The guys from paying. They've kind of showed me how much deequitment 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's Marty Jerts and Marty. No guests today.
Does it feel awkward not having a guest on?
It feels like a calm silence here. But we're gonna be able to go deep on some We're gonna go deep on web fit today, Shane.
Before we go deep on webfit, I'm now about two months into my seven. Would experience Marty Jertson and let me just say, not sure. I've been more in love with something in the golf bag that I am with my current seven. Would hit it all over the place. I'm hitting it when I don't need to hit it, just to hit it, Like that's how much I like this golf club.
Are you chipping with it like Tiger Woods?
I haven't started like the Todd Hamilton chipping with the thing around the greens, but like I just it took me a little bit of time to find the comfort in the loft and the moment that I felt that as long as I make a normal golf swing with it, I don't have to do anything different. I don't got to help the ball in the air. I don't have to keep it down with my hands. The moment that I felt comfortable that the seven wood would do what it is supposed to do, it's been kind of game changing.
I don't know if I'll go back to the long iron again, at least for the foreseeable future. I've just been obsessed with the loft and wood.
There's a certain freedom to it, for sure. Shame what is now you like to cut the ball? What is like the shortest really good seven wood you've hit? Is it like, you know, like a two twenty shot or shorter.
I pulled it the other day from two twenty and I hit a great wed and it flew the green and I was like, I.
Don't even care long it was.
It was my Marty.
Is it my home club eleventh hole?
You can't go long and you can't go right, and I hit it long and right, and I was like, I don't need I'm gonna make but par bogie. It's fine like that was the shot I wanted to see.
Yeah so too, you were trying to carve it in there two twenty Yeah, Yeah, yeah yeah. I love that show a little bit more two Fortyvin.
Anyway, I just wanted to start the program giving a little bit of love to you and Ping in general, because this seven wood has been eye opening, game changing, whatever you want to do. It's it's so fun having three headcovers in the bag. Like another thing people don't think about is you got all these headcovers floating around. Where can you use them? How do you pair them up? Now you got another club to throw a cover.
On, Well, it's faulty. Can use them as handwarmers, you know, in between if you if just if you need it.
Up here, you need that where you are right now.
Not the case.
You mentioned webfit Marty, and I wanted to get into it because I went through the ping webfit earlier.
Today.
I was asked to go through it and see the results it would pump out, and I would say I was pleasantly surprised that it gave me the clubs I currently have in my golf bags, same driver, same three wood, same irons. I know this is the purpose of this experiment, but it was great to see that what I plugged in as maybe as simplistic as I feel like my golf game is, web fit was the same as as as people, you know, watching you hit golf balls and leaning on track man to see what the results it look like.
Yeah, definitely, Shane, that is It is funny you say that, but it does make sense because we built webfit to be you know, it's people talk about AI nowadays and you know, you build artificial intelligence and how good that artificial intelligence is, which is really just algorithms that are computed by a computer. We've been doing that for a long time since the calculator, you know. But the modern
day AI is trained off our actual fittings. So webfit is AI fitting based on our actual fittings that we do at the ping proving grounds, our mobile fitting van, our account fittings, and that becomes smarter and smarter over time because we constantly are feeding it our actual fitting data. So you coming here to the proving grounds getting fit generate your fitting actually helped inform the algorithms that are
baked within webfit that made that recommendation to you. So it's it's super fun, super valuable, and I think a really good way for golfers out there to use webfit Shane is to let's say you are we launch a new iron, Let's say Ping launches a new iron, we launch a new metal wood, we launched the chipper, and you're the first thing you do is like, hey, is this club? Would this club be a good match for me? You just log into webfit dowtping dot com, go through
the survey there, and it will give you. It'll build your whole bag as you're going through it, and you will have a really good education as to the fitting process and whether or not that new club might be good for you to go check out and uh worthwhile when you go book your fitting. So it's a really good kind of practice round, so to speak. It's kind of like your fitting is going to be your tournament round,
and you're getting ready for your tournament. You can go play a practice round at the event at the course. I would really view webfit as like playing a practice round for your fitting, getting you prepared, getting you familiar with our product, our product portfolio, and if you're a
golfer out there that's intimidated by the fitting process. It is the perfect entry point to go even see what type of questions you're going to get asked and what the process you're going to go through in your real life dynamic fitting.
