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 Ping Proving Grounds Podcast. I'm Shane Bacon. That is Marty Jerts and Marty.
It's a remote podcast and we recorded a few in person and uh, this is our first, our first run through remote. You're you're still dialed though, you're still in the putting lab.
Oh yeah, I'm dialed here and I see you're you're in the You're in the man cave right there.
I was.
I was just I was joking with my wife today she's been sick and then we have both kids are home today and she said, thank goodness, we have this man this cave down here that we can like get away for an hour or two and uh, basically my workstation at this point. But yeah, you know, it was interesting.
I was kind of thinking about this time of year, you know, at school's kind of starting to wind down for most kids, and this is when parents, I would say, start to freak out a bit because the summer's long and you gotta a lot of time with your kids, and you start to plan out camps and programs and
what you can do with your children. And it got me kind of thinking about PING and what you guys have done in terms of focusing on junior programs and kids, Marty, And it's an important program that PING has established and it's something that I know you guys are very proud of, and it focuses a lot on junior golf and getting children not just invested in the game, but kind of a personalized environment for them to really kind of hold in and take in.
Yeah, I mean, growing the whole junior game is super important to the family, to the Solheim family here, Shane, And you know, I think you see it in so many of our staff players. They've grown up being PING players. Right. This is in our DNA, and it's in our fitting DNA. You know, we want to have product that's that we can custom fit to the junior golfer. That again, I think what we've talked about the essence of custom fit.
Custom fitting is so that you the player, you don't have to make a just right And I think that's a core problem that we solve with our Prodigy product and that we believe in is that whole and I can certainly relate to it. I can relate to scheduling camps and my wife being a little stressed out right now setting the itinerary for the summer. But that whole, that whole issue of you're making a big investment in your in your kids clubs, so you kind of want
to be like I want to. I want to I'll get it a little longer so they can grow into it, right, right, But then you have But but then that's not the best thing for the golfers. They're growing their swing and they're taking lessons, and they're at the junior camp, they're at the they're at the course every day, and they have clubs that are too long. That's that's a that's a big, big problem for their development.
Yeah, I mean I was thinking about myself as a as a kid, right like growing up playing golf, and things have obviously changed a lot in terms of technology and focus and obviously personalization in and around golf. What is okay, I'm a parent, I have you know, an eight Let's say I have an eight year old and a ten year old and they're starting to show interest in golf. What is the modern way about going about
getting them golf clubs? Because the old way was you went and bought, like you said, longer clubs so they could play them themselves into them, they could use them for a few years. You obviously were making a one time purchase. How has that evolved, you know, not just in junior golf, but with Ping's involvement.
Yeah, I think that. I think the issue we're trying to solve there is that, you know, I think you and I we may have played Dad's cut down clubs. Of course they're heavy, they're too stiff, their lineals aren't right, and things of this nature. So we want to provide a solution there for exactly that age range. In our first four ray into this was kind of you know, the g A twelve driver, So well, why did you
name it eight twelve? It's for roughly eight to twelve year olds, you know, is to get them in that product. The one big part of that, sane is we want to get them to the right length. We want to get them into the clubs to have the right weight and balance. That's like a really big deal the right head weight. You know, the clubs are this short. We don't necessarily care about building to a certain or designing to a certain swing weight. It's more about the head
weight optimization. Right, you get that right weight and balance so they can swing it for their specific speed and strength levels. And then the other big piece is helping somebody with the right building, the right like mix of clubs. Like the younger you are, the shorter you hit it, you don't need fourteen clubs. And we're not even trying to recommend that with the prodigy, right, And that's I
think that's very helpful to the parents. Like Mike, I have a six year old and a nine year old and my six and they both started with a set that was driver or five hybrid, nine iron sand wedge putter, you know. And even then maybe they don't need the sand wedge at the beginning, right, So you can start with like a you know, I don't know, a five piece set, or even even less than that. You can
go driver, hybrid, iron hutter. You know. It kind of helped them as they evolved their skills, don't get maybe you don't give them that sandwich at the beginning, so they can learn how to manipulate the face and develop their skills. So that's a big part of what we thought through with the Prodigy, And we're not here to push on hey you need all these clubs for your kid who only hits hits their driver one hundred and twenty yards.
