at it. But Allan said, 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:12.600 it's great to get to drive the family car one 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:15.840 hundred miles an hour, except that if he didn't drive 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:18.679 it exactly one hundred miles an hour, Carston wood yell 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:18.959 at it. 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:22.120 Rob, do you look at Marty and you think he 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:23.960 needs to do more of this when he's kind of 0:14:23.960 --> 0:14:26.280 testing out some of his new age stuff. Get behind 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:28.520 the wheel of a car, let's get the get on 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:30.800 a bicycle or a motorcycle and just see how passing 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:32.480 go with the club in hand? Or do you like 0:14:32.520 --> 0:14:33.960 the way he goes about his business today? 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:35.800 As far as I know, he goes he knows what 0:14:35.840 --> 0:14:36.560 he's doing perfect. 0:14:36.640 --> 0:14:39.200 As far as I know, Rob, we have so many 0:14:39.280 --> 0:14:41.240 unbelievable items. I know you've picked out a few that 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:43.720 you really like. And a reminder to everybody watched this 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:45.800 part of the podcast because it's going to be important, 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:47.560 But do you have any clubs that you can pull 0:14:47.600 --> 0:14:49.640 out or any of the ones that you you know 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:51.440 that you've pulled the side that are really notable. 0:14:51.520 --> 0:14:55.200 Yeah, so I thought we'd talk about, you know, since 0:14:55.240 --> 0:15:00.800 the answer is the you know, best putter in the 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:04.600 history of golf. And so this is the hand drawing 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:06.600 he did for the answer. Putt it the first drawing. 0:15:06.880 --> 0:15:07.800 This is his drawing. 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:10.400 This is his drawing. He did this drawing. And when 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:13.360 I first saw the drawing back in the nineties, when 0:15:13.360 --> 0:15:15.880 they found it in his desk drawer and they brought 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:19.080 it to me so I could photograph it and make copies. 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:21.280 And when I first saw I thought, that doesn't look 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:23.880 like an answer. It looks like the Ping pal to me. 0:15:25.160 --> 0:15:31.080 And then his second drawing he made two days later, 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:34.120 and it's dated and signed. 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:37.280 YEP, January fourteenth, nineteen sixty six. 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:42.840 Right, and then witnessed the fifteenth and on this you know, 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:45.480 so now it's starting to look a little different, the 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:48.880 drawing does. And on this drawing it says sample made 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:56.760 the fourteenth, January fourteenth, and so this is the sample 0:15:58.000 --> 0:15:58.640 that he made. 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:00.600 So this is from sixty six, I mean, this is 0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:01.680 the January. 0:16:01.240 --> 0:16:05.720 Fourteen, sixty six. So this started out as a Ping 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:10.000 sixty nine putter this head, and it even was drilled 0:16:10.000 --> 0:16:12.600 for a shaft already, so he just took one that 0:16:12.760 --> 0:16:17.360 was already drilled and then he modified it and braised 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:21.920 or welded this answer style hozzle onto it. So's the 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:24.040 that's the prototype for the answer. 0:16:25.280 --> 0:16:27.600 Is this the most mimicked golf club in the world? 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:28.480 Is that fair to say? 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:29.160 I think it is? 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:29.440 Okay? 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:35.080 Yeah, I think easily. And unfortunately nowadays a lot of 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:38.640 people don't realize that Carston invented the answer design. 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:41.400 So we have the podcast that's we're doing this, that's 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:42.800 why we're doing yellow people. 0:16:42.840 --> 0:16:45.080 And so this is like one of the very first 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:49.760 castings of the answer putter, and we know it's one 0:16:49.760 --> 0:16:53.680 of the first ones because the hozzle is much thinner 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:56.800 than the answer is. Yeah, you can see that, and 0:16:56.840 --> 0:16:59.200 I think when they got their first casting they realize 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:02.640 Carson really that when he put the shaft in and 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:04.320 the ball bearing and he had to drive the ball 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:06.679 bearing and it would bend this. 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:07.560 Yeah. 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:11.000 Yeah, So Marty is someone that does this now, you know, 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:13.280 for your life's work, if you will, what is it 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:16.000 like looking at things like this from the sixties, thinking 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:18.160 what it must have been like, you know, for Carston 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:20.200 and any designer out there having to go about their 0:17:20.200 --> 0:17:22.399 business and the sixties trying to make golf clubs. 0:17:22.640 --> 0:17:25.399 I think in talking to Rob about the timeline of 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:29.520 when Carston went out and realized there was a problem 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:34.520 to solve looking at his brain, was thinking I could 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:37.959 bring in some physics here to help the everyday golfer, 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:41.480 right right, And how quickly he got that to market 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:43.520 was is absolutely incredible. 