The guys from Ping, They've kind of showed me how much the equipment matters. I just love that I can hit any shot I kind of want.
We're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.
Welcome back to the Pink Proving Grounds Podcast. I'm Shane Bacon. That is Marty Jerts and Marty You're in the Ping Putting Lab, which is good for today because, you know what, I think it's time to talk about the thing people don't like to practice, the thing people don't like to talk about and focus on, but the most important part of golf, and that is in fact, rolling the rock on the greens. Putting is instrumental in good or bad rounds for every single golfer, no matter their handicap.
Yeah, absolutely, Shane. I mean it's like putting's one of those things where I mean the everyday golfer might not be able to hit a t shot like Cameron Champ, you know, but for one hole in one round, you can output the PGA Tour player, you know. And it's the most variable skill. I think that's what makes putting very tough. Like some days you could be. I mean
even on the PGA Tour. I mean, I mean look at Scottie Scheffler lately, right, I mean, or these guys out there that are having like high variants in putting. Ball striking can stay consistent. Your putting can be very, very variable, And I think that's what weighs on the psychology of the golfer.
Yeah, I mean it's again, you can do so many things. You get on the green and it's like your mindset changes. It's a different skill set. I mean the golf swing and power and finesse and cut the ball or hook the ball, and then you get on the greens and it's just about get it in and you can put crosshanded, you can cut, you can putt with a long putter, you can arm lock. You can do so many different variations of rolling the rock. It's just which one gets
the ball in the hole the fastest. What's your relationship been like over the years with putting. Do you consider yourself a good putter, a mediocre putter, a bad putter at times? Like have you messed with a lot of different iterations of putting? What's been your relationship with this part of the game.
Man Shane, I feel like I'm at a therapist or something. I asked you that question, but I bet every golfer would have that reaction. You know, you start asking me that question. I mean again, like, oh man, I remember my highs and my lows. I think I'm a streaky I mean sadly, I would say I'm like a very streaky putter. I think when I'm putting, when I'm putting good. I remember around last year my home course over a wildfire. I shot sixty two and I made everything, and putting
is so easy. I had the line, the speed, the reads, everything like perfect. I was like, well this, I've got putting salt, and then like two weeks later, I'm putting terrible. So yeah, I think over the years, I've really tried to improve and study and bring in I think today we can have a little conversation with that marriage of like, you know, the art of putting and the science of putting.
I mean, I bet I tried to improve the things you can try to be better at day to day, and the big one is like green reading and targeting strategy. So I kind of think of these buckets and putting like green reading, targeting, strategy. Then there's your your start line and your speed, and that's where we can really influence that with putter fitting and which putter you're playing. So I've tried to get better at the green reading side so that I know this other stuff is going to vary day to day.
When you're talking to an average player that comes into the putting lab and has questions about their putting, or they're looking for a new putter, or they're wanting to get fit into a putter. Are there questions that you guys like to ask off the bat just to get a feel for what they think about their putting, because we give away a lot of secrets about our golf games by simply getting questions asked, like you said about laying on the couch or I feel like I'm in
a therapy session. You know, I'm one of those people like I've always considered myself a streaky putter as well, just like what you're saying, Marty. And then you'll talk to your buddies and they go, oh, man, you're a great putter, and you go, yes, Well, if this guy thinks I'm a good putter, why do I think I'm a streaky putter right, Like, there's questions that we can ask or conversations that we can have that can explain what type of putter certain people are.
Yeah, absolutely, Shane. I mean, one thing we see in the statistics is that, you know, know, my bad putting round. I mean why I played the Phoenix Open. The first round I literally was the worst I've ever putt it, and I was minus four strokes gained.
And I'm seeing.
Scotti, Shuffler and some of these other guys on the tour be minus four strokes game once a while. I'm like, hey man, that must feel really bad to them. So my minus four strokes gained though, is still would be putting like a single like a good single digital handicapper, you.
Know what I mean.
So there's there's that relativity that happens with skill, and that not only applies to t shots, but that applies to putting as well. Someone comes into the lab, we start wanting to help them improve their putting, and that's our ultimate goal and we can really do that through putter fitting is ask some of those questions that like, you know, what are their strengths and weaknesses? Are they better? Are they you know, good at lag? Putting or not.