Yeah.
So if a parent's coming to you guys and thinking about getting their kid involved, you know, in the Prodigy program and kind of getting them interested in getting their own set of golf clubs, but maybe they're nervous about pricing, or maybe they're nervous about the kid growing out of that. What have you guys done to maybe alleviate a bit of that stress.
Yeah, it's definitely a big investment. I mean, I know when I'm got my kids are playing, you know, whether it's a mountain bike for them or they're into baseball. I mean, it's definitely a big investment. And so we can definitely empathize with like the parent in that regard, right because a lot of us here they're developing these programs, we are the parents. So yeah, we developed this program.
It's called the Get Golf Growing Program, and it's really to solve that problem of hey, you got your ten year old eight year old golfer, and you the parent. The first thing in the head, Hey, man, this set's going to be expensive. I'm gonna buy them in my eight year old. I'm gonna buy them to last them through their eleven and then they're playing clubs that are too long there for two years. We're like, okay, let's
solve this problem here. So the Get Golf Growing program is if you buy like just five pieces of the five piece set of the Prodigies, fit them to exactly their right length for that time, and then and then your kid after the Hey, this winter they go back to school, they sprouted up three or four inches or what have you. You send them back into us. We'll lengthen them, reweight them, regrip them, ship them right back to you. We usually get them back to you within a week.
Now your golfer can have an optimally optimal fit set for that whole span of when they're playing that Prodigy product. And it's been an awesome program since we launched it. Tons of parents are taking advantage of it. We kind of launched it out there. Hey, I'm not sure how many parents are going to send their clothes back in, but it's a lot, and so it's definitely working, and it kind of takes the edge off. It solves two problems at once. Hey, the big stick sticker tag. It
kind of takes the edge off that. And then your golfers playing more perfectly fit product for the span of when they're growing up and so they don't have to make those adjustments to their game.
Yeah, Marty, it almost sounds like what I know, I don't remember. Maybe it was an American Express program, but somebody did something with the NBA where if you bought a jersey from a player and they switch teams, you could send the jersey back in and they will replace
it for almost no cost. And again you're thinking about how much movement we're seeing in professional sports now, that makes a lot of sense if you want to go out and buy a replica jersey and it's one hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars, And this makes so much sense for a parent where when we think about things for our children, price comes up so often, cause again we're spending the money right, and we're putting them in something that maybe we don't know if they're going
to last two years, three years, four years, or even a couple of weeks. And this allows you to take a bit of stress off of the parent and also it gets the kids interested because you have a set perfectly fit for you. This is what you should be playing in this moment, and if you grow three inches in the summer, good news. We can adjust your golf
clubs to where they stay with you. And Marty, if if I'm right here, it's the same club, so you know you're looking down at the same club that you were looking at before.
Exactly what I did. And it's a good example. I just did my nine year old. He started to hit the ball a little bit further, so he had that five club set and he started to establish a gap between his hybrid and his nine iron, so it's time to add the seven iron. So it's just easy. You don't need to go out and do the whole thing at once, right, and it's helped him with against shame with that skill development. And we put a lot of
thought in that with our Prodigy set. Even when it came down to like the putter design, it was really cool. It's a putter we designed kind of with Louijus stays In at the time and actually Corey Bacon was the lead designer on this putter. We wanted to design and answer blade style putter that had like that focus to it, but still had some forgiveness. And so this putter is called the Voss putter. That's the town in Norway, so I had some hiss tied to our ping heritage there.