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:45.840 Yeah, if you don't want me asking you, Marty, how 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:49.639 long does it take you to go from idea of 0:17:49.680 --> 0:17:53.160 a golf club first look at it, and then it's 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:55.240 to market? I mean, what's the timeline for you nowadays 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:56.240 in twenty twenty three. 0:17:56.119 --> 0:17:58.919 Yeah, I mean a lot longer than Carston got the 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:02.159 answer out into players' hands. I mean a year, a 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:04.520 year and a half, yeah, okay, yeah, somewhere in that timeframe, 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:07.159 you know, for like a big scale project. But the 0:18:07.200 --> 0:18:10.520 fact that he could, you know, put so much effort, passion, 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:13.640 and he could make things, get things done, do them 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:18.600 and really bring in these physics principles of putting offset right. 0:18:18.640 --> 0:18:20.400 I mean, that was one of the main things he 0:18:20.440 --> 0:18:25.240 brought is that you can generate stability by creating a 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:28.639 distance between where the player is going to apply the 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:30.639 force through their hands in the center of gravity of 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:32.200 the club, with the plumber. 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:35.480 Absolutely offset with such a I mean that's his innovation. 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:39.280 Yeah right, yeah, Rob, what's the let's call it the 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:41.920 most unique golf club in the archive room. You could 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:44.080 maybe go weirdest, you could go strangest, you could go 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:46.800 most different. Now you didn't show me the upside down putter, 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:51.080 which is my winner already. Okay, Well, because I just 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:53.320 liked the idea of can we make it upside down? Sure? 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:01.280 This is probably the This is what a lot of 0:19:01.320 --> 0:19:04.639 collectors feel as the holy grail of ping collectibles. Okay, 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:06.600 this is the Ping trainer. 0:19:08.640 --> 0:19:10.800 Uh this what's the do you know? 0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:12.680 Do you know roughly a year for this? 0:19:12.680 --> 0:19:16.960 This would be from like sixty two three. Okay, there's 0:19:16.960 --> 0:19:20.119 supposed to be. This one's not quite complete. It doesn't 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:23.560 have there's a wire that comes to a point back here, okay, 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:27.439 and there's two movable weights here. The idea of the 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:31.359 trainer is that where the wire comes to a point, 0:19:32.000 --> 0:19:35.200 you put a piece of like felt, and you dip 0:19:35.240 --> 0:19:39.120 it in ink, and then on butcher paper you hit 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:44.360 some putts and it draws your stroke. Interesting So when 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:48.399 Carston decided to make his own putter to help his 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:53.280 own putting, he wasn't thinking of making putters for you know, 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:56.080 for sale. He was just wanting to help his own putting. 0:19:56.400 --> 0:19:57.840 You know, he didn't take up the game of golf 0:19:57.840 --> 0:20:01.400 till he's in his forties. Putting was the hard part 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:04.160 for him, you know, became the heart, you know, decided 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:07.600 that was his weak weak spot. So he took the 0:20:07.640 --> 0:20:11.200 putter that he had, which was just a simple blade putter, 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:15.359 and he had he did this wire thing attached to 0:20:15.359 --> 0:20:19.640 a wire to it, and on butcher paper, he did 0:20:19.680 --> 0:20:23.440 this little experiment. And what he found out was that 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:26.679 no matter how he held the putter, how tightly, or 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:30.760 any configuration of how he held the putter, if he 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:35.199 didn't hit the putt right in the sweet spot of 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:37.840 the putter or the ball right in the sweet part 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:41.560 of the putter, the head twisted an impact. And he 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:44.880 could see that because of the drawing, he could literally 0:20:44.920 --> 0:20:50.120 see a little squiggle, okay, And so he decided that's 0:20:50.119 --> 0:20:52.560 when he decided that he needed to move the weight 0:20:52.680 --> 0:20:55.160 to the heel and toe. Try to get more weight 0:20:55.200 --> 0:20:58.359 to the heel and toe. So the first thing you know, 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:00.960 he went to one of his friends at ge and 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:04.320 asked them to make him a blade, you know, a 0:21:04.359 --> 0:21:09.480 putterhead blade out of aluminum. And when he got that, 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:12.200 he took it home and somehow or other he milled 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:16.520 out or drilled out areas on the soul, big areas, 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:20.400 and he filled those with lead to get the weight 0:21:20.440 --> 0:21:24.000 to the heel and toe and then shafted it up 0:21:24.440 --> 0:21:26.000 and sure enough it worked. 0:21:26.840 --> 0:21:29.040 Just a bummer. We don't have like video like we 0:21:29.080 --> 0:21:31.359 have video today of this. I mean, what an unbelievable 0:21:31.440 --> 0:21:33.560 video this would have been of just like adding the lead. 0:21:33.600 --> 0:21:37.240 I just love the creativity of how can we find 0:21:37.240 --> 0:21:39.359 a solution to a problem? Right, and I mean just 0:21:39.520 --> 0:21:42.640 hearing the stories is basically his life work was finding 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:44.280 solutions into a problem. Exactly. 