Episode 33: John K. Solheim

The guys from paying 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 am Shane Bacon. That is Marty Jerts and Marty. We got a great guest and we also have kind of a live experience here at the PGA Show.

Yeah, this is fun.

You get all the sounds, the feels, the bright lights of the PGA Show.

We're here with John K. Solhin.

Good to be here.

Yeah, I've been a bit avid listener and I'm happy to actually be on the show now.

Yeah, you're on the other end of that, Johns.

A lot of pressure. John.

I asked you this question to kick it off. Are you have you frequented podcast guest a lot or is this one of your first ones?

This is my first podcast?

You feeling nervous? Are you excited about it?

Hello? I guess a little un usually not nervous about a camera, but it's a pretty good podcast, So.

I got a lot to live up to.

It elevated.

Yeah, there's been some good talent on here.

Well, we wanted to give it a kind of your journey to where you're at right now. I mean there was a lot of pressure, I'm sure in that world as well. At what age did you start to get the sense that maybe you'd want to get in the family business.

Yeah, you talk talk about pressure.

I would say there was pressure when I was young that everyone assumed I was a good golfer. So and I would say I did not handle that pressure very well on the golf course.

Were you a good player when you're.

Young, like better than average, but nothing spectacular? So like pretty good junior, but like nothing spectacular? And then I would say yeah, as I started interning at Paying kind of fell in love with the business, was like, this

Supposed to do.

You've got all this experience. I'm the new guy here, so there. I guess I never saw it as pressure at that point, but it was I guess enlightening to me just how it actually worked like.

That, Jock K, what have talk us through your journey, like like maybe some of the projects or departments you worked on is both an intern And then when he started going on full time.

How long is the podcast?

Oh yeah, we got we got, we got plenty of time, but at high level.

Break run down, so like really cool. When I was in high school and college, I'd come in to work the summers, got to work like side by side with Carston, my grandpa. Yeah, like multiple summers. He always had like an assistant. He was a lot to work for. So his assistants would get a summer assignment, they'd get a breather. I'd come in and by the end of the summer I was wiped out. He was hard to keep up with.

So that kind of.

Fueled the fire of Hey, I love golf club design. I want to be in the golf business. So I went to school, got a mechanical engineering degree and then got hired onto Ping right out of school. Was like a putter designer at first, So learned how to do CAD and was designing putters. You go, if you know, Ping like ISO Pure putters was my first project. So it was our first insert putter. So it was pretty

It takes, you know, a year or whatever.

And then actually we came to the show and launched it right and just I just remember being so giddy. I'm not quite as giddy at the show anymore, but I've just back then on how exciting it was to launch this new series of insert putters.

So I had a kind of a.

Career in engineering, continue to design putters, and it wasn't that long. I got an NBA during like my first five years of work. While I was working, and then I became the VP of engineering. Ran engineering for ten years, and then I got a signed to run our Japan office Pingolf Japan. Went there for about four years, ran that came back and then I would call that was like the transition time. Doug Hawkin was the president before me. He was kind of whatever at his sunset of his

I wanted to ask about the experience of Japan. First of all, where'd you live? Where were you based out of?

So I was a Tokyo as Abujuban was where my apartment was. Our offices were kind of on the northwest side of Tokyo.

So I had like a.

Fifty minute train commute forty five minute to two hour car drive depending on traffic to work.

So yeah, I was right in the heart of Tokyo. It was an awesome experience.

Did you speak Japanese?

I got Rosetta Stone before I. Yeah. That was back like when you bought disc right, So.

Yeah. And then I did have a tutor, like I would.

I stuck with it, so once a week I'd have the tutor come over, I would say, what I learned is I thought like after a year into it, it would start to get easy and snowball. I got a year into it, and I would say, did pretty well for that year, and then just got to a point where I was like, it's just getting harder and harder. So I remember the conversation with my Japanese tutor. I'm like, no new stuff. I just you've taught me a lot. I just want to get good at what I know.

But I can't read the kanji.

I knew maybe a hundred symbols at the time when I was there, But so I can get by if you don't speak Japanese. I can make it sound like I do speak Japanese, and I can tell the taxi cab and order food and all that. But we get in a business setting or whatever, and I'm catching twenty percent of it.

Or something like that.

John K tell us a little bit about like what you learned in your time in Japan the business side, and then just helping grow our brand because when you went over there, you know, our market share is nothing close to what it is today, and what were some of the big changes you make and things you learned on the business side there.

So I learned a ton.

