00:00:00
Speaker 1: The guys from paying They've kind of showed me how much the equipment matters.
00:00:04
Speaker 2: I just love that I can hit any shot I kind of want.
00:00:06
Speaker 1: We're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.
00:00:11
Speaker 3: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Ping Proving Grounds Podcast. I'm Shane Bak and joined by Marty Jerts and Marty just you and I. Today we're gonna talk a little driver.
00:00:18
Speaker 1: Fitting Driver fitting the most important club in the bag and has the biggest impact on your game and quite frankly, Shane, just fun to hit and fun to fit.
00:00:28
Speaker 3: You know, you said most important club in the bag, And I go back to that, you know, famous phrase about golf. You know you drive for show and putt for doe. Even when I was a kid, I remember thinking to myself, sure, you got to make the putts to score, but if you hit it off the planet or you don't get it in play, it's tough to be putting for anything that matters. I do feel like these days the driver feels like the most important and impactful club, not just.
00:00:54
Speaker 2: For the pros, but for everybody that plays. Yeah.
00:00:57
Speaker 1: Absolutely I'm at the modern day analytics, you know, strokes gained and thanks to Mark Brody and his work, it's I think the modern day version of that is drive for dough put to win, which is if your putter gets hot, you win. And I think the way golfers should think about the driver, Chaane, is the foundation of your game, right, It's like you're building a house. You need to have a solid foundation. Driving is the foundation of your golf game.
00:01:22
Speaker 2: Is that why you have two in the bag? Is that why you play two? Is that thing?
00:01:25
Speaker 1: Yes? I need to really really reassure the foundation here. Yes, but we'll get into that. We'll get into having a couple of drivers in the bag if it is a very important club or you know how your performance off the tee sets you up for everything. So there is a little niche out there for having two drivers in the bag.
00:01:45
Speaker 3: And Marty, just take us through if you can, before we really get into the fitting process of the drivers. Can you take us through the four forty lineup currently and what's kind of available in terms of the different drivers and the different models for players out there.
00:01:58
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely, I mean I think just to give a little history there when we launched G thirty driver was the first one with the turbulator. Was really fun. We came up with this car.
00:02:08
Speaker 2: When was that, Marty, What year was that?
00:02:10
Speaker 1: That was what around two thousand and fifteen ish, okay, right, and so we came up with this bit before that, Shane, we had I drivers and G drivers, right, and it was kind of like eyes maybe less forgiving for lower spin. We had tighter bulgin roll, and we had I and G and then we realized, hey, everyone needs high MOI. And in fact, we talked about this with Ryan Stokey on the on the podcast when we talked about the four to forty drivers, is high AMI actually if anything benefits the better player, faster swing, speed player a little bit more. So we were like, let's just have them all very forgiving and let's just make different spin characteristics. So that's when we came up with this naming convention, which is LST Low Spin Technology. And then we came up with, hey, instead of having our K fifteen type product, let's just build that right into the family. Let's call that straight Flight Technology or SFT, and then let's have a maximum forgiveness version. And then sure enough we start working on really really high MI product, and so that was the genesis of the ten K, which is breaking the ten thousand inertia berry for the first time. Now we've kind of morphed that just into the K name. So we have our most complete driver family ever right now with the four forty. The K that just launched earlier this year very high forgiveness, now has a CG shifter into it. The MAX, also very high MI, spins a little bit more than the K, launches a little bit higher than the K. Then we have the LST that's our low spin technology, most used driver on the PGA Tour. A little smaller head shape, a little more aerodynamic, lowers the spin rate. Then we have our SFT straight flight technology that's great for your everyday golfer that's kind of struggling with leaving the face a little bit open and right handed golfer missed the ball to the right.
00:04:04
Speaker 3: Do you feel like right now on tour? I want to ask you, both tour and kind of every day golfer. Is there a model you feel like, percentage wise, is most used by tour guys and maybe most used or most picked or after going through a fitting by an everyday player that comes in to get fitted ping.
00:04:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. On the PGA Tour, our ratio of LST's in play is very high, so it's somewhere in the neighborhood of like eighty percent, So about eighty percent roughly of our four forty drivers and in previous family drivers is the LST version. I think that's because those players are very high speed. They like the head shape of it that it gives them the right launch and spin characteristics. Now with the CG shifter and shafton hozzle sleeves settings, we can get everything else really dialed in for the everyday golfer. Certainly there's players that maybe don't have the club at speed of a tour player that maybe hit down on it, leave the face lill open and j rate a lot of spin. So don't rule out the LST for you, the everyday player. We don't want to pigeonhole the LST for fast wing speeds or certain skill level because it's still very forgiving and there is a fitting spot there. Even our our executive chairman, John Solheim, he's always kind of this player that spins it a lot, so we quite often will fit him into the LST put the CGS shifter in the in the in the draw position, lighten the swing way a little bit, make it more like an SFT build, and it hits the sweet spot for him. So don't don't rule it out. But that being said, chained the everyday golfer. We fit a lot of them into K drivers and max drivers and SFT. So it's kind of the beauty of our strategy of having all these models under under one family name.
00:05:46
Speaker 2: Is is that going to continue?
00:05:47
Speaker 3: I mean it seems like you mentioned, you know, the years ago there being kind of a split option in terms of driver heads, kind of very different if you will driver heads. It feels like not just paying but a lot of OEMs have said here's the driver where pushing now, and we're gonna obviously have different deviations. Do you feel like that it's where we're going in terms of driver you know, after four to forty the next iteration, we'll just have different specifics in terms of the models there, but still all kind of land under the same number.
00:06:14
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And I think that makes it easy for consumers to say, hey, tour players playing the four forty, I'm gonna go check that out right, So that's kind of one of the benefits that we get from that. And then it really is it makes it all about the fitting, right, So all of our drivers are built off the same core technologies, whether it's free hazzle design, carbon fly wrap, the kind of spinsistency face design. So we have all these core technologies that permeate between them, and then the models allow us to do this, you know, breaking down by model variation allows us have different launched spin characteristics, different inertias. For the LST, it's kind of optimizing the shape and acoustic profile, maybe specifically more for the tour player. And now I love the SFT because that's the go to for you're kind of for your slicer out there that's like, hey, give me something that's going to straighten the.
00:07:04
Speaker 2: Ball out, please. I want to I want to hit more fairways. I wanted to kind of run through.
00:07:08
Speaker 3: We've talked a lot about fitting on this podcast, and I think fitting continues to be one of the most important things for golfers to get done, and also one of the most important things that PING has done throughout its history, right is fitting players for the right golf clubs. What if somebody wants to get fit. What do you tell them they need to do before they get to the fitting. What is something that golfers that are looking for a new ping driver or a new ping would need to do before they arrive at their fitting that day.
00:07:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question, Shan, I love this question. I mean, if if you're into tracking stats, that's a great way to go. I mean, if you if you use any stats tracking app, whether it's Arcos or there's a lot of different apps out there that can track your encourse stats, that's a great one to do. So spend some time reflecting on that. If you're not into tracking your stats, that's fine as well. Spend a little bit of time thinking about your tendencies and your traits on the golf course, right, and a lot of times you go out, you play, you miss some left, you miss some rights. Kind of you just dismiss it, but maybe just spend a little time reflecting on that, that would be super valuable. And then kind of you know, where do you play most of your golf? I mean, if you play most of your golf at one course, a member at a course, or a member of a men's league or or ladies league, what have you you're going to play most your golf on that one golf course. That's a big deal in fitting to know whether or not you're going to need to your your club's going to need to travel or not, right, So it's kind of helping out with that optimization as well. So I would say, just spend a little bit of time reflecting on the past few months or what have you with your current gamer driver, what are your stats and what type of golf course conditions do you play? And that's that's a great one. And then and then if you do have stats, bring it in to your fitter and show it to your fitter. And we love doing that with our fittings at the proving grounds in our ping fitters.
00:08:52
Speaker 3: I think one thing Arcos has told me, and I feel like I hear this so often from people that really dive into Arcos is you don't really know what you do right or wrong. You think you do, but Arcos can tell you different things. And I think that's so helpful. Is we spend so much time playing golf and cared about our golf games and working on our golf games, Yet do you really know what you do right or wrong?
00:09:12
Speaker 2: Right?
00:09:12
Speaker 3: And I think that's something that op that has opened up from the availability of arcos in with you know, their new air technology where it's a little bit easier for players to kind of throw it in your pocket, go out and play. Is understanding I'm not a great driver. I am a great driver, I'm not a great iron player. Like all of those things, the data doesn't lie, right, and it'll tell you exactly what you need to know as you go in to look at something new.