Yeah, I mean it took me less than five minutes. I mean, you fill out your profile, you sign in, and then you kind of go through and ask you a lot of very general questions about your golf game. How far to hit your seven iron, how far to hit your driver? Which shot shape do you like to see? I thought was a kind of a cool question to throw in there, and also I thought it was interested
to see trajectory. I thought was a really cool thing to kind of It makes you think, Marty, I think sometimes, and we joke about this a lot with our bodies and with our golf game, how much do you really think about your own golf game?
Really?
From first t through the eighteenth green? What does the shots look like? What do you lean on in a pressure pack situation? Some of these questions kind of make you step back and go what what do I want it to look like?
Yeah, and I think a lot of times we get folks who come in here Shane to the proving grounds and we'll ask them questions about their own performance, and they might be stifled by it, right, They might be like you're putting them on the spot, like, oh, do you miss your you know, do you miss more putts left or right? And you're like, I don't know, I
can't remember. Maybe don't keep stats on it. I think the ultimate scenario is to collect some level of stats from your on course play, but that might not be practical for everybody. So going through webfit and I think what you experienced Shane, and how we design the questionnaire. It gives you that chance, in the comfort of your own home to have some time to be retrospective about your own game, which can be quite frankly intimidating in
a fitting environment. Or maybe you only you go book your fitting, you only have an hour forty five minutes. You're trying to get a lot done in this short amount of time. Go through webfit first, take your time. Yes you can go through it in only five minutes, but maybe go through it, think about it for a
day or two, Go answer the questions again. Change things in there in terms of your trajectory or your shot shape, and see how that might vary the recommendations that come out on the other end, Marty.
It's basically like an advanced version of the questionnaire you'd get if you go see a doctor, right whereas pain why does it hurt? I mean, it's basically just filling out all that information, not just for the golfer that's headed to the proving grounds or headed to meet with a fitter, but it's also beneficial for the fitters as well.
Yeah, definitely, And I think that's a great call to action for folks who go through it. You go through webfit and at the very end you can print the results, save it as a PDF, and email it to yourself. And I would highly advise anyone going out there who's who's gonna take the time to go to a fitting, go do webfit fit first and send your fitter or print them out or email it to yourself and have
all that information. Bring it to the fitter, because again it will be exactly like you said, Shane, maybe you're like, you know, you're going to the chiropractor, the doctor, Okay, circle the pain points, where is it hurt? Where do things hurt? It's kind of like doing all that homework ahead of time in the fitting and it will provide a fantastic jump start because one of the things, Shane that paying our product portfolio. It's not like the old days where everyone gets fit into the I two's and
that's the iron that literally everybody uses. Right, we have six different Iron models and then our lady's specific custom engineered designed for the ladies are gl E three Iron. So that makes seven different Iron models. So when we have so many different models, I think it can be super intimidating for the everyday golfer to figure out which Iron models for me. I mean, I'll give another example shame for my own life is I'm in the market.
I got a fifteen year old mountain bike. My kids are out riding these fancy mountain bikes and mine's old. I need a new one, And I go onto Trek's website and I'm like which bike is for me? And they have a great finder, like, Okay, what is your how are you going to be using it? What type of trails are you going to go on? How often do you ride? You're answering those questions to help whittle you down from all their entire offering down to a
couple different options. Webfit is doing that exact same thing. It takes the intimidation off because we want to have all those irons. All these irons are custom engineered for certain type of golfers and we can get super targeted in terms of who they're for. Not only are irons, but are different driver models we have now or LST Fairywood designed. Do you need a chipper or not? And do you need the IT grind in our wedges to
help you get out of the bunker. Webfit is the is the go to spot to kind of narrow down from our product offering and get you into that surgical location, uh, and simplify things for you. Marty.