Do they struggle with short puts or not? Do they tend to miss more left or more right or not? And not everybody knows the right answers to those questions, but you can at least get to kind of again, you'll give you some clue, Shane. And that's what fitting is all about. You're you're kind of building this mountain of evidence to get to the final solution that can give you some clues into what might be going on with that player or to their inner psychology that you
can really help them with. And then we start layering on some of the science measurements. So the other good news is that some people, a lot of people are tracking their putting stats. Again, we've kind of talked about that in a few of our previous pods. Is like, where can you kind of marry in the right way. You don't want to go all stats, you know on everything. You want to have that interview with the player, ask
them those questions. But if you can also look at their stats and corroborate or compare contrasted too, you can start to get a more click clear picture of where we might be going and where we can really help them Marty.
The the kind of the iterations of fittings. It really fascinates me because I mean, I wasn't, you know, playing competitive golf, or wasn't old enough when it was, you know, per Simmon Wooden Head. But I was, you know, in high school and to college when they weren't interchangeable shafts, you know. I mean, you guys would have fifty drivers on the range, and if you went an X shaft like this, that had to be glued into that head. And if you wanted a stiff shaft light with this,
it had to be glued in the head. I mean, you couldn't just flip them in and flip them out. And obviously all of that stuff has changed now it's gone into irons and now you guys have more scientific and AI technology to help you guys in terms of fittings.
We've talked about gapping on this podcast already. When did putting When did the science of fitting players with putters kind of become a thing for paying Because I am imagining years ago it was we have these four models, and these are kind of what you can go out and use. And now obviously behind you, I mean that what is it granted or marble behind you, and it's I mean, even if there was an earthquake, it wouldn't
even move like that is correct. There's so much science involved in fitting players on greens that maybe wasn't available fifteen or twenty years ago.
Yeah, definitely, and we're on this journey I would say fifteen years fifteen years plus we've we at ping have really done a deep dive into the science of putter fitting. But I think it's important for the golfer to know that it's not all that you know because all those the psychological aspect, choosing the right model, falling love with the model, using your intuition, these things are still very important. So we don't want to tip the scales of all science.
We kind of again kind of going to that back to that ven diagram approach. It's like, you want to marry the art and science together, and that's ultimately what we're trying to do Shane. But you know, we we wanted to ask a lot of questions around putter fitting, just like we do with driver fitting and iron fitting and things of that nature. It's like, what are the
most important aspects of putter fitting and putter performance? What are the biomechanics, and then how can we develop fitting protocols and tools for our fitters and customers to make better decisions. So we've identified some of the big staple things. Obviously, you want to get into the right length of putter,
and you talked about adjustability on irons and woods. We have a couple We've had a couple of solutions in the last five, six, seven years where we can tell uscope the length of the putter with our adjustable length.
I had an answer, Oh, I had a scott I had a Scottsdale. I mean I had to have used it right when that adjustability of the putter was available. I have it. I have it in my golf close are right here. I probably used it for like six years. Yeah, but I love the fact that depending on kind of how I'm feeling that day or that week, or even sometimes with the shoes you're wearing, you could adjust the putter a little bit higher. Yeah, totally.
I mean we've we've seen on the PGA Tour. I think at the US Open a little bit ago, some of the players were talking about, oh, I had to trim my putter down a quarter of an inch. Now, let's say you're the everyday golfer. You got to go to the shop, right, get a new grip, you gotta do all this stuff. If you have adjustable link putter, that's just.
The screw and there it is. I think there are coperations of that. It was very, very cool. But so I would say one of the keys to a putter for me is I'm coming in there and I want to look at something I like to look at. And I'm sure you get people that come into the lab and they go, I'm like an answer style putter or
I like a mallet style. And how hard is it to change that for a player if through the process of fitting you see more success in a model that maybe they're not married to when they walk in the door.
Yeah, that shame. Where we can really use data is kind of this this mountain of evidence to help help the player.
Right.
But that's the number one thing I think you nailed it is when when folks come in, they got to fall in love with the model of the putter. And so the science side of putter fitting and the most important principle outside of length we talked about and lingle, which you know are very important. We don't ignore those.