0:21:44.359 --> 0:21:47.280 So the trainer he came out with in sixty two 0:21:47.400 --> 0:21:51.480 so that he could people could see what he had seen, 0:21:52.280 --> 0:21:55.600 you know when he did this. And also he called 0:21:55.600 --> 0:21:58.439 it the trainer because he suggested that people put the 0:21:58.440 --> 0:22:02.320 weight in the center and hit putts, and then after 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:04.320 they do that for a little bit, then move it 0:22:04.359 --> 0:22:05.920 to the heel and toe and they'd see how much 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:07.479 better it was. 0:22:07.720 --> 0:22:11.359 Yeah, And so you know. 0:22:11.520 --> 0:22:13.520 I think he was thinking he might could do this 0:22:13.560 --> 0:22:15.880 with a putter, but then he turned out, of course 0:22:15.920 --> 0:22:18.920 you can't have you couldn't have movable weights. Then yeah, 0:22:18.960 --> 0:22:22.600 say so, But it became the trainer. It sold for 0:22:22.640 --> 0:22:24.639 twenty two fifty It was in the ads and the 0:22:24.680 --> 0:22:28.119 magazines and stuff, and he only made one when somebody 0:22:28.200 --> 0:22:28.680 ordered one. 0:22:29.359 --> 0:22:29.760 And so. 0:22:31.320 --> 0:22:33.680 A few years ago once sold at auction for twenty 0:22:33.680 --> 0:22:35.439 two thousand, five hundred dollars. 0:22:35.640 --> 0:22:38.199 Wow. Yeah, and it's it. 0:22:38.800 --> 0:22:41.600 Literally, I don't we don't know how many he made. 0:22:43.440 --> 0:22:45.520 My guess is it's less than twenty. 0:22:45.560 --> 0:22:48.760 Okay, yeah, so you say, holy grail. It's really the 0:22:48.760 --> 0:22:50.800 holy grail. I mean, there's not many of these things. 0:22:50.440 --> 0:22:52.960 Collect for pink collectors. This is one of This is 0:22:53.200 --> 0:22:54.240 kind of the holy grail. 0:22:54.320 --> 0:22:54.560 Yeah. 0:22:55.280 --> 0:22:58.680 Carson was such a great storyteller, and he found very 0:22:58.800 --> 0:23:02.560 unique ways to show the value of the physics that 0:23:02.640 --> 0:23:04.560 he's uh right, he's bringing in. 0:23:05.119 --> 0:23:08.240 Yeah, I'm always yeah, you know, he would show the 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:11.919 one a putter. Uh, he would demonstrate that to people 0:23:11.960 --> 0:23:14.439 with two sugar cubes and popsicle sticks. 0:23:14.720 --> 0:23:18.920 Yeah, exactly, A little you do a little more than that, now, Marty, 0:23:18.960 --> 0:23:19.520 I think. 0:23:19.760 --> 0:23:23.199 Or or you know the bonamic shaft. Yep, yep, the 0:23:23.240 --> 0:23:25.679 ball namic shaft. He would demonstrate to people with a 0:23:25.720 --> 0:23:28.160 paper clip. He would take a paper clip and bend 0:23:28.200 --> 0:23:31.000 it like the balamic shaft to show him how the 0:23:31.000 --> 0:23:32.280 balnamic shaft worked. 0:23:32.359 --> 0:23:34.080 I mean, I mean, Marty, like, we've talked so much 0:23:34.080 --> 0:23:36.000 about innovation in terms of what you're doing now, and 0:23:36.040 --> 0:23:39.199 I mean, I'm so impressed with kind of the ping's 0:23:39.240 --> 0:23:42.320 ability to push the app world forward. I just think 0:23:42.359 --> 0:23:44.840 that what you guys have done and what's coming has 0:23:44.880 --> 0:23:48.840 been very, very impressive because you're trying to solve a problem. Yeah, 0:23:48.880 --> 0:23:50.639 for the golfer at home, the technology is there, but 0:23:50.880 --> 0:23:53.560 maybe every golfer doesn't understand this. And it feels like, 0:23:53.640 --> 0:23:55.919 I mean, it's followed the footsteps of Carston, you know, 0:23:56.040 --> 0:23:58.560 kind of being under the same roof is. Maybe it's 0:23:58.600 --> 0:24:01.040 new age, maybe it's computerized me its apps, but at 0:24:01.080 --> 0:24:02.200 the end of the day, it's the same thing. 0:24:02.440 --> 0:24:05.360 Absolutely. We us and engineering. We talk about that all 0:24:05.400 --> 0:24:08.320 the time, and I think it's shows the importance of 0:24:09.000 --> 0:24:11.080 a lot of us that are designers are working on 0:24:11.119 --> 0:24:14.439 the product. We play golf, we feel the pain of 0:24:14.480 --> 0:24:17.520 the game or just like Carston and we're trying to 0:24:17.560 --> 0:24:20.480 come in and solve those you know, it's kind of personal. 0:24:20.560 --> 0:24:22.119 We want to if we could solve it for us, 0:24:22.160 --> 0:24:24.920 we can solve it for everybody. So we draw a 0:24:24.960 --> 0:24:28.400 lot of inspiration from that, and it's it's weaved into 0:24:28.480 --> 0:24:29.960 the fabric of the company. 0:24:30.320 --> 0:24:34.919 I mean, John encourages people like Marty and young engineers 0:24:35.320 --> 0:24:39.359 to come in here, yeah and look around, just just look, 0:24:39.920 --> 0:24:41.120 you know, yeah. 0:24:41.040 --> 0:24:44.679 Ask some full ideas away. What's interesting is you were 0:24:44.720 --> 0:24:46.520 showing me before we got going. I mean there's seven 0:24:46.560 --> 0:24:49.280 woods and drivers over there that are fifty inches long, 0:24:49.359 --> 0:24:53.560 fifty five inches long that are probably thirty years old, right, yeah. 0:24:53.359 --> 0:24:57.000 I mean yeah, so yeah, we have Weggie Winchester's five 0:24:57.040 --> 0:24:59.600 foot long driver, but you just win the long drive 0:24:59.640 --> 0:25:02.520 content back in the early eighties five foot long. 0:25:02.680 --> 0:25:06.320 Yeah, yeah, real, Yeah, we're still trying to figure out 0:25:06.400 --> 0:25:09.320 driver length fitting today. You know what's the sweet spot 0:25:09.359 --> 0:25:11.119 of how long should you well that ever goes. 0:25:11.000 --> 0:25:13.200 Ex Stan Marty, we'll ever get to a place where 0:25:13.200 --> 0:25:16.280 it's where USGA says it can go longer than what 0:25:16.359 --> 0:25:18.160 is it forty five right now? Forty four and a half. 0:25:18.320 --> 0:25:24.200 Yeah, well it's forty six is the condition of competition rule, 0:25:24.400 --> 0:25:27.359 but usually that's only in play PGA Tour events and 0:25:27.359 --> 0:25:29.520 things of that nature, but still remains at forty eight. 0:25:29.760 --> 0:25:32.119 So there are a good number of golfers that do 0:25:32.280 --> 0:25:35.360 good with over forty six inch driver because our drivers 0:25:35.760 --> 0:25:40.440 are so forgiving from a moment of inertia standpoint, Rob. 0:25:40.560 --> 0:25:42.480 One thing I wanted to ask you about was the 0:25:42.680 --> 0:25:45.440 how the ballnamic shaft. Maybe we could take a look 0:25:45.480 --> 0:25:48.679 at the balnamic shaft there and then also how the 0:25:48.760 --> 0:25:51.600 concept of the pistol grip came to be. 0:25:51.960 --> 0:25:57.760 Right, that's that's that's a good question. We'll talk about 0:25:58.000 --> 0:26:02.080 the shaft first, the ballnamic shaft. So the balnamic shaft 0:26:03.000 --> 0:26:05.320 is actually have a con It has a compound bend 0:26:06.359 --> 0:26:10.280 and it's right here. It's kind of under the grip. 0:26:10.880 --> 0:26:13.359 It bends towards the player and away from the target, 0:26:14.200 --> 0:26:17.000 and so it's actually easier to see looking from the 0:26:17.040 --> 0:26:22.639 other end, so you can see how it bends. And 0:26:22.840 --> 0:26:25.840 just like you were talking about offset, yeah, Carstan's idea 0:26:26.000 --> 0:26:28.639 was this aligned the player's hands with the ball, not 0:26:28.760 --> 0:26:33.879 the face of the club. It also helps minimize the 0:26:33.920 --> 0:26:38.000 tow down effect when you swing the club. And the 0:26:38.040 --> 0:26:41.520 other thing it does is that it actually stabilizes the 0:26:41.560 --> 0:26:47.080 club at impact. So I can demonstrate that if hold 0:26:47.160 --> 0:26:49.560 that and let me show you how this works. So 0:26:50.520 --> 0:26:53.439 if I hold the club, you know, lightly between my 0:26:53.560 --> 0:26:57.560 thumb and finger and I you know, kind of if 0:26:57.560 --> 0:27:00.560 I hit it in the sweet spot, you know, it's 0:27:00.600 --> 0:27:04.000 pretty stable. If I start to get out here or 0:27:04.040 --> 0:27:07.679 to hear, it's not as stable. See if I can 0:27:07.720 --> 0:27:10.000 hang on to it better, there we go. You can 0:27:10.000 --> 0:27:14.199 see it twist. Now if I hold this above the 0:27:14.240 --> 0:27:18.240 bend and now I hit it on the sweet spots, great, 0:27:19.359 --> 0:27:22.640 and I hit it out here, it's way more stable. 