I've been very, very impressed with the technology at PING over the years. Just y'all's you know, y'all's need to push the envelope in terms of technology. I mean you're always introducing new stuff. And what I've learned from you specifically especially on this podcast, is all of this technology is basically a solution to a problem. What was the problem here that you saw needed web fit to kind of solve?
Yeah, I think there's so many golfers I mentioned in it a little bit earlier, Shane are too intimidated to go out and do a fitting like uh and and I can relate to this. Let's say I'm gonna get into running, and I'm gonna go to the running store and they're gonna put me on this fancy, you know thing that's gonna measure how my feet land and look at my gate, and I might be embarrassed about that. I just I just barely want to get into running. I'm not right. I'm not good enough to go do
a fit. I want to begin.
Baby, you don't have to get exact a advanced marathon running shot.
Yes, Or I'm gonna try skiing, but I don't need the I don't need to come to the ping proven grounds equivalent to three D motion capture of skiing. I'm just barely getting in there right. But the fitting matters. It's not like, you know, I can go out with any ski. I can have a ski the wrong shape or too long or too short. It needs to be fit to me right. But I don't need that highest degree of fitting logic. I need something simple, right, simple
and basic. And that is the number one problem. I think the most important problem that webfit solves is for the golfers. Out there, the individual golfers that are intimidated or not familiar with the fitting process, and they're looking at our product and going, hey, man, Ping makes a lot of different products. I don't know, of those seven
different irons, which one might be right for me. So if you're a little bit intimidated by fit the fitting process, and you're maybe confused or you know, looking at all of our different products and not sure which one might be right for you, that is the exact problem that web fit solves. Marty.
I've never thought about that in terms of technology. I mean, you know, Ping introduces all these iron options now, which is great when you think about it, you know, kind of at the in the macro, but when you dive really into the small portions of this, it can be confusing for a golfer to go the blueprint might play for me, but you know, maybe I could lean on a more forgiving eye ron like the more options, maybe the more complicated it can be, especially in golf, which
everybody's always kind of like peeking in their friend's bag, you know, going, ah, those look pretty good, or you know that driver looks like it's performing, well, could I get a few more yards out?
Of it.
It does seem, as we've talked so much about intimidating for average golfers every day golfers, high handicapped players to want to have somebody dissect their game, their bag, the way they perform, when, like you said, they're only trying to run a couple of miles.
Yeah, exactly, Shane. Is this is a fun little stat for you here. Chris Brody, who's my colleague here in the head of fitting science, he ran the combinatorics on webfit all the different combinations of specs.
Can I guess?
Guess? Take a guess?
Okay, so I mean you're talking so this would include drivers, woods, hybrids, irons.
Wedges, wedges, and putter.
Oh, I mean, is.
This like one hundred and fifty million options? More, what is the number? Seventeen trillion combination? Believe it seventeen trillion. And that actually excludes changing your clubhead speed to give different shaft recommendations because you actually get a shaft, you get a ballpark shaft recommendation built out of what I mean, you're talking like one hundred trillion options. Honestly, when you start to kind of implement shafts, I.
Mean you have to put shaft in there.
I mean, that's crazy to think about it. And again, I mean your goal, everyone's goal at the proving Grounds is to fit the golfer with what best serves their specific golf game. And we are talking in the trillions. That can be hard to do on both sides of things. That could be hard to do for the golfer and that could be hard to do for the fitter.
Yeah, you know, Shane, And when when we first kicked off the pod, we did that, we did the tour through our manufacturing area, right, and you saw all the different weight combinations, all the different shafts, all the different uh you know, hazzle settings, lanks, grips. Are you gonna put extra wrap on the grip? Are you gonna do a custom swing weight? Or are you gonna step the shafts? Are gonna tip trim them? You start doing the combinations on that and we can do a lot of things.