Is getting the right what we call stroke type of the putter, and that's based on this is like this is like I'm holding the pen right here, right in my hands for those listening, and I go to sign my name and I'm going to sign it in a certain Your signature is your signature, and the same thing is for putting. So if you sign your name super quick, you would do better with a lightweight pen. Right, if you sign your name really slow, you want to get
that super heavy pin. So this is kind I'm oversimplifying it, but there's this biomechanics there where we want to use the weight of the putter and fit that to the player's tempo. And then the other big one that comes even before that is we based on how much somebody
put applies torque. So I want the listener to pretend like they're have a GoPro camera on and we fix it right on the end of the putter and we're looking down the shaft at the putter face, and how much torque or twisting the golfer applies with their hands is a major lever that we want to marry up to. How much basically toe hang there is on the putter, and if we can marry those two things together, magic
things happen with repeatability of your putting stroke. You're not fighting it, so to speak, in your putting stroke, and that's the number one thing. So we want to kind of marry the headweight stroke type and then have options in model styles which are blades, mid mallets, mallets, all kinds of alignment archetypes we could talk about, and then marry those two things together, right, And that's kind of again I talked about this kind of this pyramid approach
where we kind of build up. We want to build all those things and then merge them together, and then ultimately a lot of time shame, we'll get down to having like two or three different models that fit the fitting characteristics from a from a biomechanics, tempo, stroke type standpoint, and then we want to go out and maybe play a game on the putting green and see which ones do better out outside of the lab environment that we take them into the real world, create an encore simulation
and kind of have go through a game like fitting outside.
I want to know how many people pause the podcast and then sign their name and thought, is this pin the right weight? I've never thought about this before. Marty, You're a true freak by a by faked about the weight of the pen in terms of your speed of your signature. But I think that's why you are who
you are and what you do. I've been very impressed with Iping, with what you guys have done at Ping and Yes, in terms of giving people the option of getting fit in the lab with iping, but also having an option to send it to somebody at their home and having them go through that process. When did iping start? And could you talk people through how iping works? Because it is going back to the signature and the pen weight. It is simplifying all the things you're saying to basically
five putts for a player. Yep.
Yeah, So kind of an interesting story on iping. So I went to the Carrail School of Minds and mechanical Engineer and we did a project where we remember in a lab project where we hooked up these sensors to a mountain bike and we went out and rode the mountain bike around campus and got all this data and
brought it back in and we analyzed it. And in this sensor are our measurement device, the micro electronic measurements device called memes, which are accelerometers and gyroscopes and gps, and they allowed you to take all these cool measurements to how much the handlebars rotate, how much you're going like this, and so fast forward. That was in two thousand and you know two when I graduated from this so fast forward tore like I forget the exact year,
but is around two thousand and eight nine ten. It's when the iPod came out, right, and then they launched like a second or third generation that was built for playing video games. And so that's when Apple added gyroscopes, which you allow you to very precisely measure the rotation. This is like y'all pitch and roll on an airplane, the rotation. So I actually was like, holy Molly, I wonder if we could measure use this to measure how much rotation you have on a putting stroke.
So this is going back to your This is going back to college days for you. I mean, this is literally stuff you used in college now getting applied once almost the technology caught up to what you guys had done on the bikes exactly.
It's kind of that thing like eventually your cell phone will do every thing and we're kind of we're still on that journey, right, So yeah, once they add the gyroscopes. I cutted up a three D printed like a little snap on cradle to a putter, put it on, printed on our printer. I remember doing this at home, printed on our three D printer, snapped it on, uh, downloaded an app where we could get like the raw day a sensor data. Took some putting strokes. I was like, oh,
this might be able to do it. The math got really hard for me to figure it out. So that's where I had my colleague, doctor Eric Hendrickson do the math to start calculating, Okay, how much face rotation can we get, tempo, can we get liingle and all those things? And sure enough it worked. And so we've still been using iping. We've continued to develop it and what it does.
It allows you to see things in the putting stroke that even the most skilled fitter or skilled player cannot see with the naked eye, Like you cannot We've we've
actually tested this. You cannot predict tempo. Somebody can be like a fast total time but a slow tempo ratio, and it kind of tricks your brain like you can't do it, or somebody can have a very inside path but not rotate the face a lot, and they would still be better off with a like a more face balanced putter, or somebody can have I think tiger woodstroke is kind of like this, a more of a straightish path but a lot of face rotation. Okay, so they put a lot of torque on the putter. So these
things you can't see with the naked eye. That's where the tools come in. And then iping allows us to measure measure repeatability of your putting stroke, which is something so key to solving for and putting. You don't necessarily need to chase a two or average number for stroke type or tempo or or you name it. You want to kind of find what you're gonna be able to repeat the most, and then we incentivize that in the fitting process.
So again I mean trying to simplify this to what you've said in terms of what the person is going to expect to see. Is basically, it's an iPod touch that you click onto the shaft of your putter and you're hitting five balls with that, and it does it does it test three or four things? How many things? Is it? Kind of testing as you're going through those processes.