00:09:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, Shane. I'm reinvigorated to track my stats lately. I've been tracking them my last few tournaments, and I kind of was thought my iron game, my approach play was in pretty good shape. Well it turns out I'm actually doing really good. I'm like gaining a couple shots around in my you know, one and a half two shots around in my iron play. So my approach play has been great, but my putting's been stinking lately, and sure enough, I'm losing like one and a half to three strokes game. So there's definitely a lot of value there in that the numbers don't lie, they can really inform that. So that's a great little piece of homework. And yeah, I uh, second that the air technology is kind of a game changer for Marcos to be able to make that easier than ever.
00:10:14
Speaker 3: All Right, So as we dive into kind of the driver, the specific driver with G four forty, you mentioned trajectory tuning sleeve. This has been a technology that has been extremely helpful for fitting. I mean back in the day it was heads with different shafts in it. Now obviously you can pull them out, move them around, change them up, and you can also do that at home.
00:10:32
Speaker 2: So can you walk us through the.
00:10:33
Speaker 3: Tuning sleeve and the importance of what's available for the players out there with that.
00:10:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, the trajectory tuning sleeve is our is our basically our our Hauzel design that allows you to adjust your driver, swap in different shafts. It allows you to try different shafts, different lengths in the fitting environment but also with your fitter or I love this, Shane, is that what I love about the trajectory tuning sleeve. It's a great tool in the fitting environment. It's basically passes a lot longjustable UH shafts lengths and we could try different loss but it also you can use it after you get your driver and get fit for your driver to kind of dial things in because as we all know, uh, maybe you go into your fitting process swings a little different day to day. Your tea heights a little bit different, maybe the turf's a little different different, maybe it's a little bit windy. You can tweak your driver post purchase, so it's a little bit of tweaking, right. It's like it's like you get your mountain bike and you want to tweak your seat height just a little bit because the day you got fit, maybe your pasture was a little bit off. You're a little bit stiff, things of that nature. So it unlocks that capability. So our trajectory tuning sleeve, it's basically before we had it, Shane, we used to build drivers for tour players where we would shim the shaft in, you know, we put it in at a tiny little angle, and that allowed us to get either little changes in loft or lying goal that were between our core loft models on the driver. So between a nine and ten point five, we could build a driver at nine point seventy five or ten, or we could take the ten point five, put a little less loft on it and then it kind of opened the face angle a little bit right. So our sleeve has one and a half degrees of tilt in it, and depending on where you install it, you're kind of spinning that one and a half degrees around the clock, so to speak, and you can make the driver up to three degrees flatter. That's a great one and that's something that I think a lot of consumers might not know about our trajectory Tuning sleeve is that we have these flat positions that can be used to change your impact location bias a little bit, which is a nice little lever on your left right bias. So one of the big pieces in the fitting process, Shane, is dialing the impact location. Our trajectory tuning sleeve allows you to do that.
00:12:52
Speaker 3: If you change loft, does the face angle head changed you do? You have to be mindful of that as well.
00:13:00
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, no, it it will very subtly. So the way that kind of works is, let's say you put your your sleeve in the plus small plus position. It's gonna add one degree of loft and it will feel a.
00:13:11
Speaker 2: Nine degree head. And you do this, now it's ten degree head.
00:13:14
Speaker 1: Yes, now it's a ten degree head, and it will indeed change the face angle just slightly to be slightly more relatively closed. Now, for some golfers that that can be a benefit. That could be a good thing. Right, if you hover the driver and don't sole it on the ground, you might actually never notice the impact of the face angle, and we call that, we've kind of called that the resting face angle internally, and some golfers never sold the driver, right, Or you might play on fairways that are fluffy bermuda and you don't actually get a ton of that. Maybe up in the northeast, same where you're playing your golf right now, you got the tight bent t boxes and this is gonna be more like setting it on, you know, like a harder surface, and so the face angle might be a bit more sensitive. So some to be mindful of. I'm personally not too sensitive of changing that because I tend to kind of hover my driver a little bit more. But that is something to be aware of when you're changing the different sleep settings sleep settings, and again for some golfers, that can be a benefit. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna take the ten to five instead of the nine in the big plus, I'm gonna take the ten to five and put in the in the in the little minus or the big minus, because I like bias, seeing that face angle a little bit open.
00:14:26
Speaker 3: And I think something else in terms of getting fit is loft. I mean, I think we talk a lot about loft and the old days. I mean, you know, you'd have tour guys that would play you know, seven degree drivers things like that, right, and now obviously with launchhake will being so important getting the ball up in the air with less.
00:14:43
Speaker 2: Spin, I think the idea of loft has changed.
00:14:46
Speaker 3: Is that fair to say, the idea that you can play a nine ten degree driver and still get plenty of distance out of it.
00:14:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty amazing, Shane. The spread of different losts we have being played in the PGA Tour LPGA Tour. We have some LPGA Tour players that are playing very low lofted drivers because they their angle of attack is very upward right, so they tee it very high, maybe am little right swing directions right, they hit up a lot. Then we have other tour players that hit down on the driver a little bit more, and so they're playing more loft to optimize their launch conditions. So I think it's actually quite a fun time to fit drivers because I think, uh, there's a lot of the legacy thoughts that are that enough time has passed, the ego is gone, right, and and it's all about just finding the perfect launch conditions. And hopefully we've influenced this a little bit with a lot of our our tools we have with our optimal launch and spin chart in our HU Launch Efficient launch efficiency tools in Pink Copilot. But I think going back to just some the meta fitting process, shaneit's you want to think about the model in the loft, so that combination that that model loft combination is your core that you're going to start your fitting process with. Right, It's it's going to be what's going to generate launch conditions, how much inertia you're going to have to protect ball speed and keep launch conditions consistent, and then you move to okay, schaff lank, trajectory tuning, sleeve, CG shifter and things of that nature.
00:16:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny. I recently have added some loft on my driver. I was I was struggling with a right miss. Like I'm a left handed golfer, so I was struggling with this right miss, and what I realized was I'm so used to using spin because I'm a high spin player with the driver to make the ball move right to left, and with modern technology, a lot of that spin's coming off and the ball is just simply not moving as much that way. And I actually added loft on my driver recently. I've been playing the LST and I'm aiming straighter and it's just wild that it's a little bit extra loft and a little bit better in terms of my alignment off the tee is allowing me to find more fairways and it's not caused him any any distance.
00:16:56
Speaker 1: Shane, was your right miss for you being a lefty? Was it was it curving or drawing on you? Or was it just that, Hey, it's starting.
00:17:04
Speaker 3: Right and not and not and not moving Like I'm just finding that the ball doesn't spin left or right for me as much. I mean, it can when you miss hit a driver, but if I hit it solid that that miss, you know, let's call it fifteen years ago that drive. The spin's taking that ball left, and I'm used to seeing that, and I feel like over the last two iterations four thirty into four forty, it's just the spin. The side spin to me is less than so much that it's allowing me to aim down the right side of the fairway, hit it there. If it does cut, it's great, and if not, it's still in the fairway.
00:17:37
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love that, And you're you're a very fun use case to fit, very much like a PGA Tour player. That said that that a lot of the PGA Tour players that hit just a little bit of cut bias and they're okay with it going straight, And there's certainly a lot of security in that. The reason why I asked you your question is that, hey, if you if you if your ball's curving over over hooking, has any hook spin or draw spin to it on your miss? One of the things with CG shifter or swingwave or length fitting that a lot of people and I think we talk about Shane with driver fitting is should you kind of fit the driver for one shot shape? And I actually like to think about this in the inverse, which is, let's eliminate the miss that you don't want, right, Let's let's let's fit your driver for the miss that you don't want. And I think that's actually a little different framing that can really help both our fitters and consumers when they're going for their driver fit is like, maybe you don't necessarily want to fade it a certain amount chain, but you you do want to eliminate the right miss right right, Yeah.
00:18:42
Speaker 3: I mean I hate seeing the ball go right. I hate seeing the ball move right. I was okay with it starting right, But again, it was a philosophy move for me more than a fitting move. Is the technology allowed me to do that, which was very helpful because I could simply just move the tuning sleeve one move over and an added loft and kind of allowed me to just pick that spot and be a little more comfortable with it. But yeah, it's been huge. I mean I've been driving it a lot better over the last few few weeks.
00:19:07
Speaker 2: Yep.