But again I think it's how do you make the complex simple and help jumpstart somebody to our fitters out there. Webfit is a great way and this is how we use it the proving Grounds. We will when somebody's schedules of fitting here we will ask them to go through webfit ahead of time, and again that educates them on the fitting process if they've never been through it, or they want to get familiar with our ping fitting process, and it gives us a jump start. It gives us
a really good jump start. We get that ahead of time. So if you're a fitter out there, you can also make really good use of this tool because it will be a win win for both the customer and you by doing a little bit of that pre round practice round to the fitting process and give you that jump start, save you a little bit of time in the fitting process,
help you narrow things down. We've done that algorithmically. It's kind of like having the brains of all of our master fitters looking at the questionnaire and making some decisions right there.
Yeah.
I mean if you think about a fitting lasting forty five minutes for an hour, right, and you never think about this, but changing heads at a club take seconds, right, pulling out new irons take seconds. I mean that can impede in theory into someone's fitting experience. And if you go through webfit and the fitter can go, Okay, this is the shaft this golfer might might be leaning towards or at least I could get five shafts similar to
what webfit says to put the golfer in. Or these irons are not going to be for this person, these wedges likely not going to be, you know, the thing I should throw their way all of a sudden, you might have saved ten to fifteen minutes in the whole fitting experience.
Yes, exactly, Shane. And one of the other things I think is super fun about webfit this has been baked into how we built it is now that you, Shane, have created a profile, You've answered your questionnaire. Okay, if nothing changes there and we launch a new product. Let's say we launch a new iron or a new wedge model. You can log back in right when that launches, and you will if that's the right iron for you and wedges for you. You will get a those recommendations you
want need to re answer the survey again. We'll be refreshed in your profile and pig nation. That is super cool. I know I personally enjoyed doing that. I have my profile in there and I'll log in and and uh
and and see those recommendations refreshed. So how you answer those questions is kind of evergreen, and then we will keep servicing and updating, you know, our product database, rerunning the algorithms like our master fitters, looking at your game and determining if that's something that is worthwhile for you to go take a look at and and go do in a in actual dynamic fitting on a launch monitor.
Marty, have you created more golf clubs or websites? What do you feel like at this point on your resume, which one, which one's more expansive?
If you will, Oh, man, I'm gonna have to do it tally.
I think it's still still seventeen trillion.
It's seventeen trillion combinations. It's still clubs, but websites and apps is catching up very quickly here, Shane, did.
You ever think this would be the avenue that you would be going down, basically creating a driven tools to benefit the golfer when you, you know, first started a ping as an intern whatever twenty five years ago.
No, I mean, honestly, no, I think it's it's only been really probably Yeah, I think iping, and you know, I think a lot of what we're building now is, you know, it is kind of a modern contemporary version of our inflight fitting software, which is right when launch monitors first came out, Shane fitters didn't know what to do with them. You know, it was just data, right, and there was no there was no you know, stat areas back then, there was no launch efficiency score, there
was no hey, do this with the data. And so you know, we built this in flight software which provided that guidance to the fitter in our fitters really love that. In the previous version of webfit, Shane was called in flight web. It was the web version of inflight and so webfit is the modern day version, which which is you know, applying smart, intelligent AI algorithms to help golfers get fit better. And I still think, Shane, quite frankly,
we're just scratching the surface on this front. We got more fun ideas and in our ideas list is longer than our time to build all these things that.
Actually might be closer to the tree. How you know, I was thinking about this the other day. I played golf with a couple of my buddies that work at Arcos, and I know you guys lean heavily on Arcos and all that data, and I was just thinking, as it's just kind of a golfer on the golf course.
The fact that now.
In twenty twenty three and beyond, you someone at a golf company that is driven by making golf easier and better for the everyday player. The fact that you can actually find that information at the snap of a finger has to make your job not just easier in theory, but just so much more fun. To be able to dive into this data across the country and worldwide that tells you what fifteen handicaps are doing for from this distance that otherwise would have been a total guess.