I would say, like, our market share was under one percent when I got there. We had we had gone through we had distributors there. We had multiple distributors. I would say that none of them were doing great. They in the heyday of the eighties, we did very well in Japan, and then just by not investing in that marketplace, we had lost a lot of market share. So it was about five years before I went there. We started our own company there and just hadn't really taken off.

Yeah, that's a cool story. So staying more authentic to our brand.

Yeah.

On the physics side, so what you're seeing in.

The US here at the PGA show is what you see in Japan, it's the same thing.

Maybe a little different, but the core is the same.

Yeah. Yeah.

Another follow up question for you, John k is how do you kind of along that vein how do you kind of stay authentic to like our culture and our heritage while not letting that hold us back from innovating or thinking differently.

You know. Yeah, so that's I mean to do that in your leadership role.

Definitely do a great job with that tough balance.

Like I saw, like when I first became president, and I think I was here and everyone, you know, what's on your agenda, what you're gonna do, And I'm like, well, the biggest thing is to not screw up. And you know, we've got a great company here. We've had, you know, at the time, fifty five years, sixty years of success, Like, let's not mess that up. So we got a lot of good things going with that. Said, we'd had had

Yeah, exactly.

You come into this position, you worked, as you said, you interned for your granddad. Do you look at yourself in terms of a leader more like your dad or more like your granddad.

And why a little bit of both, neither of them or whatever. So like, so I would say it's like just as a company, ages or whatever, like the next generation of management is always a little different. So Carston definitely was that entrepreneur, you know, risk taker, did everything. Like I remember coming to the engineering department and being like, Okay, I'm going to design putters and they're like, well, Carston's on vacation, so we're not really doing anything.

He was never on vacation.

He was traveling in Europe or whatever, and they're like, yeah, we're waiting for him to get back, and I'm like, really, like, there's nothing to worry. It's like, well, I might be exaggerating a little bit, but it was very much like, hey, we need to wait for him to give us next direction on what to do. And then I think my dad came in loosened that up. What my dad I think is really good at is like the super fine

Yeah, I'd be.

All upset, and then we do what he said and then it's better, And I'm like, so it took me like ten years to realize that's actually a pretty good management skill, the strength of saying no and making people go back to the board. So I would say, I'm I'm more of an enabler, like a team builder, set the vision and get you know, the guys like Marty get the team on the bus, really pushing them and leveraging all their talents.

And I feel like I'm a pretty smart guy.

Myself, but I realize if I get more smart people with me, we can do more than what I saw when it was just Carston because I guess I'm not Carston, so like I need that big, strong team and we're trying to do more. We got way more irons than we used to have. We got more woods technology. We were taken so much technology and information. With all the player testing we do, we've got a lot of data to process on a daily basis.

That Marty builds all the apps.

Yeah, we all software douts. There's software at the software yeah, John K.

One thing I've really liked about your leadership style has been super inspirational to the employees is how hams On you've been. You know, you were a designer, then you were a VP of Engineering, and then you were I remember you took a did a project engineer. You jumped in there and were doing the tactical work running A and T during COVID. We're all helping build clubs here down there doing loft and live. I wasn't doing that. I gotta admit that.

You you so you get your hands dirty.

Do you think that's come natural to you or are you making like a conscious effort, like, you know, let me go, he get my hands dirty.

So I get there are times where I'm like, yeah, I got to get my hands dirty. I would say it is kind of just a natural thing. Like when COVID hit and we had we had, you know, more golf clubs on order than we could build that one. I was like, I remember talking to our CFO and I'm like, well, I'm just gonna go down and start helping build them. I think everybody can do that, And he looked at me like I was crazy, and I'm like, well, like a lot of these people they started in production.

John K we talked about the PG Show a little bit. You talked about kind of the first time you saw your putter at the show. What is it like coming here every year, the development of it, and not just the development of the show, but the involvement in ping at the PG Show over the years.

Yeah, So to me, it is like right when we like to launch products, so it's great timing for that. I'd like to think all the PGA pros, our reps have already hit them with our new product and taking their orders or whatever, so we're not writing a tonnel orders here. But it is great to see the whole industry. You know, golf'spin on quite a run as of late, so it's nice to be, you know, within a healthy industry.

Everybody's doing well.

We see a lot of great faces, a lot of friends, a lot of people I wouldn't normally see run into at the show, so it's great for a lot of things.

Is it a young person's show these days, or do you feel like you still have the energy to kind of run through it at the same clip maybe you had a decade ago.