00:19:08
Speaker 1: And another piece I think is important to this bring kind of your driver fitting and translate it maybe to the everyday golfer. Your ball speeds are pretty high, like high one seventies, mid high one seventies. You can get up to the one eighties nowadays still Shane right.
00:19:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, forty two.
00:19:24
Speaker 3: I might have to lean on one now to get one eighty ish, but I can still touch it every now and again.
00:19:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're playing at that kind of PGA tour slightly above PGA two or average speed, which is awesome your every day so you can live with a little bit of that curve to kind of reduce your dispersion, give you that comfort. What we like to do with and we see tons of these players come in that maybe drive the ball two twenty five to two fifty range and they hit it pretty darn straight or hit a lot of fairways, hit a lot of fairways. We like to reduce their spin axis as much as possible. So the more you can reduce the curve, especially if you don't have the ball speed your level, to be able to live with a little bit of that coming off for the comfort of your shot shape and your dispersion. Reducing your curve as much as possible is a little bit of a hack to get more distance, right, and so we like doing that as a general rule, is trying to reduce the amount of curve. And our modern technology and golf ball obviously has that kind of built into it, which is which is quite nice.
00:20:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the CG shifter is again a piece of technology. It's been around now for a bit, but the fact that you could build a driver and then use that to kind of eliminate, as you said, potentially something. I know that the shifter is something also to be aware of when you're changing lofts, right, because you can lean on that. It's basically use one piece of technology to help.
00:20:50
Speaker 2: You with the other piece of technology.
00:20:52
Speaker 1: Yes, And the way I think hopefully this will help consumers and fitters think about driver fitting is you want to think about vertical driver fitting, right, So this is your your side view of the trajectory, and you're going to get your your your ball speed, launch, spin optimize. You want to maximize ball speed and then you want to optimize launch and spin. So that's kind of your vertical fitting, and that's where you're going to use loft model as your main things, and then trajectory tuning sleeve and then once you're kind of in the ballpark there, then you snap yourself to the top down few of the ball flight and you're gonna optimize your left right fitting. And that's where model plays a role obviously, because they have a they each have their own unique kind of left right bias. But then now, and I love that now the K has the CG shifter in it. Our fitters have absolutely love this because now you can get this megahig MLI driver and be able to shift the CG and so then you're going to optimize your left right bias of the driver and your dispersion of the driver, and you're going to do that. It's going to be informed by model. But then you're going to use CG shifter, a little bit of length, and then trajectory tuning, sleeve and then the final icing on the cake there for left right bias is swingweight. You can you can nudge the swing weight a little heavier. It's going to help bias for the right handed golfer. Trajectory is a little bit more right or eliminate left a little bit again for the right handed golfer, and then slightly lighter swing weight, headweight hedges the face delivery more closed a path, and that can help square the driver turn it over a little bit easier.
00:22:20
Speaker 3: I mean, it seems you know, you hear all this as a golfer and you think this is very complicated, right. I mean the fact that you can move the sleeve a degree here and there, and you've got a CG shifter in the back, you've got headweights, and you've got shaft all these things. I think when you first of all, when you start to understand it, it makes a little bit more sense. But I also think this is why going to somebody that knows what they're doing is so massfully important, because it's not just getting fit, but on the back end. I always tell people this all the time that talk to me personally about getting fit is i'd say, at the end of the fitting, ask the fitter what you should be, what you should know when you leave about your specific golf club, whether it be move this if you're missing it, this way, loft if you're doing this again. It's understanding your golf game and also having that conversation with your fitter to help you on the back end, knowing that the golf club is ever evolving.
00:23:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love that, and I love I love that our CG shifter, trajectory tuning sleeve are now tools in the hands of the consumer. They're they're they're with you, the player, so that you're not stuck post post purchase. You get out there, you play a few rounds of golf. Shane one one thing we've talked to and I loved interviewing our tour fitters Kenton and then our tour players. Is that this model that the tour fitting is kind of never ending. The truck is there every week they build a driver. Yes, they go dial it in on the range, but then they go play nine or they go play the practice round. Ooh, this is a little off. Let's make a little tweak now, you the consumer can also do that. And that's what I love about our modern our modern tools, technologies and designs. I think on that idea, Shane, that the driver fitting can be complic can be complicated, which it does. It sounds like we got a lot going on here. We have so many great tools within Copilot that our fitters are utilizing. Like to get into the right shaft, we got the shaft app boom, we can get you in the ballpark for the top two or three shafts to play. And then to get the right vertical launch conditions, we have this tool in there called launch Efficiency that helps find the exact perfect launch conditions for you. And then the one I love that some of our more advanced fitters use and I think this is where we're evolving our way to and track Man even has as a metric in their tool set now is fitting and choosing drivers based on strokes gained. So we have actually a strokes gained score, so you can go in with your gamer driver, or maybe you want to say, hey, is forty five and a quarter inch driver better than forty five and three quarter forty six and do a little length comparison. Maybe you can live with a few extra yards and it won't impact your dispersion that much and make those decisions based on strokes gain. So that's kind of where we're going from a fitting standpoint, and some of our fitters love fitting drivers based on a strokes gain score.
00:25:01
Speaker 3: Marty, how often should you go get fit for a new ping driver? You know, you give them your credit card, you run it, You got a new club, you're.
00:25:08
Speaker 2: Excited about it.
00:25:09
Speaker 3: How often should you be reassessing what you're doing with it, going back to a fitter or an instructor or a launch monitor or something like that to get a feel for if it's still working for what you're leaning on this time, Because as we all know, our golf games change, I mean, our golf shots change. The way we miss it can change. Like how often should a everyday golf for a seven eight handicap at their local club. Be going back to let's call it the trainer if you will, like if you were doing a new workout and getting a feel for if the driver is where it should be at this point versus when you bought it three four months ago.
00:25:44
Speaker 1: Man, I think if you're a seven eight handicapper and you got it, maybe a summer season, kind of classic summer golf season and you're not playing much in the winter and you're playing a good number of events or with your buddies, I would do it a couple times during the season with your driver because it is that important of a golf club. Certainly, maybe you're taking lessons and you're kind of keeping an eye on, you know, is your swing direction changing, is your angle to attack changing, things of that nature. Those are definitely a big part of it for most golfer. Shane, I love, at a minimum, you want to check your driver once a year, right is the beginning of the season would be a good time, or maybe kind of back into playing a little bit early in the season, great time to go just get a check up on your driver. That being said, Shane, there's a lot of golfers out there that have home launch monitors. Maybe your club has a launch monitor on your range. Now we're seeing a lot of that, and you can feel free to tune up the driver once a week if you want to, or maybe you got your home sim And again I like this model that eventually avid golfers at home were doing exactly the same thing tour players are doing. And you're seeing tour players measure not only on the range, they're taking their quad or their track man right out of the course and they're measuring literally every I mean, who would have imagined that ten years ago, So you're measuring every single golf shot.
00:27:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's wild. And I mean we really haven't touched on shafts too, Marty. I mean, you know, I mean the shaft world is so extensive. I know, Ping makes shafts at home. Now you've got a shaft lab there where you're basically diving in to the shaft the world within the driver to basically match everything up from head through the grip. I mean, it's become a big part of what PING is about in terms of the shafts. But it is a world where you can go as deep into the shaft world as you want, or you can go as surface as you want as well, and really lean into what makes the most sense and maybe not deviate much from what you go model to model in terms of the heads.
00:27:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. Yehafts shafts of fun world. Yeah, We've been having a great time with our lab here doing a lot of fun research. I mean, what's what's great here is we have John Oldenberg Lean all of our shaft designs, and then we have our focal tools which is Markless, which is our Mark Heurd motion capture system, and we just I was in a few golf science meetings in the last couple of weeks looking at how the shaft is bending and drooping and deflecting dynamically, and we're getting going down some really fun rabbit holes, which you know, how much can the shaft influence how consistent you deliver the club, your consistency of delivery, closure rate, drooping. So not only can shaft for the golfer influence just your average ball speed, launch, spin, face delivery, but it's also and I think we all know this kind of our intuition is that shafts just kind of work for you, right, And so we're getting down into the science of what what what makes that?
00:28:37
Speaker 2: Why is that?
00:28:38
Speaker 1: Like, what is the causal reason that maybe some tour players or you or me like this kind of favorite shaft or this favorite bending profile or torque profile. And not only is it you know, maybe give us the right launch conditions, it's the consistency of delivery. You know, a certain shaft can kind of be a dampener on maybe imperfection in your swing and allow you to still deliver the face and get those launch conditions or get that tight impact stat area. So shaft's a fun one.