And the cavity instead of an answer style is exactly ball with and that's the putter we chose to put in the Prodigy line because we wanted the kids growing up with a blade style putter slide are something not too big and that forced that focus to your eye, which was pretty important. So we even thought about like those level of details in terms of your skill development, you know, when we're in the when we're in the design phase of the prodgy product.
So what's age? What's kind of the age focus? I know you mentioned eight to twelve, but what do you tell people that ask you? All right, my kids showing some interest, my kids showing some promise, When do I need to start this program for them?
Yeah? I think, you know, I think our height range is kind of the guide Okay, a like fifty two inches to sixty two inches, So anywhere in there. And obviously if you got a kid that's forty eight inches or forty nine to fifty, we can kind of hedge it a little bit on that end. And we have great, like really simple fitting information. And I think that the earlier on you are in starting your golf journey, the more you can kind of lean on just kind of
how tall you are, how long your arms are. Just like our like men's mainline men's and women's adult color code chart, we actually had to establish we had to create our own color code chart. So when we developed the Prodigy product, we actually went out and we leverage all the Ping employees because, like the CDC, we went to go get data on like wingspan or how long your arms are, and there was no data out there.
There was no like growth charts for that information. So we sent out this big survey to all of our accounts and had them go measure their kids, and we actually came up with the color code chart for juniors when we launched the Prodigy. But I think that's it. I think it's kind of that eight to twelve range.
But if you have a you know, six seven year old, that's a little on the bigger end, and it's close to that fifty two inch minimum threshold all the way up to that top end, which gets close to kind of five foot or sixty two inches is kind of the sweet spot, which is generally kind of eight to twelve, but really seven to thirteen.
And how much time are you thinking if you're talking to a parent about, you know, going through this process, what's the time commitmant?
You know, what do they need to do to get involved?
Yeah? So I mean a you could go see your local ping fitting account and they have all the the charts and fitting information. They might even have a demo there of the Prodigy product for you you to try. And we have even have a couple different shaft flexes and again that's going to be driven by kind of your speed and your height range and strength levels. So we even have a couple different shaft flexes in there.
Or you could go to our website, Shane. We have a really cool fitting charts called Junior Webfit, and you just punch in okay, you punch in the heighthier your kid you put in, You put in their wrist of floor, which is kind of that measurement how long their arms are, and even if you don't. You don't have to measure that if you you can kind of hey, set it for me and it'll pick kind of the average there and then you just put in approximately how far they
hit their driver, right, and that's carry plus roll. And if they hit their driver one hundred twenty yards or less, we're gonna we're gonna recommend less pieces like a five piece set or six piece set in there. And if they start if they hit their driver like you know, two hundred and two hundred and twenty yards or further, that's when we start to fill out the whole bag. And may you that to that gap testing. We do a lot of testing with the juniors on gaping. And
so it's that easy. You can go see your authorized ping retailer, maybe at your club or your local you know, retail store, or go right on our website and click on Junior Webfit and just use use that really easy calculator right there.
And how do you tell people in terms of mixing, you know, interest in the game for young person because you know, there's so many outlets now, there's so many places you can go clinics obviously, there's camps out there, you know, ping junior league. What do you tell people in terms of that process. You know, once now they've got the golf clubs. Now they're very interested in potentially playing golf. What's that next step to tell parents?
Man, I think the number one thing, Shane, I think you could probably speak to this yourself is like have fun, Like make the game fun, like you gotta gamify it. I mean, I know, I'm like bringing my kids on the golf course late in the evenings. I mean, I think a big thing my wife and I do with the our two kids is we play alternate shot. So we'll play nine holes alternate shot. This is really fun and we can pay play at the same pace of play, like is the regular you know kind of members tea times,
which is pretty quick. Like if you're not keeping up, they're not happy about it. So number one thing is keep it fun. But there are tons of junior programs going on out there. I think you've named a few. PGA Junior League is super fun because that scramble style format. And I know they have really cool commercials. Obviously see Steph Curry and all these Right, my kids love basketball the most, so when they see Steph Curry on those commercials.
