Paul Wood VP of Engineering at PING shares the story behind the new G430 10k MAX Driver, Blueprint Irons and s159 Wedges at this years PGA Trade Show Demo Day
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Welcome back to demo day we’re here with Paul wood vice president of engineering with ping and going to talk about a few of the products and some really really nice launches coming up ping have always been engineering based it’s always it’s not a marketing format everything is
Done for a reason and I think the you the 10K that you got here um really really fascinating to know how you managed to get all the attributes that it has yeah yeah like like like loads of questions at you exactly well we’re like you said we’re an engineering company so
This is what we do and uh uh John soim our former CEO said that we’re kind of in the business of moving weight around which is a lot of what engineering is right that was caston’s first putter was moving weight to the heel on toe to increase forgiveness that’s the same
Principle right here we’re moving Mass around the more we can spread the mass the more forgiving it is but like you said you’ve got all these other things that we’re trying to maintain you know the look and the sound the center of mass which is very important
For launching spin you know the shape of the face like being right up to the limit on characteristic times for Speed aerodynamics you know all these things so the quick answer is this is what we do every day right this is what our Engineers it’s not magic that they
Suddenly figured it out this year they’ve been doing it last year with the g430 and before that with the 425 and the 410 so it’s a bit of a natural evolution specifically on this what we’ve been able to do by concentrating all the weight in the in the mass pad
That doesn’t move we’ve been able to increase forgiveness a little and going to the carbon flly wrap on the crown again and there’s some engineering that has to happen behind the scenes to make that work and to actually realize Mass savings those are the two big things
That gave us that little extra bit to get to 10K moment of inertia what is it with the weight saving you just mentioned there what is it that is there an amount of weight saving that you can get that makes a different so is there a
Kind of a critical point where we go okay we saved enough that we can make it work or is that yeah the in tun it’s every little helps or or we talk a lot in in ping engineering World about marginal gains or incremental gains which you know the British cycling were
The big exponents of that right and the same applies here so a gram here a gram there a gram here suddenly three or four grams and that’s a meaningful amount and that does make a difference and you can notice that but it is often like the driver it’s like three or four little
Things add up to one big thing and so with this product in particular what’s been was there a particular kind of big win with this one that not not Ure eone but there was a which is the which do you feel is the most important aspect of
This club from a design point of view I would say with this one honestly going to the carbon fiber crown and really maxing out and part of what the max driver is we’re maxing out the footprint you know not Everyone likes to look at a bigger size but it really helps in terms
Of giving you that yeah spread of mass and moment of inertia so going to the carbon fiber crown and maximizing the size of the footprint with the biggest one well I think part of the sizing and scaling of it visually is having that color differentiation breaks it up and and so
You so all these little the Lines within the frame just shrinks it down visibly all that that industrial design is there to try to guide it from looking like a huge big thing into like a little more sleek and that’s exactly that’s the art of industrial design is to make it look
A little smaller and so how far around cuz the the the carbon fly WP I’ve Ed the right terminology came in on the LST 430 previously does this go further around into was it was it really kind of utilizing that technology and and putting it within the max frame yeah I
Mean you can see how far around it goes it’s pretty similar to the LST but it’s a bigger chassis so there’s just more of it and that was the that was the biggest thing we did with that got it um but keeping the mass low was also important
Because the things we do to increase forgiveness also can tend to increase Spin and you don’t necessarily want more spin on your driver and I think that’s one thing we’re very proud of here is it’s a low spin profile not as low as the LST but a pretty low spin and stable
Those are things that are hard to get together and that’s the bit doing the testing we’ve done with it in the studio that that surprised me I knew because that was what we con right it’s it’s low spin and forgiving but actually is how how stable the spin rate is taken in
Comparison to the Max and the LST it really sits just below the max was really quite yeah it’s something that we know to be hard to do but it’s really quite impressive cuz it’s always been that’s always been the bit you think okay you gain forgiveness but if you got
A higher speed player then the spin kicks and then you lose a bit of distance exactly um but this this really seems to be the whole package this year yeah and then so you get someone like Cameron Champ who’s a really high sweet s speed player keeping the spin down a
Little is very important for him he gravitated straight to this and and so it’s good for someone who’s really fast and a really good player it’s also really good for someone who’s a high handicapper who maybe uses the whole face and and then that forgiveness really kicks in there even if you don’t
Have a ton of speed so great on the 10K Max and we’ll grab a couple of other products so move into the the forged irons the blueprint series which um so again you back a few years the there was the original blade that was launched and now the the S and