00:29:08
Speaker 2: We met.
00:29:08
Speaker 1: We have some great tools. I mean, our shaft app in Pink co Pilot is our most used app in there, and that's because our fitters love using it to kind of narrow down into the right shaft. So that's how I would encourage you to think about shaft fitting is to go to one of our fitters that has Pink Copilot and when you're when they're using our shaft app, they're they're leveraging and tapping into all of our research we've done in our shaft lab, in our focal system.
00:29:32
Speaker 3: Marty, how often are tour players tweaking their drivers? I mean, I've been on the truck and been, you know within the tour truck. You know plenty of times that majors in some of the golf tournaments I go to, and the guys are in there every week tinkering with something, right Matt Fitzpatrick, you know, kind of weighing his irons every single week, make sure the weight is perfect compared to what it was the week before. You've got guys in there obviously doing stuff to their wedges and their grips, But how often are they changing or tweaking stuff with the driver? Because you said it off the top of the podcast, the driver is the most important.
00:30:02
Speaker 2: Club in the bag, especially for the tour pro.
00:30:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, driver is an interesting one. I mean, there we have it. We have a good number of tour players that will work on the driver. Let's call it the off season if there even is one anymore shame, but they're kind of in the in the off season wrap around season. Uh, they will put some work into maybe maybe if it's a tour player looking to gain a little bit and strokes gain based on their year end recap and try some a little bit longer, they'll put some work into it and and lock into the driver early in the season and then if the latch again. These guys are measuring launch conditions sometimes every single shot or you know, I think most tour players are getting on a launch monitor literally every week at a minimum, during practice rounds and days and things of that nature. They're keeping a very close eye on to those launch conditions. If the launch conditions are good where they want it to be. We have a number of tour players that stick to the same base build and they won't tweak it the entire year. Uh, you know, everything will be in pretty good shape. Then we'll have other tour players where, you know, maybe they're tweaking their angle of attack a little bit, working on some technique things throughout the year, and they need to tweak their driver to work in harmony with that, and that's where kind of the fitting coaching goes together. I we don't see tour players maybe tweaking their driver as much as maybe experimenting with grinds on their wedges weak to week for different conditions, or even maybe tweaking their putter their putter loft if they're If they're tweaking things that way, the driver seems to be if you're if they're comfortable with it, they like their model. They like the amount of loft they're seeing on the golf ball that works with their mechanics. It's one of the more stable things that we see some of our players kind of keep throughout the year, a little bit more stable.
00:31:45
Speaker 3: All Right, you got to talk about th River because it's a club that I think is is uh.
00:31:50
Speaker 2: Is beloved by you? Or are you still a Thriver guy? Are you still? Yeah?
00:31:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I'm still I'm still Thriver. I love it.
00:31:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, So explain, I mean, if if people haven't heard it or they didn't listen to previous podcasts about the Thriver, where does that fit into this process, because that's a whole different club that has the same size head as a as a driver that you're going to play as your main gamer.
00:32:12
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:32:13
Speaker 1: Well, I'll take a little step back, Shane and kind of you ask the question of what should a golfer think about going into the fitting? And so I did self reflection on my own game and track some stats. I was like, hey, I have my well, yeah, what what did I do well? Or where do I have a maybe some demons. Every golfer's got little demons in their game, and I had demons with a three wood, I would get quite often maybe a little nervous on my first T shot or my swings a little off. And where that would show up the most for me is my three wood three wood off the tee specifically, and in Arizona Golf, a lot of the PJA Southwest Section events, I need to hit a two seventy five, two eighty shot, two seventy shot fairways run out or neck in right. It's kind of classic Arizona golf style design. And so I was like, hey, looked at my stats reflected on my game. I was like, what would happen here if I played a twelve degree driver at threewood length? What would happen to my dispersion? And would that kind of solve that demon in my game? And I, in my stats, use the three wood as a T shot club eighty five to ninety percent of the time for the golf I play right. And this is this is the beauty of custom fitting. Might be very different for you, might be very different for somebody with my speed that's playing different style of golf courses and they need to use a threewood into their par five's a lot their ratio might be different, right, and this is the value of stats. So I something I experiment with. I think I'm going on year three now with the Thriver design. Is I just take our twelve degree max head and got to we gotta build for this epping put the build a shaft that's about forty three inches forty three and a quarter inches. For me, I build it slightly heavier CG shifter, the fade position flat dot, so it's a little bit flatter. And this is like, uh, I call it my anti anxiety club for me, Shane, Like, it doesn't matter how bad, you know, if I'm swinging a bat or nervous, I can see this thing low and hit this what we call the Thriver right down the middle of the fair We very comforting club.
00:34:18
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:34:19
Speaker 3: I've played it on and off for the last couple of years and it is so funny. My club in Connecticut the first hole. We call it the hardest opening hole in the state of Connecticut. It's just one of those part fours that you won't I have no interest in playing out of the gate, oh b left, trash right, just gotta hit over a fairway bunker. If you want to have a short iron in and it is legitimately a whole design for the thriver. Yeah, because if you could hit it two sixty five two seven in the air, it's perfect. And again you talk about anxiety for me trying to hit kind of the cut that doesn't cut too much and go out of bounds.
00:34:53
Speaker 2: It is. It is exactly like the club that perfect for that shot. So I'm with you.
00:34:57
Speaker 3: It's a great opening T shot club and also a little easy to hit off the ground. I mean, with the added loft you could hit it off the off the deck if you need to and get it up in the air and actually attack a Part five or two.
00:35:07
Speaker 1: I've yeah, No, I've had a lot of success as long as a Part five you've got some room to kind of run it up or a lot of times. I guess the strokes gained calculation is, Shane, Let's say I have to hit this three food off the tee or two seventy five shot off the t five times in a round, and maybe I have to hit it off the ground once into six hundred yard part five. Your your your strokes gained that you're getting from reducing your dispersion by fifty percent on those T shot clubs will far outweigh that one shot, or maybe if I can just get up by the green raw ly on my short game, get that ball up and down could be worth it. So doubt not something for everybody, but I think for your faster swing speed players that if you kind of reflect upon your game and say, hey, yeah, I hit three wood off the tee a lot of the times, but I would. I would if I played a tournament Shane, where it's every holes a driver hole, and I might have two or three part fives where I need to hit a three into the green. Yeah, I'll put, I'll put, I'll put the driver's side and put a three back in the bag for that particular course or tournament.
00:36:07
Speaker 3: All right, Marty, what did we forget or what do we miss on in terms of driver fitting for those out there kind of getting ready for something new, getting ready to go out there and look at four forty and beyond. What is kind of a lasting thought to have as we wrap this.
00:36:20
Speaker 1: Up, Man, when you go in for a driver fitting, you want to make sure your fitter is measuring your angle of attack. We talked about this with Frederick from track Man. We have great tools on it in Pink co Pilot in our driver launch efficiency tool in our optimal launch and Spin chart. So the higher the more you hit up on the ball, you're going to live with less spin and your launch angle is going to be higher. The more you hit down on the ball from an angle of attack standpoint, your optimal spin is going to be lower. So go in with an open mind about what the optimal spin rate is for you. That's number one, So keep an eye on your angle of attack and then Shane. The icing on the cake for fitting is pairing your golf ball to your driver or your entire game. So if everything's good, you like the K driver, but it might be spinning just a little bit too much two and three hundred RPMs too much. You can use our Ballnamic tool to use golf ball to get you into the right launch and spin zone. So let's say you can't get perfect on our optimal launch and spin chart, remember that that's when golf ball comes into play. And that's kind of the icing on the cake for driver fitting and marry it to you entire game.
00:37:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's there's so many options out there, and obviously it feels like every year, every six months, there's a new option out there, whether it be it kind of something within Copilot or beyond that. Marty and the team does such a great job of in terms of helping you not just get fit for something perfect for your game, but also understand what you're getting fit for. And I think the fitting world it becomes more complicated at times because of all the technology out there, and way less complicated at times because of the options. And I think golfers are just smarter now. I think they understand a lot of the stuff we talk so much about. But it just reminder, get fit, get fit for somebody who knows what they're doing. And whether it be K or LST or SFT or you know, if you're thinking about jumping the thriver world, they're all great out there if you get a fit for your game, and it makes sense for how you play the game as well. But Marty appreciate obviously the insight into the driver fitting world. Most important club in your bag. Get something new in there that finds more fairways and goes a little longer. It'll make golf more enjoyable for everybody out there that's listening. This is the Ping proven Grounds podcast
Speaker 1: The guys from paying They've kind of showed me how much the equipment matters.