It's definitely tiring. I would say, for whatever reason, my back has gotten better with age. Okay, my back used to kill me. Interesting, interesting and whatever. We're kind of getting towards the end of the day here and I'm still feeling pretty good. So I don't know's I would think anyone could do it, but it is taxing to my We had a little meeting ahead of time, and I thanked everybody for their efforts because everybody's going to be tired when they're getting on that plane to go home.

And so it's a lot of work to be here, you know what.

I compare this a lot, and it's probably a bad comparison, but the PGA show is almost Mini Vegas. Everybody shows up and they're excited, and you know, everybody's they got their new outfits and they're so excited to get here. And then you go to the airport on Friday afternoon. Yeah, they're kind of droopy and everything is a little bit more tired.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, you get a lot of peother here. It's go, go go.

I like to kind of turn it down earlier or whatever, because coming West coast to East coast the time change. I got to make sure I get my sleep or otherwise I'm want to be a train wreck and I'm want to be in front of a camera.

So just keep part of it. John K.

How's the PJ show changed since you first started coming there.

That's a good question.

I would actually say it's more more focused on what the PGA Show is for. So I would say when I first started coming, there were way more gigantic screens, loud stuff, multi story, just a lot of fluff and hocus pocus type stuff, just like who could do bigger and better boosts or whatever. I feel like the big golf equipment brands have all kind of scaled back from that, and it's a good mix of you got those brands as well as you've got all the call apparel, all

Do you still walk the floor.

If I get time to That's the one thing I kind of want to do a lot of times. I don't even have time to do it, but and I want to go for the little knickknacks. But I see I see all the other stuff all the time. I want to see what that's the Uh, what's a unique thing that I could say, Oh, I saw that at the show.

It's funny, Marty. I like the I like going and checking out the headcover. Companies can always have so many cool headcovers over that way, you know.

Inventor's Corner and some someone poured their last two years of their life and make it some little training aid and some of them are good. I've picked up some some cool little training aids over there over the years.

I've got an easy one for you, John K. What's your favorite ping club of all time? You can say the putter you built. That's fine, that's an easy way out of this.

Yeah, those early ISO Pure putters. I would say my favorite pin club of all time. Hmm, how about G four thirty Max ten K Driver.

There you go, Oh, there you go, transition into the new stuff. I'm gonna say that might be my favorite pink club of all time.

I've had it for a couple of months now, and I'm getting older, so everything had slowed down. So it was very nice to see ball speed back up, just the up substantially, in just all hitting all the fairways.

I want so to me.

I guess I've never had a big tie to an old product. I've been the guy who kind of easily switches a lot of times. I've been in the driver and I'm like, I can't hit anything better, but I'm gonna try it. I put it in the bag and I'm like, sure enough. I like G four twenty five. I didn't think I could hit it better, and I got the G four to thirty Max, and I'm like, that one's for me, and interesting, like I tried. I wanted to play the G four thirty LST and I'm like,

In the ten k.

From a fitting standpoint, you've gone a little bit longer at length because the drivers I did.

Get from listening to one of these podcasts, I was, I was like, you know what, I gotta I gotta, I gotta try the length. So I like literally came in the next day lou Bebee, who like is my fitter.

I'm like, hey, we gotta try.

And I actually went longer, and I went a half inch longer and settled on a quarter inch longer. Yeah, beautiful and loving it because I got a little more clubhead speed and ball still going in the fairway.

And it's a big deal.

One club in on every hole is a big deal game change.

I mean, Marty probably knows the answer to this, but I mean you're probably saving three, four or five strokes around if you just simply had one shorter club in everything.

Oh yeah, no, Yeah, that's uh, that is huge in terms of that compound interest when you get that ball further down the fairway.

Yeah, and it's fun to have all the fun fitting.

Tools to be able to help everyday golfer kind of make those decisions. Now, John k you've been influential in kind of having us rethink our iron strategy and having like a very pure blade iron.

Right.

I think we launched the Blueprint iron. Tour players were kind of asking us for something like that. We kind of had to really spend a lot of time diving in with the tour players. Now, those irons have been very good for the low single digit handicappers like yourself. Avid golfers. Tell us a little bit about you know, your thoughts on Blueprint ess, Blueprint te and just our whole like better player iron family right now.

Yeah.

So to me, I think we've made a lot of improvement there.

I think.

We've got an awareness issue out in the field or whatever because I play Blueprints and I you know, I'll have a caddy or people I'm playing with and they're like, I didn't know ping made a blade.

Yeah.