The T the T being the blade the S being the the forge cavity um this has really taken off on tour as a product the yes in particular seems to really caught fire lots of players switching across to it yeah yeah no the s is like the sweet
Spot of size that most tour players grab a to even on tour the blueprint T is pretty small and it’s about 25 30% of our players will have some something this size in their bag and then i230 at the other end is of a larger tour iron
But it’s in a lot of bags on tour to so I think you would view them as a three i230 blueprint blueprint T it’s it’s a fun project working with some of the best players in the world and how fun find their ey all the little tiny things
That really matter to them it’s uh it’s engineering and human factors at the same time cuz these are both got um the little bit of tungsten waiting in the heel and the toe hence the the screw on the toe there um and the S has got the a
Cavity kind of forged into it it has the cavity forged in on the long irons and that’s really helping just spread the mask gives you know even in even in a tall player IR you want a little bit of forgiveness baked in because even tall players Mish hit it slightly and they’re
Do it at much higher speed than most of the rest of us so forgiveness is still important but just in a much smaller package so that’s where that um Precision pocket forging which was kind of a fun project to work on how do you forge a cavity that was that used to be
A huge tradeoff when when kaston started peeing he forged irons and then he machined cavities now we figured out how to do it 65 years later we figured out how to do it in a forging which is really fun and if I’m if I’m right wasn’t a way of actually kind of moving
The top of the club out the way to CR so was that yeah so if people don’t have a good mental image of what forging is you’re basically heating up the metal and pressing it and so it’s very difficult to do complicated geometry so what they were doing what we would do is
We actually bend the top of the face bag then come in and Forge the cavity and then bend it back into place so like I said really fun project a good engineering challenge but what it means to the golfer is a more forgiving long
Is yeah how and how much I mean is there any Mass within that is literally just the cavity and and the masses in the heel and the toe yeah exactly and like you said we use the custom tuning port to help spread the mass a little but
Also to dial in swing weight so when we’re building everything is built to like one gr increments and the most Precision we possibly can and that’s that’s one of the things for us from a fitting and building point of is so versatile is having those ports to be
Able to fine tune them down I it’s such a such a great as otherwise you’re looking to you put something down the shaft or in the bottom of the air or something in and so versatile exactly back in the old days we used to sort heads that kind of stuff but um it’s
Great we can get within like I said within less than a gram accuracy on every iron in the set so you know if you’ve ordered a set of D2 swing weight they’re all d2 s D2 and the face on these um there’s a slightly different if
I if I remember rightly there a slightly different Groove pattern to the 230 yeah we’ve got the so we we have two different grooves that we use on some of our we have the micro Max that we used on 230 these are more like our traditional tour grus it’s it’s been
Again an interesting project working with players on when are they using them what are they seeing on The Fairway in the rough the Micromax really comes into its own when you get debre between club and ball so if you’re playing out of the rough which is frankly most of my iron
Shots it makes a huge difference actually if you’re hitting more out of the Fairway this kind of tour Groove optimizes things slightly better so we’re always balancing like how often tour players tend to be hitting like 70% of their shots out in Fairway I might be
More like 30 % out the Fairway and and so it makes a difference there so we’ve we’ve gone to really optimizing the Fairway condition on these irons that’s what our players wanted the most and so what cuz you you’d assume the microa are kind of not narrow but there more
Grooves on the face more gr on the to get rid of more debrief from the contact so you think would that not be better everywhere or does it to create too much grip you can actually get to it it’s a it’s a very long very boring discussion
From Super Geeks but it is possible to have too much friction when you end up reducing spin slightly in perfect conditions that never really happens in less than perfect conditions when it’s when in the rough then you know you want as much grip as you can but actually on
The Fairway it is possible to get too much friction sometimes so that’s that’s the explanation that’s the thing it’s always good things can always be too much be too much yeah so those are the arms and then we’ll grab on the wedges and go through that as well all right so
The s159 wedges and so these Lally just just about launching back in the Feb um back home um slightly different you know hydr pearl finish 2.0 that’s something that Ping’s been been Ping’s been doing which has been fabulous with the wedges that spin retention with the wedges yeah
Yeah I’d say we’ve been known for the the engineering and our wedges they perform amazing the the hydrop Finish like you said you know what gives you spin in the wedge is is a great coating great grooves great face blasting great face Milling they all work together all
The different um things we can do on face work together to give you spin across all the different conditions and we’ve we’ve had that kind of figured out for quite a while what we probably lagged is a little more of like the tour connection and really having all the options that