00:00:04
Speaker 2: I just love that I can hit any shot I kind of want.
00:00:06
Speaker 1: We're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.
00:00:11
Speaker 3: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Ping Proving Grounds Podcast. I'm Shane Bak and joined by Marty Jerts and Marty just you and I. Today we're gonna talk a little driver.
00:00:18
Speaker 1: Fitting Driver fitting the most important club in the bag and has the biggest impact on your game and quite frankly, Shane, just fun to hit and fun to fit.
00:00:28
Speaker 3: You know, you said most important club in the bag, And I go back to that, you know, famous phrase about golf. You know you drive for show and putt for doe. Even when I was a kid, I remember thinking to myself, sure, you got to make the putts to score, but if you hit it off the planet or you don't get it in play, it's tough to be putting for anything that matters. I do feel like these days the driver feels like the most important and impactful club, not just.
00:00:54
Speaker 2: For the pros, but for everybody that plays. Yeah.
00:00:57
Speaker 1: Absolutely I'm at the modern day analytics, you know, strokes gained and thanks to Mark Brody and his work, it's I think the modern day version of that is drive for dough put to win, which is if your putter gets hot, you win. And I think the way golfers should think about the driver, Chaane, is the foundation of your game, right, It's like you're building a house. You need to have a solid foundation. Driving is the foundation of your golf game.
00:01:22
Speaker 2: Is that why you have two in the bag? Is that why you play two? Is that thing?
00:01:25
Speaker 1: Yes? I need to really really reassure the foundation here. Yes, but we'll get into that. We'll get into having a couple of drivers in the bag if it is a very important club or you know how your performance off the tee sets you up for everything. So there is a little niche out there for having two drivers in the bag.
00:01:45
Speaker 3: And Marty, just take us through if you can, before we really get into the fitting process of the drivers. Can you take us through the four forty lineup currently and what's kind of available in terms of the different drivers and the different models for players out there.
00:01:58
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely, I mean I think just to give a little history there when we launched G thirty driver was the first one with the turbulator. Was really fun. We came up with this car.
00:02:08
Speaker 2: When was that, Marty, What year was that?
00:02:10
Speaker 1: That was what around two thousand and fifteen ish, okay, right, and so we came up with this bit before that, Shane, we had I drivers and G drivers, right, and it was kind of like eyes maybe less forgiving for lower spin. We had tighter bulgin roll, and we had I and G and then we realized, hey, everyone needs high MOI. And in fact, we talked about this with Ryan Stokey on the on the podcast when we talked about the four to forty drivers, is high AMI actually if anything benefits the better player, faster swing, speed player a little bit more. So we were like, let's just have them all very forgiving and let's just make different spin characteristics. So that's when we came up with this naming convention, which is LST Low Spin Technology. And then we came up with, hey, instead of having our K fifteen type product, let's just build that right into the family. Let's call that straight Flight Technology or SFT, and then let's have a maximum forgiveness version. And then sure enough we start working on really really high MI product, and so that was the genesis of the ten K, which is breaking the ten thousand inertia berry for the first time. Now we've kind of morphed that just into the K name. So we have our most complete driver family ever right now with the four forty. The K that just launched earlier this year very high forgiveness, now has a CG shifter into it. The MAX, also very high MI, spins a little bit more than the K, launches a little bit higher than the K. Then we have the LST that's our low spin technology, most used driver on the PGA Tour. A little smaller head shape, a little more aerodynamic, lowers the spin rate. Then we have our SFT straight flight technology that's great for your everyday golfer that's kind of struggling with leaving the face a little bit open and right handed golfer missed the ball to the right.
00:04:04
Speaker 3: Do you feel like right now on tour? I want to ask you, both tour and kind of every day golfer. Is there a model you feel like, percentage wise, is most used by tour guys and maybe most used or most picked or after going through a fitting by an everyday player that comes in to get fitted ping.
00:04:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. On the PGA Tour, our ratio of LST's in play is very high, so it's somewhere in the neighborhood of like eighty percent, So about eighty percent roughly of our four forty drivers and in previous family drivers is the LST version. I think that's because those players are very high speed. They like the head shape of it that it gives them the right launch and spin characteristics. Now with the CG shifter and shafton hozzle sleeves settings, we can get everything else really dialed in for the everyday golfer. Certainly there's players that maybe don't have the club at speed of a tour player that maybe hit down on it, leave the face lill open and j rate a lot of spin. So don't rule out the LST for you, the everyday player. We don't want to pigeonhole the LST for fast wing speeds or certain skill level because it's still very forgiving and there is a fitting spot there. Even our our executive chairman, John Solheim, he's always kind of this player that spins it a lot, so we quite often will fit him into the LST put the CGS shifter in the in the in the draw position, lighten the swing way a little bit, make it more like an SFT build, and it hits the sweet spot for him. So don't don't rule it out. But that being said, chained the everyday golfer. We fit a lot of them into K drivers and max drivers and SFT. So it's kind of the beauty of our strategy of having all these models under under one family name.
00:05:46
Speaker 2: Is is that going to continue?
00:05:47
Speaker 3: I mean it seems like you mentioned, you know, the years ago there being kind of a split option in terms of driver heads, kind of very different if you will driver heads. It feels like not just paying but a lot of OEMs have said here's the driver where pushing now, and we're gonna obviously have different deviations. Do you feel like that it's where we're going in terms of driver you know, after four to forty the next iteration, we'll just have different specifics in terms of the models there, but still all kind of land under the same number.
00:06:14
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And I think that makes it easy for consumers to say, hey, tour players playing the four forty, I'm gonna go check that out right, So that's kind of one of the benefits that we get from that. And then it really is it makes it all about the fitting, right, So all of our drivers are built off the same core technologies, whether it's free hazzle design, carbon fly wrap, the kind of spinsistency face design. So we have all these core technologies that permeate between them, and then the models allow us to do this, you know, breaking down by model variation allows us have different launched spin characteristics, different inertias. For the LST, it's kind of optimizing the shape and acoustic profile, maybe specifically more for the tour player. And now I love the SFT because that's the go to for you're kind of for your slicer out there that's like, hey, give me something that's going to straighten the.
00:07:04
Speaker 2: Ball out, please. I want to I want to hit more fairways. I wanted to kind of run through.
00:07:08
Speaker 3: We've talked a lot about fitting on this podcast, and I think fitting continues to be one of the most important things for golfers to get done, and also one of the most important things that PING has done throughout its history, right is fitting players for the right golf clubs. What if somebody wants to get fit. What do you tell them they need to do before they get to the fitting. What is something that golfers that are looking for a new ping driver or a new ping would need to do before they arrive at their fitting that day.
00:07:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question, Shan, I love this question. I mean, if if you're into tracking stats, that's a great way to go. I mean, if you if you use any stats tracking app, whether it's Arcos or there's a lot of different apps out there that can track your encourse stats, that's a great one to do. So spend some time reflecting on that. If you're not into tracking your stats, that's fine as well. Spend a little bit of time thinking about your tendencies and your traits on the golf course, right, and a lot of times you go out, you play, you miss some left, you miss some rights. Kind of you just dismiss it, but maybe just spend a little time reflecting on that, that would be super valuable. And then kind of you know, where do you play most of your golf? I mean, if you play most of your golf at one course, a member at a course, or a member of a men's league or or ladies league, what have you you're going to play most your golf on that one golf course. That's a big deal in fitting to know whether or not you're going to need to your your club's going to need to travel or not, right, So it's kind of helping out with that optimization as well. So I would say, just spend a little bit of time reflecting on the past few months or what have you with your current gamer driver, what are your stats and what type of golf course conditions do you play? And that's that's a great one. And then and then if you do have stats, bring it in to your fitter and show it to your fitter. And we love doing that with our fittings at the proving grounds in our ping fitters.
00:08:52
Speaker 3: I think one thing Arcos has told me, and I feel like I hear this so often from people that really dive into Arcos is you don't really know what you do right or wrong. You think you do, but Arcos can tell you different things. And I think that's so helpful. Is we spend so much time playing golf and cared about our golf games and working on our golf games, Yet do you really know what you do right or wrong?
00:09:12
Speaker 2: Right?
00:09:12
Speaker 3: And I think that's something that op that has opened up from the availability of arcos in with you know, their new air technology where it's a little bit easier for players to kind of throw it in your pocket, go out and play. Is understanding I'm not a great driver. I am a great driver, I'm not a great iron player. Like all of those things, the data doesn't lie, right, and it'll tell you exactly what you need to know as you go in to look at something new.