I'm like, yeah, we've been doing it for a while now.

Yeah.

But to me, you know, one, it's listening to the tour player and then you know, I grew up, you know, playing bigger irons and stuff like that, and I think it was more just out of a like I wanted to test it myself. So the original Blueprints, I just had a set made up, went out and played like back to back rounds, and I'm like a scratch golfer. I don't shoot under par a whole lot, but I think I had back to back under par rounds and I'm just like, this is a game changer for me.

Was it like a workability thing? Was it just comfort with the look of the iron?

Do you feel so my game, my miss is left and on an iron, like a big forgiving iron. It's left and long, so you kind of close the face down and all of a sudden, you're you're.

Kind of in the wrong zip code.

And if you go look at a lot of golf courses, you look what's left and long, A lot of times there's no golf course nasty.

Bunkers, especially in Arizona.

Yeah, so so to me, the miss with the blueprint is short, straight, Okay, So to me and I, you know, unless there's a bunker right in front of the green or whatever, it's usually a pretty easy chip from right on the front of the green. So to me, that's what I just started like looking at like my Arcos data and stuff, and I'm like, yeah, this is this

Yeah, or doing mixed sets.

We see a lot of that on tour, like Corey Connors playing blueprint as four and five iron then going to the t and it's fun now to have that iron and the I two thirty.

All with the same lofts.

Yeah, and design them to be blended because it's such a big deal. You can either play them all the way down or blend them, which is super fun. So yeah, I've never I've had the same feedback John k. You know, I think a couple of accounts came by and said, when are you guys gonna stop making those boxy irons? And I show them the blueprints.

They're like, WHOA, yeah, we did it at Yeah, I need to ask what is in the bag? What does your bag look like right now?

So I've got the Max tank driver, I've got our LST three woods, which is awesome. So I play at I five thirty four iron if we even that's not out yet, is it? No, that's no, But I've had it for a while. That club is awesome.

You somebody, you know, somebody paying then get it early, so.

That club's yeah, that club's super flexible. I hit it off the tee a lot now. And then I've got so another four iron four I heard through of blueprint t and then I've got s one fifty nine wedges.

I've got a.

Fifty so I get pretty precise bent to forty nine, and then I've got a fifty four to fifty four and a fifty eight bent to fifty nine, and then an answer four K putter.

I didn't know it had a name, and then I just found.

Out we call an answer four K apparently because my middle name with the K, so it's an answer head. It's a PLD putter with an answer for hozzle. So I'm a little more open closed. So went in and did the whole PLD fitting and beautiful. That was a cool thing too, because I'm more used to seeing like the numbers from track Man and Foresight on the launch monitor with a driver, but now used to seeing numbers with a putter and when I did that PLD fitting experience,

Yeah, I mean putterfitny. You gotta fall in love with the look of it. But then layer on the science. Yeah, you know, it's like the marriage of art and science. So that iping we you know, just that incentive to you know, try to maximize someone's repeatability is super cool that we're doing in there.

Now, what about your lob wedge. What grind do you have?

I do have a custom grind there, so it's the standard soul and then it's got the dish like the it grind.

Ah yeah on that and that gives me.

It gives me what I like for a full shot ground impact wise in that bunker and full disclosure week. Part of my game is my short game the bunker. I go back to the old eye two days when I was a kid and I didn't have a.

Short game issue, and it gives me that same.

Feel in the bunker when I get the dish with the dish, just that nice Crisp comes out and has some spin on it, So that's been a good combo for me.

Yeah, nice, John Cam.

How much golf are you playing right now? Do you get to play once a week? You get to play much? I mean, you know, I feel like people within the golf industry either play a lot or they don't play much at all, you.

Know, So I play way more. My kids have gotten a little older, so I don't have as much commitments on the weekends and stuff. Uh. I've got one pretty into it. He goes to school at Saint Andrews, gets out on there quite a bit. He was just at home for Christmas and stuff, and we got some golf in together. My youngest son plays a little bit, and then my girls they do other sports. So but I would say I play once or twice a week, so I get a fair amount of golf in. But sometimes

I already got it all.

Scheduled, so I gotta It's golf season in Phoenix, so there's there's a decent amount of golf coming.

Up if you're gonna play play Now, Marty, what are you a week? I've never really asked you this. How often are you playing the eighteen holes of golf? I feel like you're a practicer.

I'm a practicer, and then I'll go play like I'm Some people at my course are like, I never see you. Well, I go out at dark and I play like four or five holes. I hit a bunch of t shots and I'm out of there.