Yeah, so I think we at the core we're measuring five main things. We're measuring a few other things in the background, but we're measuring your your setup shaftlean, so we can actually get a measurement for how consistently you lean the shaft that's your handle forward or handle back. We measure your setup liingal and then we also calculate that at impact right so we can measure we can compare those two things. That has a lot to do with getting the right length and lie of the putter,
make sure the optics are good for you. We need to tweak, set up, position, things of that nature. Then we measure how much the face rotates on the backstroke and forward stroke, and that's strongly correlated with how much toe down you should play in your putter, and again you can't see that with the naked eye. Then we measure your tempo, that's your time of backstroke by time of forward stroke. A faster tempo player will generally but not always, do better with a lighter headway putter. Slower
tempo generally do better with the heavier putter. And then we measure a missing one in their Shane, we also measure Yeah, no, I think I got it because loft and live those were those were those are the other two variables.
Yeah, mixed in there. I mean I've done both iterations this, Marny. I've had the one sent to my house and got to do it right behind where I'm at kind of on my mat, and then i had one in the lab as well. And I'm always just so fascinated by you know, You're you're seeing it through the processes of different putters, and you're getting to see in real time with a score, which again, like we're simple beings here,
I mean we're golfers. Like scoring is all we're really looking for, right, I mean, once you shoot today, how many greens did you hit? How are your putting stats? How'd you drive the golf ball? You guys have put this into a score for players. I mean there's a leader board to your right right now. Some of the best numbers. Shout out to my buddy RJ who's on that board as an amateur and one of the better
putting numbers you guys have ever had. But I mean there's a literal score that will show you where you kind of sit in terms of handicap by how your putting stroke works sufficiently and repeatability wise.
Yeah, so when we when we developed EPING, and this is like the early days of launch monitors. It's kind of like a launch monitor you're putting is like, Okay, you get data, Well, what's a mean what do you do with that? That's the most important part. So we developed, Shane, what you're talking about, this calculation called your your putting handicap. And the way we did that we had everybody at Pink.
We literally went around to the corporate desk of folks because you can do iping right there, and you're right all of a sudden, five balls and we're like, what's your hand We know everyone's handicap here, so we're like, what's your handicap? Give me five putts and we tell them, hey, try to be as repeatable as you can, kind of blocks style putting, and we measured their repeatability. That's like your standard deviation, like how much variation do you have?
And we developed this beautiful correlation between your actual golf handicap and how repeatable you are with your putting. And we use we actually use the ping Man robot to set I forget what we actually have there in iping is the best handicap. It's like you know, plus eight or whatever, right, it's the most repeatable and and and then so we saw this great correlation between your repeatability
and your actual golf handicap. Well, then we started applying that to let's have you, Shane Putt with a putter that has a certain different characteristic to it, wait to it, base rotation characteristics, what have you. And we saw this predictive quality that the better your iping putting handicap, the better you would perform with that putter out on the golf course. That's what ultimately matters. So then we could start using that score to compare contrast and fit putters.
How are you trying to push that technology forward, because I know there's been a couple of iterations of iping already as you, I mean, I know you're a guy that's looking years ahead. How do you guys perfect this technology and make it even easier and better for the consumer.
Yeah, absolutely, that's a great question. So right now the consumer can go on ping ping dot com, go to find a fitter, and you go into the filters and you can find a fitter close to you that's using iping too, So that's awesome. So we're catering you is a custom fitting tool for our fitters. Number one for to fit all of our putters out there with our
UH with our retail network and our fitter network. And then number two the experience you went through, which is really cool, Shane, is our pod custom program he K. So that's where you you will. You can either come here to where I'm at right now and get fit for your putter, or we can do a remote experience,
which we'd call telefitting, and that's that experience. Well, we'll actually ship you an iPod and you get in the mail and you we guide you through doing several sessions on iping and we use that data set up a telefitting like this to drive the putter fitting process and the customization process. Because we want to with PLD program, we wanted we had a rule for ourselves and I was kind of part of that decision where we want
to have every player be fit for their putter. We don't want this to be just kind of order putter you think is right for you. We want to kind of marry those two things together. Yes, let's put on the custom sideline, stamping, customization all those things that are super important to the player, but let's also have those fitting metrics to go along with it. And then a few other new features we've had to ipink too that we could touch on.