00:09:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, Shane. I'm reinvigorated to track my stats lately. I've been tracking them my last few tournaments, and I kind of was thought my iron game, my approach play was in pretty good shape. Well it turns out I'm actually doing really good. I'm like gaining a couple shots around in my you know, one and a half two shots around in my iron play. So my approach play has been great, but my putting's been stinking lately, and sure enough, I'm losing like one and a half to three strokes game. So there's definitely a lot of value there in that the numbers don't lie, they can really inform that. So that's a great little piece of homework. And yeah, I uh, second that the air technology is kind of a game changer for Marcos to be able to make that easier than ever.
00:10:14
Speaker 3: All Right, So as we dive into kind of the driver, the specific driver with G four forty, you mentioned trajectory tuning sleeve. This has been a technology that has been extremely helpful for fitting. I mean back in the day it was heads with different shafts in it. Now obviously you can pull them out, move them around, change them up, and you can also do that at home.
00:10:32
Speaker 2: So can you walk us through the.
00:10:33
Speaker 3: Tuning sleeve and the importance of what's available for the players out there with that.
00:10:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, the trajectory tuning sleeve is our is our basically our our Hauzel design that allows you to adjust your driver, swap in different shafts. It allows you to try different shafts, different lengths in the fitting environment but also with your fitter or I love this, Shane, is that what I love about the trajectory tuning sleeve. It's a great tool in the fitting environment. It's basically passes a lot longjustable UH shafts lengths and we could try different loss but it also you can use it after you get your driver and get fit for your driver to kind of dial things in because as we all know, uh, maybe you go into your fitting process swings a little different day to day. Your tea heights a little bit different, maybe the turf's a little different different, maybe it's a little bit windy. You can tweak your driver post purchase, so it's a little bit of tweaking, right. It's like it's like you get your mountain bike and you want to tweak your seat height just a little bit because the day you got fit, maybe your pasture was a little bit off. You're a little bit stiff, things of that nature. So it unlocks that capability. So our trajectory tuning sleeve, it's basically before we had it, Shane, we used to build drivers for tour players where we would shim the shaft in, you know, we put it in at a tiny little angle, and that allowed us to get either little changes in loft or lying goal that were between our core loft models on the driver. So between a nine and ten point five, we could build a driver at nine point seventy five or ten, or we could take the ten point five, put a little less loft on it and then it kind of opened the face angle a little bit right. So our sleeve has one and a half degrees of tilt in it, and depending on where you install it, you're kind of spinning that one and a half degrees around the clock, so to speak, and you can make the driver up to three degrees flatter. That's a great one and that's something that I think a lot of consumers might not know about our trajectory Tuning sleeve is that we have these flat positions that can be used to change your impact location bias a little bit, which is a nice little lever on your left right bias. So one of the big pieces in the fitting process, Shane, is dialing the impact location. Our trajectory tuning sleeve allows you to do that.
00:12:52
Speaker 3: If you change loft, does the face angle head changed you do? You have to be mindful of that as well.
00:13:00
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, no, it it will very subtly. So the way that kind of works is, let's say you put your your sleeve in the plus small plus position. It's gonna add one degree of loft and it will feel a.
00:13:11
Speaker 2: Nine degree head. And you do this, now it's ten degree head.
00:13:14
Speaker 1: Yes, now it's a ten degree head, and it will indeed change the face angle just slightly to be slightly more relatively closed. Now, for some golfers that that can be a benefit. That could be a good thing. Right, if you hover the driver and don't sole it on the ground, you might actually never notice the impact of the face angle, and we call that, we've kind of called that the resting face angle internally, and some golfers never sold the driver, right, Or you might play on fairways that are fluffy bermuda and you don't actually get a ton of that. Maybe up in the northeast, same where you're playing your golf right now, you got the tight bent t boxes and this is gonna be more like setting it on, you know, like a harder surface, and so the face angle might be a bit more sensitive. So some to be mindful of. I'm personally not too sensitive of changing that because I tend to kind of hover my driver a little bit more. But that is something to be aware of when you're changing the different sleep settings sleep settings, and again for some golfers, that can be a benefit. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna take the ten to five instead of the nine in the big plus, I'm gonna take the ten to five and put in the in the in the little minus or the big minus, because I like bias, seeing that face angle a little bit open.
00:14:26
Speaker 3: And I think something else in terms of getting fit is loft. I mean, I think we talk a lot about loft and the old days. I mean, you know, you'd have tour guys that would play you know, seven degree drivers things like that, right, and now obviously with launchhake will being so important getting the ball up in the air with less.
00:14:43
Speaker 2: Spin, I think the idea of loft has changed.
00:14:46
Speaker 3: Is that fair to say, the idea that you can play a nine ten degree driver and still get plenty of distance out of it.
00:14:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty amazing, Shane. The spread of different losts we have being played in the PGA Tour LPGA Tour. We have some LPGA Tour players that are playing very low lofted drivers because they their angle of attack is very upward right, so they tee it very high, maybe am little right swing directions right, they hit up a lot. Then we have other tour players that hit down on the driver a little bit more, and so they're playing more loft to optimize their launch conditions. So I think it's actually quite a fun time to fit drivers because I think, uh, there's a lot of the legacy thoughts that are that enough time has passed, the ego is gone, right, and and it's all about just finding the perfect launch conditions. And hopefully we've influenced this a little bit with a lot of our our tools we have with our optimal launch and spin chart in our HU Launch Efficient launch efficiency tools in Pink Copilot. But I think going back to just some the meta fitting process, shaneit's you want to think about the model in the loft, so that combination that that model loft combination is your core that you're going to start your fitting process with. Right, It's it's going to be what's going to generate launch conditions, how much inertia you're going to have to protect ball speed and keep launch conditions consistent, and then you move to okay, schaff lank, trajectory tuning, sleeve, CG shifter and things of that nature.
00:16:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny. I recently have added some loft on my driver. I was I was struggling with a right miss. Like I'm a left handed golfer, so I was struggling with this right miss, and what I realized was I'm so used to using spin because I'm a high spin player with the driver to make the ball move right to left, and with modern technology, a lot of that spin's coming off and the ball is just simply not moving as much that way. And I actually added loft on my driver recently. I've been playing the LST and I'm aiming straighter and it's just wild that it's a little bit extra loft and a little bit better in terms of my alignment off the tee is allowing me to find more fairways and it's not caused him any any distance.
00:16:56
Speaker 1: Shane, was your right miss for you being a lefty? Was it was it curving or drawing on you? Or was it just that, Hey, it's starting.
00:17:04
Speaker 3: Right and not and not and not moving Like I'm just finding that the ball doesn't spin left or right for me as much. I mean, it can when you miss hit a driver, but if I hit it solid that that miss, you know, let's call it fifteen years ago that drive. The spin's taking that ball left, and I'm used to seeing that, and I feel like over the last two iterations four thirty into four forty, it's just the spin. The side spin to me is less than so much that it's allowing me to aim down the right side of the fairway, hit it there. If it does cut, it's great, and if not, it's still in the fairway.
00:17:37
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love that, And you're you're a very fun use case to fit, very much like a PGA Tour player. That said that that a lot of the PGA Tour players that hit just a little bit of cut bias and they're okay with it going straight, And there's certainly a lot of security in that. The reason why I asked you your question is that, hey, if you if you if your ball's curving over over hooking, has any hook spin or draw spin to it on your miss? One of the things with CG shifter or swingwave or length fitting that a lot of people and I think we talk about Shane with driver fitting is should you kind of fit the driver for one shot shape? And I actually like to think about this in the inverse, which is, let's eliminate the miss that you don't want, right, Let's let's let's fit your driver for the miss that you don't want. And I think that's actually a little different framing that can really help both our fitters and consumers when they're going for their driver fit is like, maybe you don't necessarily want to fade it a certain amount chain, but you you do want to eliminate the right miss right right, Yeah.
00:18:42
Speaker 3: I mean I hate seeing the ball go right. I hate seeing the ball move right. I was okay with it starting right, But again, it was a philosophy move for me more than a fitting move. Is the technology allowed me to do that, which was very helpful because I could simply just move the tuning sleeve one move over and an added loft and kind of allowed me to just pick that spot and be a little more comfortable with it. But yeah, it's been huge. I mean I've been driving it a lot better over the last few few weeks.
00:19:07
Speaker 2: Yep.