But it's all.

Work or you played? Do you play much?

Like?

Is there much casual golf in your life?

Not a ton, I'm not.

I just prep for the tournaments and the occasionally I'm a sundowner.

I go out at sundown.

That's why I'm kind of cause I get that at the golf course too. We never see you, and I'm like, well, I play earlier. I play earlier, but I'm not a practicer. Yeah, because those premium tea times. I'm like, well, that takes up your whole day. I like, gotta I gotta get two things in of the day or whatever. But I

That gets me swinging.

And then you know, once a week or maybe twice a week out on the golf course.

But earlier late.

When your son decided to go to Saint Andrew's. How excited not just as a dad but as a of for were you that you got to potentially go over there?

You know, yeah, I love you. So we went and visited him in September for the first time. My wife plays a little bit of golf, but not much. She's like, well, what are we gonna do. We're in Saint Andrews. And I looked at her, like.

You do one thing.

We're going to see her son and we're gonna play golf. Yeah, Like she did not get that. And then I'm like we did. Like we had a trip to Mexico and she's like, well, where do you want to play golf in Mexico. I'm like, I don't need to, that's not Saint Andrews.

Like we could go to the beach, we could do those sort of things. So yeah, I was excited.

We had We played King's Barn in the old course, the last time we were there, we played in pouring rain and wind at the old course. So I was like under par on the way out down win and you couldn't even tell. Yeah it was, but created a great memories. Yeah it was a lot of fun.

Yeah so cool, John K? What are you doing outside of work these days?

I remember, you know, before you moved to Japan, you were doing triathlons. I'd come into work, Shane and John K would have already rode ridden his bike sixty you know, and I'm like, oh boy, okay.

Yeah, those were the days.

I still would say, I've got like the workout bug. I would say, it's gotten a little bit more like golf. Focus on trying to do things to maintain the golf swing. If anything, speed it up a little bit. Still get the cardio in, but have it. My knees don't love running anymore, so I kind of had to slow that down because I'm like, I I don't want to be the have.

Knee issues, So.

I like so golf, I would say, is a big like spare time thing. Still got one kid at home, so I'm doing my park to shuttle him back and forth to his uh practices and whatever. Pickups or take him to school, so that sort of stuff. And yeah, just to join some family time and yeah, playing golf and.

Outside a lot of work outside of this podcast obviously, which I know you consume a lot. You're a podcast listener, I'm guessing, and you're a book reader. You a little bit.

Just finish the Elon Musk book.

How was it?

Uh, it was good. It was good to me.

I Uh. It was actually my pastor at church that recommended it to me, and I was like, Okay, I read it, I got done with it. I'm like, okay, I read it, but I don't think I want to do all this stuff. He's like, no, it's not like the example of what to do. It's like all the stuff you could do and what costs. So to me it was pretty powerful because like he you know, puts it in NonStop, but also kind of like level setting of that.

There could be a too much or whatever and what cost.

So but I thought it was a great read, super interesting because we're like living through it right now and we're still like in the middle of Tesla SpaceX and all this stuff. So it's like the book's already out, but it's not finished. So that was interesting. And then I'll just like I'll listen to podcasts that people send to me. I do listen to like some Joe Rogan podcast here and there. Just got some interesting stuff on there, and it's.

Always kind of guest depend it. Right, It's like, you know, I feel like there's the massive podcasts, you know, you kind of are scrolling through and it's like, Okay, I want to hear what this.

Podcast is great?

Like I love listening to this one and taking a bunch of stuff here, Like by the chipping, I've become a much better chipper.

Listen.

That's right, thank you.

Take the math in my head of I need that negative angle of attack. I've been trying to sweep it and the grounds just getting in the way. And now I'm like, the ground's not in the anymore.

So, yeah, that last last night he wore a shirt, he had a jacket, he unzipped it, he had a spin loft.

He's like, where are you gonna point the spin loft? You know?

So this is open for on brand for Joe right there, I'm gonna make a shirt for the open form and get dial John K. We really appreciate you doing this and appreciate the time, appreciate everything you do at Pinging with the brand. It's been very cool to see the recent developments. I mean just in terms of the irons that you talked about. The new wedges are so great, the driver's awesome. So thanks for the time and thanks for everything you.

Yeah, thanks for having me on a great path.

We've got great product this week we're introducing, and then the future looks very bright. We got a great pipeline, we've got great people working on products, so stay tuned.

The boss Man, John k. This is the Pink Proven Grounds Podcast