0:27:22.760 --> 0:27:24.080 Yeah. 0:27:24.560 --> 0:27:26.760 And you can actually if you do this yourself, you 0:27:26.800 --> 0:27:29.800 can feel you can feel that in your fingers. You 0:27:29.840 --> 0:27:34.560 can actually feel the vibration, the vibration change. So that's 0:27:34.600 --> 0:27:38.000 the balnamic shaft. And so one of the first people 0:27:38.040 --> 0:27:41.360 to play this club with the balnamic shaft was Joel Goldstrand, 0:27:42.240 --> 0:27:44.760 and he told a story about you know, he got 0:27:44.760 --> 0:27:48.639 his set of clubs with the shaft balnamic shaft, and 0:27:48.640 --> 0:27:50.440 he went took his seven iron. He went out to 0:27:50.520 --> 0:27:52.879 the schoolyard school's out of session and he had a 0:27:52.920 --> 0:27:55.520 shag bag, and he said, he started hitting seven irons 0:27:55.560 --> 0:27:57.960 and he's out there all by himself, and he said 0:27:57.960 --> 0:28:00.800 he hit balls for about fifteen minutes or so, and 0:28:00.840 --> 0:28:02.919 he actually picked the club up and looked at it 0:28:02.960 --> 0:28:05.399 and he said out loud, this has got to be 0:28:05.440 --> 0:28:11.879 illegal because he hit the ball so straight. Well, unfortunately, 0:28:11.920 --> 0:28:15.240 the balnamic shaft did become non conforming. In sixty seven, 0:28:15.760 --> 0:28:20.600 the USGA changed the rule on shafts bins so that 0:28:20.680 --> 0:28:23.639 you couldn't have a bind more than five inches from 0:28:23.760 --> 0:28:28.960 the ground, and so almost all of Carston's clubs had 0:28:29.000 --> 0:28:33.040 a bind either here or they had a bind down 0:28:33.080 --> 0:28:35.399 lower like the putters. All had a bind down lower, 0:28:35.480 --> 0:28:37.200 kind of a double bind that he did and stuff, 0:28:37.240 --> 0:28:39.160 and a lot of those were more than five inches. 0:28:39.880 --> 0:28:42.040 And so when the rule changed, when the rule went 0:28:42.040 --> 0:28:46.680 into infect Carston didn't have. The only club he had 0:28:46.680 --> 0:28:50.560 that was conforming was the Answer putter, so he had 0:28:50.560 --> 0:28:54.520 to he wanted to make things right for people, so 0:28:54.560 --> 0:28:57.120 he straightened a lot of shafts and did a lot 0:28:57.160 --> 0:29:01.600 of things to make it right for people. And so 0:29:01.640 --> 0:29:07.120 it really literally almost put them out of business. But 0:29:07.280 --> 0:29:10.240 fortunately the Answer was such a hot cellar right away 0:29:10.360 --> 0:29:13.720 that the answer kind of saved the business. I suppose 0:29:14.160 --> 0:29:14.640 you could. 0:29:14.440 --> 0:29:18.360 Say, yeah, kind of an answer in more than one way, right, yeah, exactly, Rob. 0:29:18.360 --> 0:29:19.840 Do you have a favorite club in here, like you 0:29:19.880 --> 0:29:22.840 personally have one? Maybe it's just maybe it's a different 0:29:22.840 --> 0:29:25.160 looking club. Maybe it's one that not many people know 0:29:25.240 --> 0:29:26.920 much about. Is there one here that kind of stands 0:29:26.920 --> 0:29:27.520 out to you? 0:29:27.560 --> 0:29:27.800 Boy? 0:29:30.560 --> 0:29:32.800 I don't know if I have a favorite club. I 0:29:32.840 --> 0:29:36.040 know the most favorite club that people like to like 0:29:36.120 --> 0:29:40.080 to see when they come in. WHOA is a croquet putter? 0:29:42.760 --> 0:29:44.760 You know what? I'm not an engineer that hasn't been 0:29:44.760 --> 0:29:46.800 in the shaft. Yes, it does almost positive. 0:29:47.000 --> 0:29:50.120 So Carston did this bend himself with heat. He had 0:29:50.120 --> 0:29:51.600 to use heat to get it to bend like this, 0:29:51.720 --> 0:29:54.560 and see if I can get it to Well's stand 0:29:54.640 --> 0:29:56.040 up on the right, stand up by itself. 0:29:56.120 --> 0:29:57.920 Yeah. 0:29:58.280 --> 0:30:01.080 So yeah, so this was you know, croquet putting was 0:30:01.520 --> 0:30:03.960 pretty popular there for a while, and one of the 0:30:04.000 --> 0:30:08.440 reasons the USGA changed the bend and chef rule was 0:30:09.080 --> 0:30:09.840 croquet putting. 0:30:09.880 --> 0:30:10.760 That was part of it. 0:30:11.520 --> 0:30:13.240 And they also put in the rule that you couldn't 0:30:13.240 --> 0:30:16.680 straddle the line. Yes, yeah, but yeah, so this is 0:30:16.760 --> 0:30:19.280 I don't know if it's my favorite, but it's when 0:30:19.320 --> 0:30:20.880 people come in and I show them things. 0:30:20.880 --> 0:30:24.719 This is a big hit. One thing to notice on 0:30:24.760 --> 0:30:26.560 this is the. 0:30:25.920 --> 0:30:26.600 The pistol grip. 0:30:26.920 --> 0:30:29.960 Pistol grip yep. So give us a little insight into 0:30:30.480 --> 0:30:33.040 how that came to be. See that, Shane, I see 0:30:33.040 --> 0:30:34.760 this bad boy. 0:30:35.840 --> 0:30:36.920 It's heavy too. 0:30:36.920 --> 0:30:42.440 Yeah, it is heavy. So Carston's first putter's uh, the 0:30:42.840 --> 0:30:47.000 Redwood City putters made in Redwood City. They had a 0:30:47.040 --> 0:30:51.240 leather grip, a leather wrap grip, and they did that. 0:30:51.400 --> 0:30:54.640 The way they made that grip was they actually had 0:30:54.640 --> 0:30:59.520 a kind of heavy paper, like Kraft paper kind of stuff. 0:31:00.040 --> 0:31:03.479 And with that paper and white glue, they built up 0:31:03.480 --> 0:31:08.280 an underlisting and so you had to put put a 0:31:08.360 --> 0:31:10.520 layer on and have to dry overnight, and they put 0:31:10.560 --> 0:31:13.840 another layer, have to dry and so it took three 0:31:13.880 --> 0:31:16.320 or four days to do a shaft to do a grip, 0:31:16.400 --> 0:31:20.120 I mean, and and so on. Once they had the 0:31:20.200 --> 0:31:23.960 underlisting and it was dried up, you know, dried, then 0:31:24.640 --> 0:31:26.560 they would make a couple of cuts on the table 0:31:26.600 --> 0:31:29.960 saw shape it a little bit. And then Alan is 0:31:30.000 --> 0:31:34.280 the one that normally would wrap the leather around the grip. Well, 0:31:34.320 --> 0:31:39.040 Alan joined the Marine Reserves and he had to go 0:31:39.040 --> 0:31:42.680 to boot camp. So he he did as many grips 0:31:42.680 --> 0:31:46.280 as he could before he left. So then when they left, 0:31:46.440 --> 0:31:51.520 when they ran out of grips, leather grips, they went 0:31:51.640 --> 0:31:57.880 to this golf pride and former grip and so John says, yeah, 0:31:57.960 --> 0:32:02.560 our production time came way down when they went to 0:32:02.600 --> 0:32:04.920 the rubber grip. And so this is the grip that 0:32:04.960 --> 0:32:07.320 they used on a lot of the putters, a lot 0:32:07.360 --> 0:32:15.720 of the Scottsdale putters. So then Carston, because of the 0:32:15.760 --> 0:32:23.360 balnamic shaft being you know, ruled non conforming, Carston designed 0:32:23.360 --> 0:32:26.560 his own grip what we call the PP fifty eight. 