They're like, okay, I'm getting in the junior league and it's that team atmosphere. Any play a scramble, so it takes like the pressure off of you know, it's like a good entry point whether a kid is more skill playing individual tournaments or not. Keep it fun. Tons of
programs out there either either at your local course. I just think at least here in Arizona, junior golf has really been flourishing, and you see a lot of opportunities where through your local PGA Section tournaments, PGA Junior League, other initiatives. I would say the big thing is keep it fun and try to keep get your kids out there with other buddies and friends they can have contests with.
And when does a junior transition to more of an adult set. I mean, at what point are you saying, Okay, you've gone through you know, our Prodigy program, You've gone through the Get Golf Growing program. Now we're getting to a full set of adult golf clubs. What do you feel like that age range is and maybe skill set is.
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean I think the number one thing is kind of their height. If they're kind of getting close to that five foot level. That's kind of that transition point. So that's the first thing to look at, and then beyond that's kind of the speed factor. Like our Prodigy driver, for example, And we know this because we're using all the same engineering tools we're using to optimize our mainline product and our ladies product.
We're throwing those engineering resources at the Prodigy, right, So it's got a lighter headweight, and then it has our driver has fifteen degrees of loft on it, so that may seem crazy, like why do you have a driver that much loft? Well, slower speeds, like you need more
launch and more spin to optimize your distance. So if your junior players starting to pick up some speed and you just kind of know they're spinning their driver too much, or maybe you get them on a launch monitor, you can actually use our driver Optimal launch and spin chart and start taking a look at Hey, you know, my juniors get a little bigger, they get a little more speed. Hey, on this chart, their spin is a little too high. That's a good time to take a look in that
transition point of getting to a mainline product. The fun part is now Shane with the G four thirty we have this build called the HL build in the G four thirty, which stands for high launch, and it's a lighter headweight build. And this is the perfect marriage because there is this kind of gap. Hey, I got a fourteen year old, you know, maybe they're not swinging fast enough for clubs, are a little too heavy in the main line, they just graduate on Prodigy. What do you do?
We have this HL build which is lighter headweights in there, which is kind of this perfect marriage. So you can go to a driver that's maybe we're in forty four inches or forty four and a half, keep the headweight appropriately, optimize a little lighter weight, and help them make that transition,
which is a great solution there. And then you can use con of our our mainline fitting tools like our regular color code chart and other fitting tools start to really work well once you make that transition.
Marty, when did you guys start to see these types of holes? You know, I mean not just in junior golf, but maybe in women's clubs and you know, a HL driver. I mean, it feels like what ping has done so well is solutions for potential gaps, if you will, And we talk so much about gut gaping in your own golf club, in your own golf bag, but gut gaping and golf in general. Because all of what you're saying makes sense, but I don't feel like it's been around forever.
Yeah, we're getting more Shane, You're exactly right, We're getting more and more nuanced. Is taking these certain segments of the market, and a lot of them have been underserved, like I don't know. I mean, hey, lefties, we'll start with lefties. They were the original underserved. We've been them forever. But you know, it's just doing things like cutting we did. We did a test shame where we cut down. Let's take dad's cut down driver and test it VERSU the Prodigy, right,
and we just absolutely crush it with the Prodiect. It shows the value of having a lighter head, more law, custom engineered shaft, all those things, right, And so that just really validated the Hey, there's a gap there and we need a custom engineer or solution there. Same thing with the Ladies product. That's another really good example where it requires its own custom uh optimization. Right. There's speed ranges,
there's line goal ranges, there's headweight optimizations. It's very specific for those segments, and so yeah, we've been going down a lot of these little rabbit holes, and I think we've you know, I think today we're having fun talking about juniors and ladies this HL build and how we've kind of targeted those and designed solutions for them. Marty.
Do you ever have like an entire family come out to get fit? You know, I mean, I mean dad's getting fit, moms getting fit, and the kids are getting fit.