Yeah, no, it's gold. I mean, I can't tell you. For decades we were around the office and you have to hypothesize, well, I you know, my father in law is like this, and you know he I see him playing golf like this, but but you don't. It's all what we call antek data. You know, it's like, oh, I know three people and I played some golf with him and there you go. Now with the Arcos data, man,
oh man, we have very high volume data. And so to kind of tie that Shane to the web fit side, is now, if to kind of go in and do webfit, you have to create a ping Nation account, which is kind of like our community. You log into our website and you'll you'll when you first log in up there, you click on your profile, you get these tiles, and one of the tiles that's available to you if you've played like I think it's five or more rounds with Arcos on your clubs and our pin clubs, you'll have
a tile in there called my game Insights. So this is data from your Arcos on course play. And then it's like myself, Chris Brody are data scientists here looking at your on course play and we can draw club fitting and game improvement conclusions based on your on course play driven by the Arcos data. So this is literally like a dream come true. It's like having a little data scientist looking at your game and saying, hey, you might want to get your gapping. Take a look at
your gapping because we're noticing an issue here. You tend to miss it. Write a lot off the tee. You might want to put your CG shifter in the draw or go see your club fitter. So this is early day's shane of that concept of providing data science solutions, just like the tour players do, and they have their data science coach looking at their game, their shot link data. We actually have that product ties within pig Nation under that feature called My Game Insights.
I mean, none of us are going to hit it like Victor Hovelin or drive it like Tony Fena. But the fact that modern technology has allowed us to fill in the holes with our golf game in terms of gapping like you said, or perfecting the bag, making sure it's fit exactly for you, it is. It is so much more available. I think that's probably the term I lean on the most is so many of my golf friends that just had no idea right They didn't know
what a gap was in their bag. They didn't realize that they had issues in certain parts of the bag that would be simply fixed or at least improved if you leaned into all of this available technology that's out there that wasn't available twenty five thirty years ago.
Yeah, and I think that's I think that topic, Shane. How we've thought about that on bringing it back to Webfit is that as you're going through Webfit, you probably noticed this we have. It's an educational experience. We built it to not only just provide you with a possible club recommendation to pa that you can take with you to a f but to educate the golfer on the
fitting process. So as you're answering those questions, we have these little helper tips or tool tips called you know, where you can click down and give you more explanations says why does this matter? Tell me your heightened risk of floor? Why does this matter? You know? And I think educating the golfer as they go through that is another one of the goals that's been super helpful. We did the same thing with Balnamic. We want it to be an educational experience. Why does this matter? Why can
you see different properties in golf balls? How's it going to impact your game? And the more empowered and educated the end consumer is the better.
Yeah.
Something I was impressed with with webfit was once they recommended a golf club, it would also give you a description of.
What the club was about.
You know, So if you're somebody that doesn't know a whole bunch about the available irons at paying and it now all of a sudden, you've got a recommended iron, it actually describes what that iron does and performs, like and ballflight, all those types of things because you kind of get to the end of the test and if the teacher doesn't tell you what you did wrong or didn't tell you how to improve on it, I mean, what do you learn from that experience?
Yeah, exactly, Shane. I mean again, I go back to my mountain bike thing, because I'm going through it right now. I'm like, you know, tell me about this model. Tell me about this model and why it might be for me. That's super helpful, because how do you kind of cut through the weeds and find the needle in the haystack of all the different offerings out there. We are obviously super familiar with our whole product portfolio, but I empathize with some golfers that might not have looked at clubs
in the last three, four or five years. Maybe they're out looking for a new set of irons. All of a sudden, they're not as familiar with our product portfolio of us having just g irons and irons. Oh, ping's got all this new stuff. I'm a little intimidated. This is the way to kind of fight through that intimidation in a very intelligent way. And again, I think you noticed this. You got your whole bag pretty much built exactly as you're fitting that you got here at the
proving grounds. It is. It is creepily accurate the results that pop out a webfit webfit.