0:32:26.600 --> 0:32:29.240 Now in those days we just called it the ping 0:32:29.280 --> 0:32:32.680 grip way back when it first designed. With that design 0:32:32.680 --> 0:32:38.080 of that grip, it's not bored through the center's it's 0:32:38.120 --> 0:32:43.280 bored off center. And that grip simulates some of the 0:32:43.320 --> 0:32:50.720 bend the balnamic bind and it you know, the USGA 0:32:50.840 --> 0:32:55.800 did outlaw pistol grips they got, so this grip became 0:32:55.840 --> 0:33:00.560 non conforming and that's when Carston would started design his grip. 0:33:01.520 --> 0:33:06.640 And so that grip the thing we did with the shaft, 0:33:06.680 --> 0:33:09.560 you know what I did with the bonamic shaft. You 0:33:09.600 --> 0:33:11.520 can do the same thing with one of our putters 0:33:11.520 --> 0:33:15.200 on a pin grip. The effect is not quite as much, 0:33:15.440 --> 0:33:17.959 but you can you can still feel it in your hands. 0:33:18.160 --> 0:33:18.640 Yeah. 0:33:19.360 --> 0:33:23.400 So that that grip, that PP fifty eight grip, and 0:33:23.440 --> 0:33:25.640 I think you can tell me because I don't know 0:33:25.680 --> 0:33:27.760 for sure, but most of all of our putter grips are 0:33:27.760 --> 0:33:29.600 now designed kind of that way. 0:33:29.520 --> 0:33:34.040 Right, Yeah, so we we that was Carson's ingenious way, 0:33:34.320 --> 0:33:36.160 you know, when they changed the rule on the bend 0:33:36.160 --> 0:33:39.280 in the shaft to get that physics effect right, And 0:33:39.360 --> 0:33:42.080 now we've done a lot of research, which turns out 0:33:42.320 --> 0:33:45.200 a lot of the research we do to today, Shane 0:33:45.320 --> 0:33:50.400 just proves what Carson Carson. So now we use that 0:33:50.440 --> 0:33:54.280 as a fitting variable that if we need to change 0:33:54.280 --> 0:33:57.640 how the putter rotates and match it perfectly to someone's stroke, 0:33:58.120 --> 0:34:00.360 we can put them in a grip that as like 0:34:00.360 --> 0:34:03.200 our PP. Fifty eight that has more pistol to it, 0:34:03.240 --> 0:34:06.120 that points their hand more towards the center of the 0:34:06.720 --> 0:34:09.440 center of the club. Yeah, which is really fun. 0:34:10.000 --> 0:34:13.440 Really, Yeah, Rob, you talk about ordering clubs these days 0:34:13.600 --> 0:34:16.320 for the archive room, what do you do about clubs 0:34:16.320 --> 0:34:19.480 that didn't make it in here in the sixties and seventies, 0:34:19.480 --> 0:34:21.200 but you want to acquire them, you want to add 0:34:21.239 --> 0:34:22.759 it to the archive room, but maybe you don't have 0:34:22.800 --> 0:34:24.879 one here. How do you go about finding those golf 0:34:24.920 --> 0:34:26.279 clubs and acquiring them? 0:34:26.360 --> 0:34:31.920 Well, generally we will try if people come to us, 0:34:32.280 --> 0:34:35.000 don't I try not to go out looking too much, 0:34:35.160 --> 0:34:37.240 but people will come to us with something, okay. 0:34:37.800 --> 0:34:39.759 And I mean, do you still get surprised, Like, do 0:34:39.760 --> 0:34:41.680 you still have people that say, I've got this club 0:34:41.719 --> 0:34:43.439 that you don't have in the room? 0:34:43.760 --> 0:34:44.560 I do. 0:34:45.000 --> 0:34:47.960 I occasionally do. And it's usually a variation of something 0:34:48.560 --> 0:34:52.600 because early on Carston did what a customer wanted. 0:34:52.960 --> 0:34:56.239 Carston would do that for people sometimes. 0:34:56.280 --> 0:35:00.680 And so occasionally you do get surprised, Like there's a 0:35:00.680 --> 0:35:03.040 putter right here that I don't think Murdy's ever seen. 0:35:03.760 --> 0:35:07.760 So this is a one a putter, but a fella 0:35:07.840 --> 0:35:12.359 asked to have one heavier, and so Carston actually, uh 0:35:13.440 --> 0:35:17.719 raised another piece of bronze. Oh, made it deeper and 0:35:17.760 --> 0:35:20.080 heavier and it has a little flange. 0:35:21.040 --> 0:35:23.640 I have not seen that, right, And. 0:35:23.600 --> 0:35:26.440 So yeah, so there's this this came a guy you know, 0:35:26.640 --> 0:35:28.759 called me up and said he had this putter and 0:35:28.840 --> 0:35:31.960 so what we like, what we'd like to do is trade, 0:35:32.520 --> 0:35:37.920 you know, trade new equipment. We don't want to purchase 0:35:37.920 --> 0:35:40.600 outright if we can help it, but sometimes we do. 0:35:41.000 --> 0:35:44.160 And uh, you know another putter that came to us 0:35:45.239 --> 0:35:52.160 was George Answers, George Archer's answer putter that we believe 0:35:52.239 --> 0:35:54.719 is the one he used to win the Masters. That's 0:35:55.160 --> 0:35:57.799 that's for that's up for debate, but we believe it 0:35:57.880 --> 0:35:59.960 is the one that he used to win the Masters. 0:36:00.680 --> 0:36:04.919 And so you know, that's one that we we did buy. 0:36:05.239 --> 0:36:09.239 Can I ask about the golf ball? Sure, because nowadays 0:36:09.600 --> 0:36:12.160 there's a lot of variations of golf balls that are 0:36:13.000 --> 0:36:15.879 different colors and they have different patterns on them. I mean, 0:36:15.960 --> 0:36:19.319 this was the og This was the original golf ball 0:36:19.360 --> 0:36:22.920 that had different variations of colorways and all that. What 0:36:23.000 --> 0:36:24.879 was the reasoning for the ping golf ball? 0:36:25.080 --> 0:36:32.080 Well, Carston, when he decided he wanted to build his 0:36:32.120 --> 0:36:36.799 own golf ball, he actually bought a company Truce Fear, 0:36:37.560 --> 0:36:39.480 I think that's the name of it. He bought them 0:36:39.520 --> 0:36:43.719 and moved all their equipment and actually their head engineer 0:36:44.040 --> 0:36:49.399 designer came and came to work for Carston. I don't 0:36:49.440 --> 0:36:51.360 know exactly how he came to the idea of the 0:36:51.400 --> 0:36:54.960 two color ball, but he called it stroboscopic because he 0:36:56.040 --> 0:36:59.439 liked the idea. You could see it spin and this 0:36:59.520 --> 0:37:03.239 is the orange and yellow combination. It was his favorite, 0:37:03.280 --> 0:37:05.799 and we called it the Ping punch, or he called 0:37:05.800 --> 0:37:06.840 it the Pink punch. 0:37:07.239 --> 0:37:07.440 You know. 0:37:07.480 --> 0:37:10.319 As we went on, you know, we had yellow and 0:37:10.360 --> 0:37:13.279 white and pink and white, and red and white and 0:37:13.560 --> 0:37:18.560 different standard colors. With our customization process that Ping has 0:37:18.560 --> 0:37:23.040 had for a long time, we started doing custom colors 0:37:23.040 --> 0:37:26.960 for people. We would try to match a color to 0:37:27.040 --> 0:37:30.759 somebody's logo and we also could pad print logos on. 0:37:30.840 --> 0:37:34.000 God okay, I I mean again like in twenty twenty three, 0:37:34.600 --> 0:37:37.000 this is what you're seeing, what you're talking and we're 0:37:37.040 --> 0:37:39.479 doing this back in the in the eighties, right. 0:37:40.920 --> 0:37:43.440 But anyway, so the two color balls are very collectible, 0:37:43.600 --> 0:37:45.880 some of them, and depending on the color and stuff, 0:37:45.920 --> 0:37:49.320 people get all carried away about it. The ball collectors 0:37:49.360 --> 0:37:53.080 are different than the club collectors. 