Have you seen that, you know, on the proven grounds over the years.
Yeah, Yeah, it is kind of fun. It is fun. I mean, definitely we see a lot of dads and kids here. I mean, I don't know we'd have let's say, I mean a good example is one of our ambassadors, Kerry Cosby, like the PGA professional year, playing the Senior PGA Championship. Whenever he comes in, he's always with the sun Banks, right, So there's I look at the calendar
and there's tons of those scenarios. We definitely see some some A lot of couples come in and quite often they'll be there'll be a family four come on in and they're all getting optimized and it's really fun to see, Okay, mom maybe getting fit for our glee product. Kids are getting into prodigies and dad's getting in you know, maybe set of blueprints or something if he's a player. So it's fun to be able to service that whole spectrum of the marketplace, right and playing golf as a family
is It's what I remember from my childhood. I mean, people ask me how I got into golf. Well, I went to play every Saturday with my dad. It was the thing, like, I don't remember a Saturday we didn't go play nine or eighteen holes. So it's such an important part of golf and one of the one of the funnest things about golf. And it's fun for us to have products and fitting solutions, you know, for the whole family.
Yeah, I mean the solution part again going back to this is you know, when you tour the facility and you really get a feel for what you guys are trying to accomplish, it really does feel like it's it's checking boxes. And when you go through checking those right boxes, where you know the women's clubs are perfectly designed to fit those swing speeds and the junior golf clubs are
perfectly designed. And then maybe, like you said, maybe somebody's not swinging it at one hundred and fifteen miles an hour with their driver, but you know they want to get into, you know, the newest gear and you've got high launch for them. I just find it so fascinating that, you know, it's almost like there's not one leaf that's not been uncovered,
you know. I mean, it really does feel like every single day the team is working to make sure that everybody's served, so everybody has their best chance of playing the best golf.
Yeah, we're yes, absolutely, Shane. I think we I think you know we we right now have the most complete solution for all those little segments of the market, and there there's more to be done. There, there's more to be done. I mean, I think we've all seen, Hey, somebody else better with a heavy headway driver. But you go hit it and it feels like a toothpick and your ball speed goes down. But the other person hits it, uh,
and it works really well for them. So we're still going down and segmenting the market with even more precision than we ever have. I think our G four to thirty driver is a really good example. The headway we have on the s FT, which is our straight fly technology driver built to counter folks who deliver the face open path and put a lot of curve on it and just want to straight. Hey, just give me the
club that straight exactly. Like not everyone's going to go out and and put a lot of time into working their game. But that's totally okay, Like we can we can fit you for that. We're getting more targeted, more surgical on our solutions and and and today we talked about some really fun examples that.
Marty, when did you first beat your dad? I mean you talk about going out and playing golf with your dad. How old do you think you were when you first maybe got him on the golf course?
Man, that's a good question, Shane. I want to say. I want to say probably like in the probably eleven or twelve years old. You know, it's always playing nine. I mean I think I always remember like Bogie, like Bogie is par you know, like so in my head it's like, okay, when was I shooting forty five?
Right?
And I think that first time was probably in that like eleven or twelve years old, like true legit, like shooting shooting breaking you know, Bogie par breaking that forty five level and then I remember probably shooting like a forty one or two and then Pop shot forty three and I was like, okay, took you down. We're going for ice cream. Oh.
I mean, I was trying to think back of, you know, like being competitive with my dad and on the golf course, and I'm you know, I have young kids, and I can't you know, it's hard to fathom that one of these days Henry's going to beat me in golf, you know, but I mean it's inevitable that at one point, if he's interested in the game and he gets dialed in it,
he's going to beat me in golf. And to think that, you know, I was reading something there was some dad that said every year he fell on there on his kid's birthday, he does a film where he rases his kid because he said, at some point, the kid's gonna beat him. But right now, I mean, the kid's six and he's got kid's got no chance. But every single year they do a race, and you know, when did
when did I finally actually beat dad? You know, it's like Dad's actually stressing over a couple of mounths on a nine to take down his kid.