The better players want having more grinds having more finishes so like two new grinds this year yeah so we got two new grinds this one right here is the age grind that’s our half moon been really popular on tour gives you more bounce when you’re kind of hitting with
A square lead Edge but if you want to open it up it gives you more versatility with the heal relief and relief and then the be grind again is a popular one particularly in like firmer conditions if I was playing in St Andrews I think it’d be a great option where you’ve got
Bounce width you’ve got a little bit of forgiveness through the turf but not a lot of height so it sits nice and low easy to slide the ball under Club on on TI and that’s certainly one where I think there there’s that bouns has always something that golfers want to
Understand but there are different aspects to it you say it’s not just the angle it’s the width and the shaping of it and been someone’s angle attack it’s exactly so part of what we done to help try to demystify that as we have the web fit Wedge app it’s just 60 seconds we
Ask a couple of little questions and we give you a little bit of an understanding of hey you might you might be a good candidate for the HQ and then here’s why and we’d always encourage people to go hit him yeah you know that hopefully the the web fits not the
Beginning and end of it but at least give someone a bit of education on why might this grind work for me with my technique and actually for us what supp could be great with them with the H in particular is not having to kind of go
Up and bounce grind a bit down there a monkey around with the words actually that one in par well actually both of the additions for I think UK are really good because of the variety of bounces we need we’re not just playing off you in the parts of the US you’re playing
Off kind of the same kind of softer tur softer stand you you need bounce or higher bounce and all of those that bit of relief on the back Edge and the um and the D being the D the b v the B and the H the B being the the lower wide and
That one really I think it’s going to be a really popular one back in the UK I think you’re right I think you know there such a difference playing in Lynx golf versus Inland maybe wther that maybe you get one of each you know and you have your s Andrew’s wedge and you
Have your belfrey word and the the different finishes this year now the the black doesn’t doesn’t have the hydrop pill it’s not hydropool it’s actually called a qpq quench polish quench um we call it the midnight um we’ve we’ve worked really hard although it doesn’t have the hydrop it has all
The same Machining Milling blasting and the spin is almost every bit that the Chrome is um and so you’re really not having to make a big tradeoff but a lot of players just really like the black finish it’s great in the sun I know we
Don’t get a lot of sun in in England but those few days you do anti- glare finish um but it’s just a really nice option it’s available in all the wedges so we wanted to give people that choice and what is it that makes the hydr pole not
Doable in the midnight finish it is the hydrop pole is a chrome plating and this is a qbq like you can get a black chrome but it doesn’t look quite the part it’s not um it’s not quite the same so but it we’ve done all our testing and in most
Conditions we’re within a few hundred RPM of the Chrome so I I think for most golfers you’re not going to see a huge tradeoff it’s got it still has amazing Spin and it gives you like I said that versatility to if if the black’s for you you can go
With trust and one of the things that that ping always done with their wedges that bar in the back which is also a weight cartridge as well and that’s something you know that you ping and now basically unique at doing and that where other brands used to do a li ahead you I
Used to be tall at six foot is with that and I’m not anymore and the amount of wedges that we need to build longer and lighter to have so to have the versatility of the weighting on the heads that’s that’s now unique to Pink yeah so we do our best to hide it
Because you don’t particularly want to look at it but that little piece in there there’s a is an elastomer so it’s like helps contribute to that soft feel but the biggest reason is it gives us swing weight flexibility so we can build every set’s custom build and we can go
Down to one ground accuracy and that’s I say for us is a massive thing because say we we we’re seeing more and more taller golfers and the technique now is not kind of pulling on the handle as much so be able to control that weighting is you know huge and in
Internally within that is there like the ARs um is there that El to heal tow waiting as well built into the of any kind of tungsten waiting healing toe no no this one’s it’s uniform we got the ni thing with the wedge you got a lot of
Mass in the head so we can kind of build in the forgiveness in the head itself um we’re actually taking a little bit of Mas out because we’re using lighter materials in here but keeping it keeping it uniform we don’t want to introduce anything that might hamper the feel or
Anything like that but it’s it does everything we need it gives us the Precision and precision goal and that is the thing you add you add the materials in you’re changing the Acoustics and the feel and the vibration that’s going through the head so hence leaving the tungsten out yeah and it’s really
Important you know with these feel clubs that like your feel the sound the feel of it going to the tough that’s your feedback loop for the next shot so we want to enhance that we we pay a lot of attention and just try to blend the hard engineering with the human factors Paul
Been fascinating toward to you thank you so much for your time it’s been a real pleasure another Brit over here in in the US and uh we look look forward to getting everyone in testing these out they’re going to be a great wedge this year
1 Comment
Not sure if I missed it , but are the new wedges replacing the glide 4.0?