0:37:53.680 --> 0:37:54.760 Got to deal with both parties. 0:37:54.840 --> 0:37:59.960 Yeah, sometimes the ball collectors have kind of I understand, 0:38:00.000 --> 0:38:02.560 and there they want to know how many colors we made, 0:38:02.600 --> 0:38:04.920 and we don't know because we were custom mixing colors. 0:38:05.200 --> 0:38:08.440 To match logos, right stuff and so but yeah, so 0:38:08.520 --> 0:38:11.640 the two color ball was and it's a great putting 0:38:11.640 --> 0:38:13.640 aid is you guys probably know, And. 0:38:14.160 --> 0:38:16.719 I will, I will draw mine. So I will get 0:38:16.760 --> 0:38:19.280 the tool and draw half a golf ball with the sharpie. 0:38:19.280 --> 0:38:20.840 I mean, you know they sell golf balls now that 0:38:20.880 --> 0:38:22.480 you can do that with. But yea, yeah, I mean 0:38:22.480 --> 0:38:24.279 I will, I will do that. I'll also make my 0:38:24.280 --> 0:38:25.719 four year old do it too. And it's not a 0:38:25.760 --> 0:38:27.880 straight a little here. 0:38:27.920 --> 0:38:30.600 Before there, before anybody else was doing the two color 0:38:30.600 --> 0:38:34.920 ball like they are now. When Lee Westwood came here 0:38:34.960 --> 0:38:37.600 for a visit one time, uh been, I don't know, 0:38:37.640 --> 0:38:38.520 maybe ten years. 0:38:38.360 --> 0:38:39.840 Ago, yeah yeah. 0:38:39.880 --> 0:38:41.319 And one of the things when he was here he 0:38:41.400 --> 0:38:43.200 asked for he asked for a two color. 0:38:43.040 --> 0:38:46.480 Ball for practice. Yeah yeah yeah. 0:38:46.719 --> 0:38:48.719 So yeah, so we found him one. 0:38:49.400 --> 0:38:53.839 R Rob Fast forward to today. Uh well, Carson was 0:38:54.120 --> 0:38:56.920 kind of famous. He has a video where he's famous 0:38:56.920 --> 0:39:00.440 for saying that, you know, the golf ball is like 0:39:00.480 --> 0:39:03.160 the tuning fork for us. It tells us what to 0:39:03.239 --> 0:39:06.520 do on the clubs. And so fast forward to today, 0:39:06.600 --> 0:39:11.520 we made a golf ball fitting wrapp software solution, you know, 0:39:11.680 --> 0:39:14.080 inspired by the name Baldnamic. I know that, you know, 0:39:14.280 --> 0:39:18.520 just golf ball's flight Carston Aerodynamics. Let's bring it all 0:39:18.560 --> 0:39:20.600 in and so that that's how we kind of have 0:39:20.680 --> 0:39:23.399 that name for our Baldnamic fitting software. But he knew 0:39:23.440 --> 0:39:28.000 the importance of marrying ball and club together, right. 0:39:28.200 --> 0:39:30.480 And it's funny you say that because just the other 0:39:30.560 --> 0:39:33.080 day John said something to me where he said, well, 0:39:33.080 --> 0:39:36.919 you know, the golf ball is what you know because 0:39:36.920 --> 0:39:39.839 I asked him about the golf ball. I asked him 0:39:39.840 --> 0:39:42.000 how what he felt about, like the golf ball being 0:39:42.440 --> 0:39:44.600 cut you know, the USGA wanted to cut back on 0:39:45.280 --> 0:39:47.840 flight or the distance and all that sort of stuff, 0:39:48.239 --> 0:39:51.120 and he said, well, the ball is our tuning fork. 0:39:51.680 --> 0:39:52.880 They used the same. 0:39:52.680 --> 0:39:59.160 Phrase, Carson, And so that's it's really interesting and your 0:39:59.160 --> 0:40:02.520 ball app is is pretty cool. When James Lee fit 0:40:02.680 --> 0:40:04.280 me over there. For clubs, we went through. 0:40:04.160 --> 0:40:08.160 The Marty will run you through it. We've talked about 0:40:08.160 --> 0:40:10.560 acquiring clubs and finding golf clubs. Are there clubs that 0:40:10.600 --> 0:40:12.399 are missing? Do you have any? Do you have any 0:40:12.400 --> 0:40:14.120 clubs that you could I mean, this is a PSA. 0:40:14.200 --> 0:40:16.399 It's a podcast for goodness sakes, So let the people 0:40:16.520 --> 0:40:18.600 know what we need what we need. 0:40:18.840 --> 0:40:21.880 Well, yeah, we're missing. We have some holes. We have 0:40:21.880 --> 0:40:25.840 a few holes one of them, and most of the 0:40:25.880 --> 0:40:28.759 older stuff I have, although I'll say any I will 0:40:28.800 --> 0:40:32.600 say any older club, Redwood City address club or Scott 0:40:32.640 --> 0:40:36.160 Stale address club. I'm always interested in seeing pictures because 0:40:36.200 --> 0:40:40.360 Carston did do variations just like I showed you, So 0:40:40.400 --> 0:40:43.919 I'm always interested in those. As far as one that's 0:40:43.960 --> 0:40:48.840 missing from our collection, I don't have a ping sixty 0:40:48.920 --> 0:40:52.680 nine W putter with a Scott Stale address. Okay, I've 0:40:52.719 --> 0:40:54.640 got them with Phoenix address. I don't have one with 0:40:54.680 --> 0:40:58.160 a Scott Stie address. But the putters I'm actually missing 0:40:58.760 --> 0:41:02.799 is because like I mentioned Don Wingert, and she was 0:41:02.840 --> 0:41:04.680 here and then she wasn't here, and then I didn't 0:41:04.920 --> 0:41:08.120 start doing this into two thousand and five. In that 0:41:08.200 --> 0:41:12.000 period of time, new putters that came out, we didn't. 0:41:11.719 --> 0:41:12.200 Get them all. 0:41:12.320 --> 0:41:14.480 So so some mod you're saying, some more modern. 0:41:14.280 --> 0:41:17.279 More modern, so G two putters, G two, I, G 0:41:17.440 --> 0:41:20.919 five I putters, all of the I have some of those, 0:41:20.960 --> 0:41:22.680 but not all of them. And there was a number 0:41:22.680 --> 0:41:23.160 of those. 0:41:23.000 --> 0:41:24.640 Models, Yeah, there were, Yeah, we had a lot of 0:41:24.640 --> 0:41:25.319 models that right. 0:41:25.400 --> 0:41:27.160 Oh yeah, that's something that works. 0:41:27.239 --> 0:41:29.319 So so, I mean, I know I'm joking about a 0:41:29.320 --> 0:41:31.719 p s A. But if somebody had a club and 0:41:31.760 --> 0:41:33.360 they were interested in showing it to you, how do 0:41:33.360 --> 0:41:34.040 they get ahold of you? 0:41:34.040 --> 0:41:36.400 Oh? They can just they can just call the main number. 0:41:37.360 --> 0:41:39.239 Main ping customer service. 0:41:39.080 --> 0:41:41.319 Customer service number. They can ask to speak to me. 0:41:41.640 --> 0:41:41.879 Yeah. 0:41:42.440 --> 0:41:43.960 Can I call and just ask to speak to you 0:41:44.000 --> 0:41:46.000 every now and again just to chatter? Okay, just making 0:41:46.000 --> 0:41:48.720 sure that's good. I was gonna say we could actually 0:41:48.719 --> 0:41:51.800 maybe get the direct line after the pod. What is 0:41:51.840 --> 0:41:54.239 your role with the Ping Putter vault, because I can 0:41:54.280 --> 0:41:57.120 only imagine that you're somehow involved in the gold Putter 0:41:57.200 --> 0:42:01.160 Vault that considering you're the archive guy, you probably have 0:42:01.239 --> 0:42:02.480 some involvement over there as well. 0:42:02.640 --> 0:42:02.879 Well. 0:42:03.120 --> 0:42:05.400 When we were working on the book, you know, our 0:42:05.440 --> 0:42:08.160 ping book, the History. 0:42:07.920 --> 0:42:10.040 Of and you picked that thing up with one arm. 0:42:10.160 --> 0:42:14.239 Yeah, yeah, seven pounds, so the putter went ping. When 0:42:14.280 --> 0:42:17.520 we were working on this book, Jeff Ellis that wrote 0:42:17.560 --> 0:42:21.719 the book, he actually discovered a number of wins that 0:42:21.760 --> 0:42:24.160 we had missed and so. 0:42:24.360 --> 0:42:25.760 We weren't in the vault. 