Yeah, no U two album on the on the iPod that gets sent out, that's not like automatically downloaded on there. And also you do have to send the iPod back. That is not something you get to keep as like a momento to uh to previous technology. But uh, yeah, you mentioned the PLD program. It's uh, it's been really cool to see. I have my original PLD putter more of like an answer style. I've gotten into more of a of a mallet style as I've gotten a little
bit older. Maybe my stroke hasn't been maybe as consistent. I mean, I like have I like weight in the way I putt, so moving over to mallet has been nice for me. But I think again, getting fit for a putter, I feel like it's something that maybe I didn't ever expect to be an important part of the golf experience. But once you get set up with something that a you like to look down at and b is creating the numbers that are helpful and around your handicap,
or maybe even better than what your handicap is. You can really get set and I mean it goes beyond that. I mean groove depth, right, I mean you like a firmer putter, Do you like a softer feel? You can go through a million different iterations of grip and I think that's very important. Right, is this grip good for you? How big are your hands? How small your hands? There are so many steps that go into the right putter for someone, and I feel like the PLD program has
been exactly that is. It's a high end putter that does everything that needs to be done to get you on those greens feeling the most comfortable possible.
Yeah, and you touched on some very key area Shaane, like with just being able to customize the the face texture. You know, anyone shun test this for themselves, right. All you have to do is put on your noise canceling headphones and putt with a couple of different putters, or grab a range ball and then a softer compression ball and put with them and see if you can tell
the difference in the field. I don't need to answer that for you, but the answer is probably got to be no, like sound is everything in putting, like the acoustics is virtually everything, and so by changing and customizing that face texture, we can make little adjustments. And we've we've heard this from some of our players we've interviewed in the in the tour truck chain. They're so particular about the sound feel and the perception of how the speed comes off the face that that's a variable we
wanted to put in there. And then grips Man, We've done a lot of research on putter grips like. It's not just pick the one you like, there's there's some major science behind it. That goes back to our founder Carston having a bent shaft in his putters to point where the shaft went closer to the middle of the face to get putters to perform more like a face balance putter. And then the USGA kind of banned that putting a bend in the shaft really high. Obviously we can do bends down at the bottom.
So he got.
Creative and bored the hole in the grip off axis and created the pistol grip. So many people, Hey, the famous you know, best player in the history of golf used the putter grip called the PP fifty eight that stands for a ping pistol. Well, the reason why you'd want to do that from a science standpoint is to point that upper hand more towards the middle of the face and make a slight arc putter perform more like
a face balance putter. So it's even the amount of pistol in the grip, we can kind of dial that in for your putting stroke.
There was nothing more Tiger Woods in the fact that he had that same grip on his putter for like years and years years using different manufactured putters. But he was convinced and he was set on that putter grip being the grip he was going to used. It was just ama amazing, real quick. I wanted to ask you this. I know it's not necessarily about putting, but I kind of is. You said something about sound earlier, and you've you and I have talked about this, and you've you've
changed the way I practice. Literally, you have changed the way I practice because you made this point to me when I was in Scottsdale. It's not great to practice with headphones on. This is something I used to always do. I'd always listen to a podcast or listening to music on the range hitting balls, and we're taking away feel for the practice by not being able to hear everything as crisply as maybe you need to. Yeah, and I get it that.
I mean even me sham like, oh man, I love listening to a podcast when I'm chipping or putting or something like that. But I'll do it now, but I'll turn the volume like really low, you know so. But yeah, I think in the in the in the ideal state, you would not be doing that when you're hitting balls.
Acoustics is so important to the feedback. I mean, when we fit wedges, for example, you want to you you know, a good fitter uses the set because the sound gives you a clue about the timing of the bounce interaction with the turf and the ball interaction. Right. I mean that you ask any good fitter that's fitting wedges outdoors, and you're like, well, you kind of like the one that's gonna have that nice click to it. You don't get the double hump means you're kind of hitting the
ground first or thinning it or whatever. So, yeah, acoustics is a huge deal. I know it's a hard thing to do. I know it's a cultural thing, but I think from a purest standpoint, if you if you can, you know, throw your air pods on at the gym instead of while your practice, especially you're chipping and putting, it's a huge deal.
Yeah, it's weird when silence happens in modern society. You're going, wait, this is so weird. These are birds chirping. I don't know what the hell's going on, but I guess I'll be into exactly how much tour feedback have helped you guys with different types of models with your ping putters.