Dot ping dot com if you want to check it out. And as Marty said, this is a very important thing to do before you go get fit if you're interested in getting fit, if you just want to kind of take the test if you will, and see what it spits out at you. I think it's worthy of your time, doesn't cost you anything. It takes five ten minutes of your time if you want it to take that long. I love what Marty said about maybe going through it and then taking a day and coming back to the
results and making sure you input it everything correctly. But it's a quick and easy process to improve this entire experience that, like you said, Marty, so many golfers are intimidated by or maybe don't even want to dive into because they're not sure what they're going to experience.
Yeah, Shane, I can't tell you how many friends and family members. I'll have a cousin and their you know, golf's exploding. People want to go play the game. After COVID here, I'll have a cousin in Wisconsin. It'll be like, Hey, I want to get my wife clubs. What should I get? I'll send him the link to webfit she you know, they go through their answer the question, send me the specs.
So it could definitely be used on that front. We also have a junior version on our website, so if you go on our website, you can find a junior version which will kind of build a prodigy bag for juniors. So it's it's great at spanning that whole spectrum of of golfer skill. Male female. Junior version a great place to get started. Learn more about the fitting process.
Marty get currently getting my four year old son clubs made. I'm super excited about it. We took me ten minutes to do the hand to floor link things.
He just kept going, what are we doing here?
I'm like, just stand still watch your show for goodness sakes, I promise this will be over soon. But once I got the got it all figured out, we were dialed and I know he's going to be excited, actually showing a little bit of signs of being interested in golf. Marty, I'm fired up. We've he was outside the other day taking full swings. I told him not do it on the actual putting surface. Let's do that from the rough.
But he's been mentioning golf a little more after about three and a half years of never bringing up the word once.
You gotta, you gotta game a fight, you gotta, you gotta. We just had a four person putting contest, my two kiddos and my wife, and get a little get a little action on the line, get a little ice cream on the line. I'm bringing out the radar, the little PRGR radar for my kid to try to get his R on ball speed. Those kids, give him something to chase and they'll get after it.
Marty, my entire winner is stack system focused. By the way, I hope you know that we're gonna be swinging hard. I've decided. I just turned forty. I've decided this is the goal going forward is to at least maintain. I don't know if I'm gonna improve, but my goal is to at least try to maintain where I'm at.
So, Shane, we've looked at this on the stack data. After you get like thirty five, aged thirty five, we're looking at all of our users. You start to go down at about a half mile a year, a half mile an hour in club speed per year, Okay, until age forty five. Once you get to forty five, then it goes down like three quarters mile an hour per year. Then once you get to fifty five, you lose a mile an hour per year. So my point is, if you can maintain, you're actually huge.
Oh there you go. I love that so much. Good chat. I find web fit very interesting, Marty.
I think it's something that you know, even if you're not in the market to buy new golf clubs right now, I think it's it's worth a few minutes of your time just to see what it says. Because you know, you said scratching the surface. Every time we talk about new technology at ping, I am floored by a how advanced it looks, how clean it is, how easy it is to access. And for you to say we're only scratching the surface, I mean, I.
Don't even know where we're gonna go. I'm excited to see what it looks like. But this stuff is crazy cool.
Yeah, and especially I think the cool poud about webfit, Shane is it builds a whole back because a lot of people don't know gapping right? What is gapping?
Like?
How should I hold bag? After I go to driver and then I'm playing three wood? What should I go to next? Should I be going to a seven wood like you? Are that all the everyone's been raving about? Or should I maybe you know, what's the longest iron should I play? Should I end my set into six iron? Five iron? You know, maybe you got an old set where you still got a three or four iron? Hopefully not, but if so, now's the time to take a look
at that. And webfit can can provide a really good framework to answer some of those questions that are otherwise hard to answer.
Yeah, so check it out if you haven't yet, webfit dot ping dot com. This Proving Grounds podcast, by the way, is brought to you by my seven wood because my seven wood right now.
Is my best friend. Marty. Always appreciate the time
Love it nice chatching