Uh, it's it's wild to think.
And I mean obviously with what the club's pings are put things putting together, that opportunity is going to come around a little easier.
Yep, yep. Oh man, you got me thinking, I'm glad I don't film that race with my nine year old. He runs track and field. He's like a sprinter and he he can already smoke me. So I'm glad I'm not doing that.
Smarty, That's that's right.
Just gonna stick stick to the golf match.
So you know, if if somebody is going to think about getting their kid into the game and into fitting, and you're really going to give him a time like ale like this might take you an hour, two hours, five hours, a couple of days a week, what do you tell people in terms of getting them involved in programs, getting them involved in new golf club fitting, all of that. I mean, how much time is a parent thinking about week to week?
Yeah, that's a good question, Shane. I mean, I just go back to keep it fun for the kids, man, Keep it fun. Keep it like, get them in a fun camp with some friends, with somebodies. The more time on the golf course the better. It's hard to make it fun just hitting balls on the range. Oky, you can do it. You can have fun things on the range, don't get me wrong. But the more time you can do that, get them on the course playing you know,
have some different formats. Play some scrambles, play some alternate shots, play some stableford. You know, have some different games. Kids just love playing games. Keep it competitive. And then when it comes to fitting, you know, just don't think you need to have a bag full of ten or twelve clubs for your kid. Get them, get them four or five clubs, highly engineered but custom fit. Don't go with cut down your old clubs, and and and that would be a problem, that would be a challenge for you.
And don't don't be tempted by buying them for how big they're going to be in two years. So get them into that right length, right now. And and we've made some really tool simple tools to make that super easy for you. Go around our website, get in there and punch in their height, how long their arms are, and you'll get all that information instantly, which is really cool.
Yeah, I mean, it's such a good idea. I mean, get golf growing makes so much sense. And I love the idea behind it, and really, I mean it's it's not necessarily as much science. That is just logic, right, I mean, it's a logical way to go about it. As your kid grows, allow us to do the dirty work, allow us to you know, you know, extend the clubs and add new grips. What's cool about it is I love the idea of the new grips. I mean, you
think about getting new clubs. You're not necessarily getting quote unquote new clubs, but I feel like as a young person, when those show up in a box and they're cleaned up and they're refinished and the grips are new, it's gonna almost feel like you're get new golf clubs every year as a young person. And as you and I've talked about getting new golf club is one of the greatest parts about being a being a golfer is getting the box.
At home exactly. I mean, Shane, I remember thosere some of my best Christmases as a kid. Man I got a new driver, you would go out there. I remember that was another memory childhood memory for me is we'd always go play golf on Christmas Day. Christmas Day we would do the same thing. I love that. So yeah, this get golf growing program. I think you're exactly right.
You get your club, you get fresh, you get new shafts, longer, fresh grips, nice and TACKI and uh and and now they're they're going to be more fit to you if you if they've gotten a little too short for you, having to bend over too much, read too much, you know, things of that nature. You know that the fitting is so important, and you know that way you don't have to make those make those adjustments. And the UH for ill fitted equipment such a big deal, Marty.
I know people probably can't see you if they're listening, but you're in the putting lab. When you go to the putting lab, do you roll a putt every time? Or is it one of those things like are you a a little bit a bit stricter.
Shane, I think you nailed it. I actually do.
I don't know how you can.
I usually roll these ten putts in here.
While I'm in here, I'm looking behind you, and all I could think is I would be rolling putts immediately after finishing this. I mean, it's so awesome to get a chance to kind of be involved in that area and to get a chance to really see what it's all about. But yes, that's like when you go to the like PGA Tour superstore and you go.
Yeah, I gotta roll. I mean I do.
Really a couple of Putts always, I got a wall, a couple of five fitters and see how it goes.
Marty always appreciate the time. Thank you so much. This is the Being Proving Grounds podcast.