Yeah, our tour feedback's been huge, Shane, And I think I mean it started with our founder Carson going back again kind of spending so much time with our tour players. And now fast forward to the p and we have our master putter designer, Tony Serrano, who leads our designs that we do with our tour players, and we've we've we've really catered through the PLD program and then the ones that have been super successful, super popular with both our tour players and PLD, we bring them into our
mainline putters. I think a couple of good examples we launched the Tyne model which is our kind of fork style archetype model. And we're working with Cameron Champ and he he really got particular, is like, hey, man, I love this model, but I'd like to see it smaller in size, shrunk down. He wanted a center shaft version. Then he kind of was working on some changes in stroke mechanics. He wanted a you know, a heel shafted version.
So that time four was a really good one. We work with Cameron champon the OSLO and the PLD family. We work with Trell Hatton on very particular. We spent some time with him talking about how particular he was with his putter designs.
I mean Victor in the DS.
We literally designed that putter with Victor Hoblin, and that's a putter anybody can go out and get both in our PLD family and our main line line putter models. And it's been fun to work all those little levels of nuance into the models, Shane. Another one that you said a good analogy for yourself was Tony f Now he came in, he's like, man, he used an answer putter answer style putter for a long time. He's like, man, I just don't want to go all the way to
a mid mallet. So we developed the answer two D literally for Tony fe Now, and that's a putter's been super popular, kind of that big style answer model, which doesn't you don't have to go all the way to a mid mallet putter, right, So it's it's it's a tweener model. And that's exactly what what Tony was looking for. And we developed out putter for Marty.
Why certain people use center shafted versus other types of shaft insertion levels on putters, Like what's the difference in what fits what type player?
Yeah, so if you have more face rotation again kind of measured on iping, if you rotate the putter more torque it more, you will generally do better with a more face balanced putter. So that could be a center shafted or it could be one with a long neck on it where it hangs face balanced, or it could be one with a double bend or what have you that hangs more face balanced. Now, there are some exemptions
to that, Shane. You can let's say you're a golfer that doesn't rotate the face a lot, but you tend to pull your putts. Then we see this really strong measurement and a lot of our testing we've done that if you pull your putts and you go to a pudder with more toe hang, it will deliver the face more open. So again that was the metric I missed on iping, Shane is delivered face angle. You can measure your delivered face angle. That was the fifth metric I
missed there. And if you if we if we're saying, okay, you don't rotate the pudder face a lot, but you pull your putts, we can measure that. On iping, we can put you into a more tow down putter to bias that delivered face angle. So that's a really big deal. And then we can also use offset a little bit. How much offset you have on the putter that we've seen a correlation there more offset, generally speaking, there's always exceptions in putter, so you got to kind of always
put this caveat on it. But generally speaking, more offset the player will aim the putter a little bit more left at address and deliver more dynamic loft. So if you tend to not deliver enough loft on your putter, not only can we change the actual static loft, we can also use the offset on the shaft and pick a right model to kind of tune in your aim and your delivered face angle.
What goes into new Putter designs Because it feels like, you know, I mean I've felt like this for a long time. Oh, I'm sure they've checked all the boxers. There's no way they can come out with a new Putter model. And I mean I think the DOC was one that was just completely crazy. I mean there's been so many iterations of new age Putter designs where all of a sudden, there's something that we didn't know existed.
What goes into introducing a new a completely new model to kind of the ping off the ping line when it feels like we've seen so many come through over the last you know, seventy eighty years.
Yeah, I think it's like, Okay, you want to kind of have these kind of fundamental principles or a box that you play with in like, Okay, we know we need to have different stroke types, we know we need to have different headweights. Then you want to give yourself permission to have creative solutions. There might be a little bit outside the box. Jane, I think a great example of one of my personal favorite stories over the last like five years was we had Anlin Solheim, who's John
Solheim's brother. He had the idea of, hey, we should design a putter because he goes and plays a lot of scrambles, fun events, what have you. He's the aging golfer in great shape. But it's like, hey, we should have a putter for the older golfer or you name it, any golfer that can pick the ball up off the green. And then he was like, hey, what if we had it, you could actually get the ball out of the hole.
So we were like, you know, it's one of those things where you know, some people like laugh at you the idea, Oh, let's design a putter. It gets the ball out of the whole. Well, sure enough, Shaye, we did it. We named it and we branded it the Fetch because that's exactly what does. It fetches the ball out of the hole. But turns out we had this surprising result that was our number one selling putter in that putter family for like six months to Fetch because
it solved a real problem a golfer. Right, it sounds like a gimmick, but solves a real problem. You know, so many people have those little things that you puck. Yes, ex absolutely, but the fetch, we have a ball alignment feature and actually the putter being small help players focus and we had one of our top players on the LPGA Tour use that putter for a long time. Then my favorite story with the fetch was Lee Westwood use
down the Deep World Tour. He's winning a big, big event in Abu Dhabi and I actually sent him a message because he was leading. I was like, hey, Lee, it would be epic if you if you pluck that ball out of the hole on the green on the last the eighteenth.