0:42:25.520 --> 0:42:28.120 We won in the vault, and we had we the 0:42:28.160 --> 0:42:31.600 player didn't have a putter either, we just that, you know, 0:42:32.080 --> 0:42:33.839 and so we we went back and tried to pick 0:42:34.440 --> 0:42:37.240 those up, and we we picked up a good number 0:42:37.239 --> 0:42:39.279 of them, but we haven't actually some of them we 0:42:39.280 --> 0:42:44.040 have been able to pick up. So my involvement, my 0:42:44.160 --> 0:42:51.000 involvement over there is pretty minimal. Sometimes if we need 0:42:51.040 --> 0:42:55.359 a gold putter, what's happened in the last few years, 0:42:55.360 --> 0:42:57.920 and sometimes we needed we need putter heads to make 0:42:57.960 --> 0:43:01.640 gold putters with. And if a player wins with a 0:43:01.680 --> 0:43:04.600 putter that is maybe four or five years old, we 0:43:04.680 --> 0:43:06.520 may not have a head. And so I've had to 0:43:06.560 --> 0:43:09.719 go on eBay and buy some putters for the gold 0:43:09.719 --> 0:43:12.200 putter end up in the gold butter ball. 0:43:12.400 --> 0:43:15.640 It's true technology, Chase, right, We're talking about full circle 0:43:15.680 --> 0:43:17.239 technology here, right. 0:43:17.160 --> 0:43:20.680 Because nowadays when we do putters, don't we don't have 0:43:20.760 --> 0:43:23.239 the molds and we can't make another one ten years later. 0:43:23.560 --> 0:43:27.000 We used to be able to. So it's become a 0:43:27.000 --> 0:43:30.080 little bit of a problem. We need to get those 0:43:30.520 --> 0:43:31.759 the players to always use them. 0:43:31.760 --> 0:43:35.279 We're current model. There you go, it's the PSA for them. Rob. 0:43:35.320 --> 0:43:37.080 When you sit in your office and you sit in 0:43:37.120 --> 0:43:40.279 here and you're here every single day looking around, what 0:43:40.320 --> 0:43:42.440 does it say about your experience with ping. What has 0:43:42.480 --> 0:43:44.320 that been like throughout your life. 0:43:45.160 --> 0:43:49.200 Well, I always tell people when they call me and 0:43:49.239 --> 0:43:51.200 they are asking a lot of questions, and they'll say, boy, 0:43:51.239 --> 0:43:52.840 I really am sorry to bother you. So no, no, 0:43:52.880 --> 0:43:55.680 you're no bother at all, because I learned. I learned 0:43:55.680 --> 0:43:57.279 as much from them as they learn from me. 0:43:57.400 --> 0:43:57.960 I really do. 0:44:00.560 --> 0:44:05.839 So I really enjoy talking to people when they when 0:44:06.320 --> 0:44:10.200 even emailing. Although I'm a terrible type, but I enjoy 0:44:10.280 --> 0:44:14.600 talking to people about the equipment, and you know, just 0:44:14.680 --> 0:44:17.200 talking about what we're talking about today, what Carston did 0:44:17.239 --> 0:44:21.440 and didn't do. And I'm constantly learning things about Carston 0:44:21.520 --> 0:44:24.160 I didn't know, or about Carston or Louise I didn't know. 0:44:26.200 --> 0:44:30.000 So it's, uh, it is just a constant learning thing 0:44:30.040 --> 0:44:33.960 for me, and I enjoy it a lot. Otherwise I 0:44:34.080 --> 0:44:36.400 probably would have retired a long time ago. Maybe, but 0:44:36.760 --> 0:44:40.560 well probably not. I couldn't afford it, you know. So yeah, 0:44:40.640 --> 0:44:44.520 that's that's you know. And and sometimes you know, once 0:44:44.520 --> 0:44:46.359 in a while, Tony You'll come to Tony Serrano will 0:44:46.400 --> 0:44:48.080 come over and want to look at a at a 0:44:48.080 --> 0:44:50.920 putter because they're talking about making a PLD putter like 0:44:50.960 --> 0:44:53.800 it or something like that, And I really do enjoy 0:44:53.880 --> 0:44:57.120 when people like Marty and Tony and young guys come 0:44:57.160 --> 0:44:59.000 in and I can show them this stuff and talk 0:44:59.040 --> 0:44:59.640 to him about it. 0:45:00.320 --> 0:45:03.320 One of my favorite putter projects I worked on coming 0:45:03.360 --> 0:45:06.400 in here, Rob was working on the Dale Answer. So 0:45:06.520 --> 0:45:10.319 when we remade the Dale Answer, and maybe you could 0:45:10.360 --> 0:45:13.040 tell the story of the difference between the answer and 0:45:13.080 --> 0:45:16.480 the Dale was I think in you know, the collectors 0:45:16.520 --> 0:45:19.160 called the Dale Head otherwise known as the Dale Answer. 0:45:19.480 --> 0:45:23.080 Where the name Dale come from? What was that little well, 0:45:23.320 --> 0:45:24.520 the issue on the putter. 0:45:24.640 --> 0:45:26.080 Yeah, so. 0:45:27.640 --> 0:45:32.480 The Scottsdale answer the putters the answer putters made with 0:45:32.480 --> 0:45:35.439 the Scottsdale address. There were two masters for that. Those 0:45:35.440 --> 0:45:38.840 are sand cast putters, and there were two masters. Carston 0:45:38.920 --> 0:45:41.359 made the first master, and he asked Allan to make 0:45:41.360 --> 0:45:44.680 the second master. When Alan was making the second master, 0:45:45.320 --> 0:45:48.120 cutting on the toe ballast, YEP, the back of the 0:45:48.120 --> 0:45:50.920 putter cutting on the toe ballast, the mill slipped a 0:45:50.960 --> 0:45:54.480 little bit. Well, he didn't want to start over, so 0:45:54.520 --> 0:45:56.640 he decided what he would do on the other side. 0:45:57.719 --> 0:46:01.719 He made it look like the mistake and kind of 0:46:01.760 --> 0:46:05.360 evened it out, and he said that, you know, he 0:46:05.360 --> 0:46:07.560 figured when he got done, Carston would make him start 0:46:07.600 --> 0:46:07.880 over it. 0:46:09.360 --> 0:46:10.680 I might as well lean into the mistake. 0:46:11.560 --> 0:46:14.360 And so when he showed it to Carston, Carston said, no, 0:46:14.440 --> 0:46:21.880 that's okay. So there's two masters, and so any any putter, 0:46:22.280 --> 0:46:26.520 any any answer putter with a Phoenix address that's made 0:46:26.520 --> 0:46:28.840 from one of those masters. Because when they first moved 0:46:28.840 --> 0:46:32.600 to from where they were doing Scott Steale address putters, 0:46:33.480 --> 0:46:36.600 which actually wasn't in scott Steele, but I was in 0:46:36.640 --> 0:46:39.640 the county and the Scott Steal was the closest peel, 0:46:40.080 --> 0:46:44.480 the closest closest mailbox. But anyway, they moved here to 0:46:44.560 --> 0:46:47.600 the first building on our campus here, they just changed 0:46:47.640 --> 0:46:53.840 the address plate to Carston Coe Carston Company or and 0:46:53.880 --> 0:46:57.040 then a little later Carson Manufacturing Corporation, and they still 0:46:57.080 --> 0:46:59.920 were using the Scott Still Master, but with a different address. 0:47:00.560 --> 0:47:05.160 So those putters collectors refer to started referring to those 0:47:05.200 --> 0:47:10.839 as dale Heads, Scottsdale dale Heads. Okay, Well, when we 0:47:10.840 --> 0:47:13.600 were working on the book and the story that I 0:47:13.680 --> 0:47:15.920 just told you about Alan talking about how he made 0:47:15.960 --> 0:47:21.600 the second master, John didn't know this. John, I remember 0:47:21.640 --> 0:47:23.840 so well because I asked the question, why are the 0:47:23.880 --> 0:47:26.759 two masters? And Alan said, oh, I know that, and 0:47:26.840 --> 0:47:31.279 John said you do. And Alan tells the story about 0:47:31.280 --> 0:47:35.439 what happened, you know where he made a little mistake. Well, 0:47:36.280 --> 0:47:42.000 John said, oh, your middle name's Dale. That's where the 0:47:42.080 --> 0:47:45.440 Dalehead comes from. Yes, And I was like, now we 0:47:45.480 --> 0:47:46.320 have a second reason. 