00:19:08
Speaker 1: And another piece I think is important to this bring kind of your driver fitting and translate it maybe to the everyday golfer. Your ball speeds are pretty high, like high one seventies, mid high one seventies. You can get up to the one eighties nowadays still Shane right.
00:19:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, forty two.
00:19:24
Speaker 3: I might have to lean on one now to get one eighty ish, but I can still touch it every now and again.
00:19:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're playing at that kind of PGA tour slightly above PGA two or average speed, which is awesome your every day so you can live with a little bit of that curve to kind of reduce your dispersion, give you that comfort. What we like to do with and we see tons of these players come in that maybe drive the ball two twenty five to two fifty range and they hit it pretty darn straight or hit a lot of fairways, hit a lot of fairways. We like to reduce their spin axis as much as possible. So the more you can reduce the curve, especially if you don't have the ball speed your level, to be able to live with a little bit of that coming off for the comfort of your shot shape and your dispersion. Reducing your curve as much as possible is a little bit of a hack to get more distance, right, and so we like doing that as a general rule, is trying to reduce the amount of curve. And our modern technology and golf ball obviously has that kind of built into it, which is which is quite nice.
00:20:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the CG shifter is again a piece of technology. It's been around now for a bit, but the fact that you could build a driver and then use that to kind of eliminate, as you said, potentially something. I know that the shifter is something also to be aware of when you're changing lofts, right, because you can lean on that. It's basically use one piece of technology to help.
00:20:50
Speaker 2: You with the other piece of technology.
00:20:52
Speaker 1: Yes, And the way I think hopefully this will help consumers and fitters think about driver fitting is you want to think about vertical driver fitting, right, So this is your your side view of the trajectory, and you're going to get your your your ball speed, launch, spin optimize. You want to maximize ball speed and then you want to optimize launch and spin. So that's kind of your vertical fitting, and that's where you're going to use loft model as your main things, and then trajectory tuning sleeve and then once you're kind of in the ballpark there, then you snap yourself to the top down few of the ball flight and you're gonna optimize your left right fitting. And that's where model plays a role obviously, because they have a they each have their own unique kind of left right bias. But then now, and I love that now the K has the CG shifter in it. Our fitters have absolutely love this because now you can get this megahig MLI driver and be able to shift the CG and so then you're going to optimize your left right bias of the driver and your dispersion of the driver, and you're going to do that. It's going to be informed by model. But then you're going to use CG shifter, a little bit of length, and then trajectory tuning, sleeve and then the final icing on the cake there for left right bias is swingweight. You can you can nudge the swing weight a little heavier. It's going to help bias for the right handed golfer. Trajectory is a little bit more right or eliminate left a little bit again for the right handed golfer, and then slightly lighter swing weight, headweight hedges the face delivery more closed a path, and that can help square the driver turn it over a little bit easier.
00:22:20
Speaker 3: I mean, it seems you know, you hear all this as a golfer and you think this is very complicated, right. I mean the fact that you can move the sleeve a degree here and there, and you've got a CG shifter in the back, you've got headweights, and you've got shaft all these things. I think when you first of all, when you start to understand it, it makes a little bit more sense. But I also think this is why going to somebody that knows what they're doing is so massfully important, because it's not just getting fit, but on the back end. I always tell people this all the time that talk to me personally about getting fit is i'd say, at the end of the fitting, ask the fitter what you should be, what you should know when you leave about your specific golf club, whether it be move this if you're missing it, this way, loft if you're doing this again. It's understanding your golf game and also having that conversation with your fitter to help you on the back end, knowing that the golf club is ever evolving.
00:23:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love that, and I love I love that our CG shifter, trajectory tuning sleeve are now tools in the hands of the consumer. They're they're they're with you, the player, so that you're not stuck post post purchase. You get out there, you play a few rounds of golf. Shane one one thing we've talked to and I loved interviewing our tour fitters Kenton and then our tour players. Is that this model that the tour fitting is kind of never ending. The truck is there every week they build a driver. Yes, they go dial it in on the range, but then they go play nine or they go play the practice round. Ooh, this is a little off. Let's make a little tweak now, you the consumer can also do that. And that's what I love about our modern our modern tools, technologies and designs. I think on that idea, Shane, that the driver fitting can be complic can be complicated, which it does. It sounds like we got a lot going on here. We have so many great tools within Copilot that our fitters are utilizing. Like to get into the right shaft, we got the shaft app boom, we can get you in the ballpark for the top two or three shafts to play. And then to get the right vertical launch conditions, we have this tool in there called launch Efficiency that helps find the exact perfect launch conditions for you. And then the one I love that some of our more advanced fitters use and I think this is where we're evolving our way to and track Man even has as a metric in their tool set now is fitting and choosing drivers based on strokes gained. So we have actually a strokes gained score, so you can go in with your gamer driver, or maybe you want to say, hey, is forty five and a quarter inch driver better than forty five and three quarter forty six and do a little length comparison. Maybe you can live with a few extra yards and it won't impact your dispersion that much and make those decisions based on strokes gain. So that's kind of where we're going from a fitting standpoint, and some of our fitters love fitting drivers based on a strokes gain score.
00:25:01
Speaker 3: Marty, how often should you go get fit for a new ping driver? You know, you give them your credit card, you run it, You got a new club, you're.
00:25:08
Speaker 2: Excited about it.
00:25:09
Speaker 3: How often should you be reassessing what you're doing with it, going back to a fitter or an instructor or a launch monitor or something like that to get a feel for if it's still working for what you're leaning on this time, Because as we all know, our golf games change, I mean, our golf shots change. The way we miss it can change. Like how often should a everyday golf for a seven eight handicap at their local club. Be going back to let's call it the trainer if you will, like if you were doing a new workout and getting a feel for if the driver is where it should be at this point versus when you bought it three four months ago.
00:25:44
Speaker 1: Man, I think if you're a seven eight handicapper and you got it, maybe a summer season, kind of classic summer golf season and you're not playing much in the winter and you're playing a good number of events or with your buddies, I would do it a couple times during the season with your driver because it is that important of a golf club. Certainly, maybe you're taking lessons and you're kind of keeping an eye on, you know, is your swing direction changing, is your angle to attack changing, things of that nature. Those are definitely a big part of it for most golfer. Shane, I love, at a minimum, you want to check your driver once a year, right is the beginning of the season would be a good time, or maybe kind of back into playing a little bit early in the season, great time to go just get a check up on your driver. That being said, Shane, there's a lot of golfers out there that have home launch monitors. Maybe your club has a launch monitor on your range. Now we're seeing a lot of that, and you can feel free to tune up the driver once a week if you want to, or maybe you got your home sim And again I like this model that eventually avid golfers at home were doing exactly the same thing tour players are doing. And you're seeing tour players measure not only on the range, they're taking their quad or their track man right out of the course and they're measuring literally every I mean, who would have imagined that ten years ago, So you're measuring every single golf shot.
00:27:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's wild. And I mean we really haven't touched on shafts too, Marty. I mean, you know, I mean the shaft world is so extensive. I know, Ping makes shafts at home. Now you've got a shaft lab there where you're basically diving in to the shaft the world within the driver to basically match everything up from head through the grip. I mean, it's become a big part of what PING is about in terms of the shafts. But it is a world where you can go as deep into the shaft world as you want, or you can go as surface as you want as well, and really lean into what makes the most sense and maybe not deviate much from what you go model to model in terms of the heads.
00:27:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. Yehafts shafts of fun world. Yeah, We've been having a great time with our lab here doing a lot of fun research. I mean, what's what's great here is we have John Oldenberg Lean all of our shaft designs, and then we have our focal tools which is Markless, which is our Mark Heurd motion capture system, and we just I was in a few golf science meetings in the last couple of weeks looking at how the shaft is bending and drooping and deflecting dynamically, and we're getting going down some really fun rabbit holes, which you know, how much can the shaft influence how consistent you deliver the club, your consistency of delivery, closure rate, drooping. So not only can shaft for the golfer influence just your average ball speed, launch, spin, face delivery, but it's also and I think we all know this kind of our intuition is that shafts just kind of work for you, right, And so we're getting down into the science of what what what makes that?
00:28:37
Speaker 2: Why is that?
00:28:38
Speaker 1: Like, what is the causal reason that maybe some tour players or you or me like this kind of favorite shaft or this favorite bending profile or torque profile. And not only is it you know, maybe give us the right launch conditions, it's the consistency of delivery. You know, a certain shaft can kind of be a dampener on maybe imperfection in your swing and allow you to still deliver the face and get those launch conditions or get that tight impact stat area. So shaft's a fun one.