Yeah, look this up.
Go to YouTube. Look it up.
Lee Westwood literally did it.
He hold out his last putt, won the tournament from He putted it in from like a foot, put his fetch down in the cup, raised his hands and we still have that picture over here just outside the hall here at the proving grounds.
He's doing he's doing a commercial for you guys. It's like we don't even have to hire any actors. We're dialed on it. That was my dream.
Yeah, he designed the fetch. A tour player wins with it and plucks out their winning putt.
Marty you mentioned earlier you know, everybody's handicaps at the Ping campus. There's a lot of people that work there. Is there shifting and kind of acknowledgment for who has the best handicap? And does that move a lot? I mean, is there? Is it a competitive top three? Oh? Man, it's good.
Well, we're recording it this week During the US Senior Open. We got will Yana Gasawa O our rep who works at the tour apartment, playing and he qualified.
He's the leader again.
Last year, exactly last year we had a field rep, Rick Bell playing in the US Senior Open. One of our our sales reps in the Northeast, Shannon Johnson, won the US Women's mid Am like four years ago. So Shade, I tell you what, man, it is very competitive and it does move around.
I just want to know how many pluses there are?
Is it?
I mean, you'll have to get the number at some point. I can only imagine it is going to be a high, high number. It's like going to a whisper rock and you go, these are literally all the people that are pluses. This is so wild, you know. I mean the putting thing is is so cool because what I again, I've gone back to this a lot as we've chatted. But what I find so fascinating is finding solutions for problems
that golfers probably don't even realize exist exactly. And I feel like with the I PING and with the continued push for simplifying the technology, technology is advancing by the second, it feels like in our society, and simplifying that whole process so everybody can understand it. I mean again, going back to a leader board and a number and a putting handicap, all of this stuff is something that you
can actually look at. It's quantifiable, and I feel like with PING, you guys do an excellent job at trying to quantify all of the science in the months and the years that go into certain projects so that everybody can understand it, because golf can be very complicated, and these things aren't complicated to somebody that's coming into the lab.
Yeah. I agree, Shane, And but I want to stress this point again that we're not ignoring the intuition that you have to fall in love with the right right. Putting is really like the art and science. I mean, I think an analogy would be, like you see some of the golf purist be like, oh, green readings and art. You know, everything breaks towards this, and then you got like all the players out there crediting their latest on
a learning game point right science based thing. These ame pointers aren't ignoring their intuition, they're just adding to that, and so we want to do the same thing. On putter fitting. We're not ignoring that you need to fall in love with your putter, and there's those aspects, but we do want to bring in the right amount of fitting in science and again marry those two things together. That's what I'm so excited about on both our pod program have an iping out there to help our fitters.
Hopefully the conversations like this will help the every day golfer. If you do nothing else, get on iping, get on blast, get on something that can measure your face rotation and know what that is and have that in mind when you go pick how much towdown there is in your putter if you do nothing else. That's the basic, most basic, fundamental takeaway, Marty.
What do you say to people that are the change the putter once a month or they have the six putters in the closet and when one's not acting rights, it's immediately to a new one. What do you say to this, I mean, are you in this camp or like, like, what do you say to people that are always kind of switching the putter depending on how they're rolling it? Do you, Shane?
Do you know Debbie Cruz here who is like a researcher here it is to you. So she actually did a study on that that that indicated that it is actually helpful to switch putter models often. Oh no, there is a little bit of science out there. There is a little bit of science.
I would have liked to I would have liked to dive into that study and see who they who she talked to and and how do you get the data there? Are you a say putter all the time guy? Or do you change a decent amount?
