Building a PING G440 LST Driver for VIKTOR HOVLAND

The new PING G440 LST drivers offer a superb forgiveness of low-spin performance and reliable forgiveness. It’s why the PING G440 LST driver is among the most-played drivers on tour. PING Tour pro Viktor Hovland is known as one of the best golfers in the world and is in the process of testing various PING G440 LST driver options.

In this video, PING Tour Technician Matt Kistler walks us through the process of building a PING G440 LST driver for Viktor Hovland to test.

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all [Music] [Music] right Matt we got a new club to build what we got today yeah so we’re uh building a couple different drivers for Victor Hobin to test um so this is just one of them here that I’m going to kind of walk through a build so graphite design 280 VF 60x so first I’m just going to tip it tip one in just tip it and then we just prep the shaft to glue it a little file a little plug just to make sure no epoxy gets inside the shaft at all too just kind of seals it up we’re just going to just going to glue it so just a little mix of epoxy and a little bit of shafting beads just to help it nice fit there stir it up he’s adjusting is that is that a mix that’s commonly used you know elsewhere is that just something you guys do the mix of the same Yeah pretty much the same epoxy you’re going to find on any other truck it might be moderately different but the same kind of two-part mix okay quick set epoxy yeah so Victor we put we put we sleeve his in the flat dot setting a little flatter lie angle pretty common with a lot of these guys flatter more open look just put a little bit in the adapter itself let me roll the prepped area of the the shaft up we just get it in press it down and I’ll actually just kind of stamp it down here just to make sure it’s all the way seated right i like the one just wipe off the excess here i’ll see you later see we’ll see you soon very soon here oh yeah just use kind of a a head just to make sure it’s lined up properly as well to make the graphics look right just kind of twist it make sure it looks good shaft there so now we’re lined up pretty good just make sure we wipe off the epoxy that comes out we have a little kind of custom plate that we use just to make sure the u the epoxy kind of sets properly at the right angle just to let it sit for a few minutes and we move it over to our curing cell gotcha which which helps it speed up that process okay so I’ve been I’ve been seeing some shafts that have been in those plates throughout that’s that’s the purpose for them is just kind of making them ready for the curing machine correct yeah just it we we line everything up here in the dot position even if we don’t sleeve it in that position it’s just kind of how that’s our manufacturing process to make sure it it kind of all settles in in the proper area sure so just just for a few moments like I said just to kind of seat there get get ready to roll and then move it over to the curing cell just press the button five minute timer that’ll be ready to roll here cut find a head and continue to build in just a few minutes here okay all right so our adapter is cured onto the shaft so we’re ready to go on to the next set so find a head this case it’s a 440 a G49 LST leave it onto the position he likes that that flat dot make sure that [Music] then we’ll uh we’ll cut it to length so he wants it at 45 and 3/4 so we know our number just make sure it’s our mark it here to length over here to the cut saw the right length now we’ll just check to make sure we have the right loft on this head wants that are about 8 1/2° in the uh in that flat dot setting which is pretty pretty common for most of the 9° LSD heads they come in a little bit lower than the stated law so in that case we got 8 8.55 so within you know 0.05 or 0.1 that’s generally pretty dang good if not right on if we can’t if we’re trying to find a exact loft so uh so that’s the head we’re going to use documented that the serial number just to make sure we we know that that head has exactly 8 8.55 degrees of loft and that’s just in the flat the flat setting right that was that’s standard or flattened out we call it Yeah so you flip it over it be it should be around the same loft a little more upright um so next we’ll just take it take it to the spindle get it taped up uh Hob uses plus one wrap tape on a MCC uh black and blue stick a couple of these so we use a masking tape for any buildup tape just makes it a lot easier to peel off tape we need to regrip we can we can leave the spacer on cuz it’s not doublesided and sticky that going full wrap get ready yes sir all right and then we uh use our double-sided tape for the final layer only two wraps total that there and then cut taping’s all done grips there it is all right so he’s all grip so everything’s pretty much ready to roll now besides the the back weight and the internal hot melt 35 shirt anywhere from said 14 to 38 gram is our is our range for back weight so you can do a lot in terms of quite a bit of weight back if and that’s just what got him to the swing weight he’s looking for yeah it gets it gets pretty close and then so we you the more the more weight you use of course with the back weight the less hot melt so just that ratio just kind of gives you the right right feel forgiveness and and sound okay and in this case uh the rest of it will fill out with hot melt but he wants uh we want to do 3 g hot melt forward just to lower the spin we can fly a little bit lower just make sure we have room for that of course with swing weight so with no hot melt at all we’re at D2 plus final spec will be D 5 plus so we have plenty of room for that okay use a hot melt gun just kind of heat up the needle here to get it ready to flow from here we want just three grams forward so we kind of just use our kind of point the needle kind of turn the head to get it to sit kind of forward not on the face but but far forward into that that cavity side so about three grams just kind of a kind of a feel thing you get about five grams or so on a full full squeeze there i did a just over a half or so you get about three usually takes 20 30 seconds or so to kind of settle in the right spot so if I moved it around it can move a little bit right now mhm um so I can just hold it in place for now get it uh set here for a bit so you said you said 5 g is like a full you know a squeeze squeeze of the gun if we need 15 g of hot milk which we definitely do in some cases I could just pull three full pulls of that that’s quite a bit but um yeah you can just keep keep going and and double check it afterwards okay all right should be pretty good now just resume so we let this settle for just a sec just double check make sure we get the right amount of squeeze in there shows us D5 plus yeah d5.3 so pretty much right on yeah this little final uh hot melt port screw that adds maybe a point one of the swing should get us pretty much right to D5 plus that’s kind of the final final step one more time you say D5 plus you say just like D5 and just a little bit more basically yeah D5 yeah so yeah so in this case D5.5 is showing here D54 6 you know kind of a tiny tolerance there so that’s exactly right there that’s good so I’ll just kind of clean it up make sure it’s ready to roll make sure everything’s tightened down that’s good sweet tighten that up grab the head cover and that is it this is ready to go just needs like I said maybe 15 20 minutes for the grip it’ll be ready to hit it to roll wow there you go [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]