00:29:08
Speaker 2: We met.
00:29:08
Speaker 1: We have some great tools. I mean, our shaft app in Pink co Pilot is our most used app in there, and that's because our fitters love using it to kind of narrow down into the right shaft. So that's how I would encourage you to think about shaft fitting is to go to one of our fitters that has Pink Copilot and when you're when they're using our shaft app, they're they're leveraging and tapping into all of our research we've done in our shaft lab, in our focal system.
00:29:32
Speaker 3: Marty, how often are tour players tweaking their drivers? I mean, I've been on the truck and been, you know within the tour truck. You know plenty of times that majors in some of the golf tournaments I go to, and the guys are in there every week tinkering with something, right Matt Fitzpatrick, you know, kind of weighing his irons every single week, make sure the weight is perfect compared to what it was the week before. You've got guys in there obviously doing stuff to their wedges and their grips, But how often are they changing or tweaking stuff with the driver? Because you said it off the top of the podcast, the driver is the most important.
00:30:02
Speaker 2: Club in the bag, especially for the tour pro.
00:30:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, driver is an interesting one. I mean, there we have it. We have a good number of tour players that will work on the driver. Let's call it the off season if there even is one anymore shame, but they're kind of in the in the off season wrap around season. Uh, they will put some work into maybe maybe if it's a tour player looking to gain a little bit and strokes gain based on their year end recap and try some a little bit longer, they'll put some work into it and and lock into the driver early in the season and then if the latch again. These guys are measuring launch conditions sometimes every single shot or you know, I think most tour players are getting on a launch monitor literally every week at a minimum, during practice rounds and days and things of that nature. They're keeping a very close eye on to those launch conditions. If the launch conditions are good where they want it to be. We have a number of tour players that stick to the same base build and they won't tweak it the entire year. Uh, you know, everything will be in pretty good shape. Then we'll have other tour players where, you know, maybe they're tweaking their angle of attack a little bit, working on some technique things throughout the year, and they need to tweak their driver to work in harmony with that, and that's where kind of the fitting coaching goes together. I we don't see tour players maybe tweaking their driver as much as maybe experimenting with grinds on their wedges weak to week for different conditions, or even maybe tweaking their putter their putter loft if they're If they're tweaking things that way, the driver seems to be if you're if they're comfortable with it, they like their model. They like the amount of loft they're seeing on the golf ball that works with their mechanics. It's one of the more stable things that we see some of our players kind of keep throughout the year, a little bit more stable.
00:31:45
Speaker 3: All Right, you got to talk about th River because it's a club that I think is is uh.
00:31:50
Speaker 2: Is beloved by you? Or are you still a Thriver guy? Are you still? Yeah?
00:31:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I'm still I'm still Thriver. I love it.
00:31:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, So explain, I mean, if if people haven't heard it or they didn't listen to previous podcasts about the Thriver, where does that fit into this process, because that's a whole different club that has the same size head as a as a driver that you're going to play as your main gamer.
00:32:12
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:32:13
Speaker 1: Well, I'll take a little step back, Shane and kind of you ask the question of what should a golfer think about going into the fitting? And so I did self reflection on my own game and track some stats. I was like, hey, I have my well, yeah, what what did I do well? Or where do I have a maybe some demons. Every golfer's got little demons in their game, and I had demons with a three wood, I would get quite often maybe a little nervous on my first T shot or my swings a little off. And where that would show up the most for me is my three wood three wood off the tee specifically, and in Arizona Golf, a lot of the PJA Southwest Section events, I need to hit a two seventy five, two eighty shot, two seventy shot fairways run out or neck in right. It's kind of classic Arizona golf style design. And so I was like, hey, looked at my stats reflected on my game. I was like, what would happen here if I played a twelve degree driver at threewood length? What would happen to my dispersion? And would that kind of solve that demon in my game? And I, in my stats, use the three wood as a T shot club eighty five to ninety percent of the time for the golf I play right. And this is this is the beauty of custom fitting. Might be very different for you, might be very different for somebody with my speed that's playing different style of golf courses and they need to use a threewood into their par five's a lot their ratio might be different, right, and this is the value of stats. So I something I experiment with. I think I'm going on year three now with the Thriver design. Is I just take our twelve degree max head and got to we gotta build for this epping put the build a shaft that's about forty three inches forty three and a quarter inches. For me, I build it slightly heavier CG shifter, the fade position flat dot, so it's a little bit flatter. And this is like, uh, I call it my anti anxiety club for me, Shane, Like, it doesn't matter how bad, you know, if I'm swinging a bat or nervous, I can see this thing low and hit this what we call the Thriver right down the middle of the fair We very comforting club.
00:34:18
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:34:19
Speaker 3: I've played it on and off for the last couple of years and it is so funny. My club in Connecticut the first hole. We call it the hardest opening hole in the state of Connecticut. It's just one of those part fours that you won't I have no interest in playing out of the gate, oh b left, trash right, just gotta hit over a fairway bunker. If you want to have a short iron in and it is legitimately a whole design for the thriver. Yeah, because if you could hit it two sixty five two seven in the air, it's perfect. And again you talk about anxiety for me trying to hit kind of the cut that doesn't cut too much and go out of bounds.
00:34:53
Speaker 2: It is. It is exactly like the club that perfect for that shot. So I'm with you.
00:34:57
Speaker 3: It's a great opening T shot club and also a little easy to hit off the ground. I mean, with the added loft you could hit it off the off the deck if you need to and get it up in the air and actually attack a Part five or two.
00:35:07
Speaker 1: I've yeah, No, I've had a lot of success as long as a Part five you've got some room to kind of run it up or a lot of times. I guess the strokes gained calculation is, Shane, Let's say I have to hit this three food off the tee or two seventy five shot off the t five times in a round, and maybe I have to hit it off the ground once into six hundred yard part five. Your your your strokes gained that you're getting from reducing your dispersion by fifty percent on those T shot clubs will far outweigh that one shot, or maybe if I can just get up by the green raw ly on my short game, get that ball up and down could be worth it. So doubt not something for everybody, but I think for your faster swing speed players that if you kind of reflect upon your game and say, hey, yeah, I hit three wood off the tee a lot of the times, but I would. I would if I played a tournament Shane, where it's every holes a driver hole, and I might have two or three part fives where I need to hit a three into the green. Yeah, I'll put, I'll put, I'll put the driver's side and put a three back in the bag for that particular course or tournament.
00:36:07
Speaker 3: All right, Marty, what did we forget or what do we miss on in terms of driver fitting for those out there kind of getting ready for something new, getting ready to go out there and look at four forty and beyond. What is kind of a lasting thought to have as we wrap this.
00:36:20
Speaker 1: Up, Man, when you go in for a driver fitting, you want to make sure your fitter is measuring your angle of attack. We talked about this with Frederick from track Man. We have great tools on it in Pink co Pilot in our driver launch efficiency tool in our optimal launch and Spin chart. So the higher the more you hit up on the ball, you're going to live with less spin and your launch angle is going to be higher. The more you hit down on the ball from an angle of attack standpoint, your optimal spin is going to be lower. So go in with an open mind about what the optimal spin rate is for you. That's number one, So keep an eye on your angle of attack and then Shane. The icing on the cake for fitting is pairing your golf ball to your driver or your entire game. So if everything's good, you like the K driver, but it might be spinning just a little bit too much two and three hundred RPMs too much. You can use our Ballnamic tool to use golf ball to get you into the right launch and spin zone. So let's say you can't get perfect on our optimal launch and spin chart, remember that that's when golf ball comes into play. And that's kind of the icing on the cake for driver fitting and marry it to you entire game.
00:37:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's there's so many options out there, and obviously it feels like every year, every six months, there's a new option out there, whether it be it kind of something within Copilot or beyond that. Marty and the team does such a great job of in terms of helping you not just get fit for something perfect for your game, but also understand what you're getting fit for. And I think the fitting world it becomes more complicated at times because of all the technology out there, and way less complicated at times because of the options. And I think golfers are just smarter now. I think they understand a lot of the stuff we talk so much about. But it just reminder, get fit, get fit for somebody who knows what they're doing. And whether it be K or LST or SFT or you know, if you're thinking about jumping the thriver world, they're all great out there if you get a fit for your game, and it makes sense for how you play the game as well. But Marty appreciate obviously the insight into the driver fitting world. Most important club in your bag. Get something new in there that finds more fairways and goes a little longer. It'll make golf more enjoyable for everybody out there that's listening. This is the Ping proven Grounds podcast