I think I would be like, And again I go to the fact, I love having these conversations running with with our tour staff because we're asking them, We're asking them that same question. I think I'm kind of the same. Like I love the catch model. We we've we've diagnosed and put players into kind of four different alignment types of putters, and I'm definitely the one that likes a long continuous aligne from the back of the putter to
the front. And we've done some really cool research where we where where we have golfers where I tracking goggles. This is the fun, This is the coolest thing, Shane. We track where golfers, pupils are looking and they can't tell you where they're looking. We see people looking at their left toe, their knee, the the labels on the shaft. That's why we don't put labels on the shaft. It was distracting. The eye of the player goes. This goes into some things that have done out of free throw
shooters that are really good. They've done this with Steph Curry. He has the quietest eye when he shoots. So in putting we've seen that same thing. So we want to have putters that induce quiet eye. Like we don't want to have a lot of distracting things. But if you're a player like me, going back to my favorite model, I look at the very back of that line, the very front of the line, and I use that to aim my putter. That's why I've always used that that
putter model. I've stuck to it. Unless it's misbehaving, then I'll take it out. But then I'll go always go back to that catch model.
And you fall back in love with the one that you really know you want to use. That's like the tournament tournament mode. I've always, always, I love the customization program with PLD as well. You know, are you align on top or you align kind of on the base of the putter? Do you want no lines at all? Is it dot? I mean you guys do different color ways. Yes.
With PLD. I mean again this goes back to more what you want to look at and what you do you want to present is just something cool, But the customization options are relatively endless as well.
Yeah, that PLD has been great in that regard, and we see how many different alignment types that are tour tour players use. And again it's fun to be able to pass that along to anybody participating in that pod program to and again we marry not only what you think you want, we bring in our scientific research to help you make that good decision. And that's kind of the sweet spot of that PLD custom program.
I'm going to post my putter on Instagram when this episode drops, just so you can see some of the customization options. I've got a little like an equation if you will, on the base of my PLD putter that has kind of my family involved in it. But again, little things you can do that you know, make it yours. And again I think that's if we've seen anything with golf over the last few years, it's it's cool personal stuff plays and that's head covers that you want, you know,
that are that are yours at your clubs. There's so many brands out there that are doing such amazing stuff in that world. It's towels, you know, from your home club or from your local golf tournament that you want on the bag. It's not the you know, the clip the towel on your bag now and obviously it's gone into the golf clubs as well, and I think the putter is probably the best place to present that in
the bag outside of maybe your wedge stampings. Is having that putter kind of tell your own story.
Yeah, it just it just goes to show shade that like putting is such like it's such an emotional thing. You know.
Yes, going back to what we've started the conversation with, you.
Need some good vibes, you know what. You know what I'm saying, and I think another fun thing on the PLD Shane is that it was the number one putter model the NCAA Men's National Championship over here at Greyhawk this year. And you should see just like yours. You should see all the customization we did for our college players on those putters, which is super sweet, you know,
especially their different team colors and everything like that. But such an awesome program, and yeah, throw yours out there.
I will post that on Instagram. Already, great chat, I find I find this stuff incredibly fascinating. And the listener, do you talk about it, because you obviously have seen so much of this from iteration to now being available to the public, to now being available to get shipped at your home and do it yourself. It's so cool to find the solutions for issues in the golf game because there are more issues out there than even golfers
realize exist. Yeah, and I mean you know what again, going back to what I said to you, is there are things you guys are working on to even improve and perfect everything you've already tried to solve. And I find that so fascinating. So appreciate the time as always. Now I might go practice putting with no headphones outside in the backyard exactly. Uh, and hopefully the putter behaves, Marty. It behaved this week. It was nice to see putts go in. I heard that there's there's nothing better than
twelve footers to save par. I think that's my favorite golf shot in the sport is when you make the relatively mid linked putt to save par and keep the round going. Uh, that will keep the Dauber up. I'll say that.
Yeah, Shane, give a little give it. Don't be shy man.
What'd you shoot your what'd you shooting in your last terment? Yeah? Played in the ike. It's one of the met majors out here. Shot a seventy one, seventy one and closed with sixty six and drove it. Dude. Oh man, I hit the driver so good, Marty. I mean, it's so fun when you're driving it well and you're making putts. It's like the perfect recipe. And yeah, the ping that's by the way, that's my first tournament with my new ping clubs in the bag. So like, you know, that's right.
I'd had the driver, I had the three wood, but like new Irons, i'd had the crossover and there before but my new irons, my new wedges, and my new putter. Like a full tournament, you know, three day tournament. That was my first one and I top ten, died and uh it was fun. My dad was out here and he was watching, So it's fun. We don't get to celebrate golf much. It's fun when you get to celebrate it.
Yeah, low rounded the day, I mean you show the low round the day in any tournament against anybody, but especially that one, Shane, that's legit.
I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Thank you so much, Marty. This is the Ping Proving Grounds Podcast. We'll be back next week