0:47:46.320 --> 0:47:50.680 It's a Dalehead, Alan Dale Solheiman Dale. So when I 0:47:50.760 --> 0:47:53.920 was working on the dale Head in the Answer or 0:47:54.000 --> 0:47:57.200 a Vault two point zero, we relaunched the dale Head 0:47:57.239 --> 0:48:01.319 but milled. We came in here, got a dale Head 0:48:01.360 --> 0:48:06.239 Answer three D, scanned it, brought it into our CAD software, 0:48:06.360 --> 0:48:09.720 and I matched up every little nuance of the mistake 0:48:10.320 --> 0:48:12.560 on both sides, and a bunch of the nuance there. 0:48:13.040 --> 0:48:15.240 So cool. I mean, I love I love the marriage 0:48:15.239 --> 0:48:17.920 of you know, the Vintage Club with the New Age 0:48:17.920 --> 0:48:20.279 Club is so cool and I feel like I feel 0:48:20.320 --> 0:48:22.200 like you guys have done that for a long time. 0:48:22.320 --> 0:48:23.120 It's like marrying that. 0:48:23.239 --> 0:48:24.359 Yeah. Yeah. So. 0:48:24.440 --> 0:48:26.560 One of the one of the things Alan's really proud 0:48:26.600 --> 0:48:31.240 of too about his you know, putters made from his master, 0:48:32.120 --> 0:48:35.480 is that he saw Seve someplace one time and Sebe 0:48:35.760 --> 0:48:38.840 was talking to him about the Answer and told Alan 0:48:38.960 --> 0:48:44.960 he'd like to get a dale Head with with that 0:48:45.560 --> 0:48:50.319 what what they then called flat Soul, which was the 0:48:50.360 --> 0:48:54.080 master from Alan's Allen's Master. Sevie would like to get 0:48:54.080 --> 0:48:58.839 a master to get a answer like that. Yeah, so, uh, 0:48:59.360 --> 0:49:02.320 Alan knew that Lee McCormick, one of our sales reps, 0:49:02.400 --> 0:49:07.040 had one, and he called Lee, and Lee gave the 0:49:07.080 --> 0:49:10.880 putter to Seve. Literally gave the putter to Seve, you know, 0:49:11.000 --> 0:49:16.279 sent it to Seve, and then Seve uh sent Lee 0:49:16.320 --> 0:49:19.200 a really nice letter thanking him. So Lee, Lee's got 0:49:19.200 --> 0:49:23.320 that letter really, you know, framed and everything. But Alan 0:49:23.400 --> 0:49:27.600 is very proud that Sevee wanted that answer from that master. 0:49:28.280 --> 0:49:30.600 Sevy's got a few putters in the in the ball, 0:49:30.680 --> 0:49:32.319 in the ball, I've seen him. 0:49:32.840 --> 0:49:36.000 Rob, We've talked about ping collectors. So I got to 0:49:36.040 --> 0:49:38.160 ask you this as we kind of wind down, what 0:49:38.200 --> 0:49:41.520 do we talking in terms of most expensive club in 0:49:41.560 --> 0:49:42.040 this room? 0:49:42.680 --> 0:49:47.520 Well, we don't like to get into value. You know, 0:49:47.640 --> 0:49:50.680 as a ping employee. Ping employees actually are not allowed 0:49:50.800 --> 0:49:55.920 to appraise or value on vintage ping equipment. Now, we 0:49:56.000 --> 0:49:58.960 have some things in here that are priceless, okay, and 0:49:59.080 --> 0:50:03.240 so the original these two original drawings, they're priceless, right, Yeah, 0:50:03.560 --> 0:50:07.480 the the prototype for the answer, that's a priceless item. 0:50:08.480 --> 0:50:11.240 You're not going to replace that for any amount of money. 0:50:12.239 --> 0:50:15.400 And then not in here, but in John's closet he 0:50:15.480 --> 0:50:18.799 has the first one A which is welded up from 0:50:18.880 --> 0:50:23.400 stainless steel. You know. Again, those are priceless items. Like 0:50:23.680 --> 0:50:26.400 you know, I mentioned before, the highest priced thing I 0:50:26.440 --> 0:50:29.319 know that sold, you know, at auction was probably this 0:50:29.480 --> 0:50:32.799 trainer that sold for you know, about twenty two to five. 0:50:34.680 --> 0:50:38.120 So it's you know, it's. 0:50:39.239 --> 0:50:41.840 So the answer is priceless. I feel like, yeah, priceless. 0:50:41.880 --> 0:50:44.440 And there's multiple items in that in that regard. 0:50:44.360 --> 0:50:46.800 And all that we have all these hand drawings by Carson, 0:50:47.080 --> 0:50:49.719 many more than this. Yeah, you know those those sorts 0:50:49.760 --> 0:50:51.960 of things are Yeah, they're just priceless. 0:50:52.040 --> 0:50:54.200 And that's so cool, Marty. You have anything else? We're 0:50:54.280 --> 0:50:56.200 up who you're. 0:50:56.120 --> 0:50:59.680 Rooting for this yere Sons or Pelicans? Pelicans of course. 0:51:00.160 --> 0:51:04.600 And why well, my son is the vice president of 0:51:04.680 --> 0:51:07.399 basketball operations for the New Orleans Pelicans. 0:51:07.600 --> 0:51:09.840 When he goes to another team, what do you do 0:51:09.960 --> 0:51:12.520 with the old team stuff? Is it like you donated 0:51:13.440 --> 0:51:14.600 so it stay? You keep it? 0:51:14.880 --> 0:51:15.120 Yeah? 0:51:15.160 --> 0:51:17.880 Because he was he was GM of the Cleveland Cavalist 0:51:17.960 --> 0:51:19.960 right when they won the championship. 0:51:20.040 --> 0:51:22.000 So you can't get rid of that. Are you talking 0:51:22.000 --> 0:51:25.279 about priceless? There you go, that's priceless stuff in your 0:51:25.400 --> 0:51:30.160 version of this room. I caddied years ago. It's St. Andrew's. 0:51:30.200 --> 0:51:32.040 I caddied there after college when I got out of school, 0:51:32.320 --> 0:51:34.080 and I had a lady show up one day and 0:51:34.120 --> 0:51:35.440 we're on the first team, and she was wearing this 0:51:35.520 --> 0:51:37.880 shirt and I had all these course logos on, you know, 0:51:38.080 --> 0:51:40.000 brand logos on the shirt, and I was like, that's 0:51:40.040 --> 0:51:41.920 kind of interesting. She was a pretty good player, hit 0:51:41.960 --> 0:51:43.399 down the middle of the fairway, you know, two twenty 0:51:43.480 --> 0:51:45.319 or something, and we went up there about three holes. 0:51:45.320 --> 0:51:47.319 Then I go, hey, listen, what's the deal with the shirt? 0:51:47.680 --> 0:51:50.440 And she was like, well, Anica Sorenstein's my neighbor. The 0:51:50.520 --> 0:51:52.880 time she gets a new brand or she gets a 0:51:52.920 --> 0:51:55.279 new sponsor, she just brings all the old shirts over 0:51:55.320 --> 0:51:57.440 to me. So that's kind of paying it for it, 0:51:57.440 --> 0:52:01.200 if you will. Well, Rob, this has been really really interesting. 0:52:01.239 --> 0:52:03.040 I mean, this room is unbelievable. I've never been in 0:52:03.040 --> 0:52:05.560 here before. I mean, this is my first visit here. 0:52:05.760 --> 0:52:07.600 I mean, I will be coming back. I was taking 0:52:07.600 --> 0:52:10.160 pictures of some of the lefty irons over there to 0:52:10.160 --> 0:52:11.600 some of my dad, because I mean, I know he 0:52:11.640 --> 0:52:14.120 had a set of those. What are the brilliant ones? 0:52:14.160 --> 0:52:16.319 What was that the Yeah, I mean he had a 0:52:16.360 --> 0:52:19.040 set of those. When I first started playing golf. I 0:52:19.080 --> 0:52:20.600 remember he had a set of those irons in his back. 0:52:20.600 --> 0:52:22.040 So I have to send him a picture. But we 0:52:22.080 --> 0:52:23.680 appreciate the time and the insight because it has been 0:52:23.760 --> 0:52:24.359 very very cool. 0:52:24.640 --> 0:52:25.080 Lots of fun. 0:52:25.160 --> 0:52:26.399 Yeah, thanks Frev. Always fun. 0:52:26.480 --> 0:52:28.480 Yeah. This is the Ping Proving Grounds podcast.