The guys from Ping.
They've kind of shown 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.
Hey, hey, everybody, welcome back to the Ping proven Grounds Podcast. I'm Shane Bacon, joined as always by Marty Jerts and Marty want to talk a little junior golf today. Just came off the heels of hosting an AJGA event in Texas and it brought me back, Marty, to my junior golf days. The Ping Hooper Bags, some of the golf clubs that we've talked a lot about on this podcast over the years. But I know you've had some experiences lately with your kids and some drive chip and putt stuff.
What is it like being a father watching your kids compete in golf tournaments as you're still a guy that competes in golf tournaments, Like, what's it like being on that side of the thing.
It's like, well, I speak for my wife too. She gets more nervous watching them than watching me or playing herself or anything like, especially drive chip and putt where there's only three shots, you know, you scull one chip and your toast. But Shane, it's been an amazing summer. My kids are seven and ten, so they're right in the sweet spot of like, hey, we're trying to get him to fall in love with the game. And they
got a lot of other sports going on. It's not their only thing, but they got the bug right now, and we are just we're rolling with it. We're rolling with it. So yeah, my seven year old won the dry chip putt last weekend. Awesome and it was so fun, you know, and then he won and then big brother, ten year old, he's like an hour later, he did really good in driving, came in third, then chipping barely missed the grid. So he's like, okay, you know, you're kind of must make all three putts or make two
out of three or something. And little brothers there he's like, hey, make make make you got this, you know, So they're cheering each other on. I mean, it's kind of a dream Shange. I like, did now be in that spot where the kiddos are, you know exact? I feel like I'm it wasn't that long ago. I was right, they're ten years old, you know, falling falling in love with this great game.
Yeah. I mean the memories of junior golf pop up a lot in our brains, right, I mean, that's when we started to fall in love with golf. That's when we started to have our first you know, feelings of competition, you know, both positively and negatively. I remember there are plenty of rides home from junior golf tournaments where I shot a million and you're so bummed out and there's really nothing mom or dad can say to help you out. There was some pictures that your wife posted of you.
They were awesome photos, by the way, like you're sitting next to your son and they're prepping for drive, chip and put. You said it, it's such a small competition compared to maybe a big golf tournament where you're playing nine holes or eighteen holes. How much coaching goes on there? Like what are you saying to your kids as they're getting set to go or is it just simply trying to get them as comfortable as possible.
Yeah, no, I did a little bit of coaching. Look out there, looking at the at the tea box and at the big tea and all the kids kind of just tea up on the right because it's close, but it's a little slopey, the grass is a little long. I'm like, okay, find a flat spot, get comfortable. I'm like working on their te height. You don't want them to pop it up, and you know, and then you know, you got to know the this is like regular stats
and analytics. Like in the driving, it's way more important and drive your put to hit the grid than to like have two go far in one go out. So really just kind of, hey, you know, they got their kind of fairway finder swing so to speak. And my kids have played enough golf to kind of know, okay, I'm gonna try to bomb this one or make sure
I hit it straight. And last year they both missed the grid early on in the driving, and so we're really working on, hey, just you know, a fairway finder type of swing, and they all both kids hit the grid every time. So I was kind of we're kind of just talking through that, you know, and then also how to handle if you do miss it. You know, like it's okay, you got a lot of shots left.
You can make it up, and chipping you can make it up, and putting so just making sure they have those recovery I guess, like recovery mechanisms like me and you you know my I was talking to somebody the other day, Shane about my PGA championship or I made the cut at Bethpage. Yeah, on number ten, hardest whole out there. Everyone knows that. And I doubled it, and I was like, Okay, this is like a little story. I told my kids, like I had that adversity right
out of the gate. You got to get your calm a lot of golf left, you know, do all that positive self talk. So that's why I was trying to kind of coach them through those recovery skills. You know.
Yeah, I'm a little I'm a little behind you in terms of my kid's age.
I mean, my son's fly.
My daughter's too slowly getting interested in golf. I will say this, though, I got a prodigy set of clubs for Henry about three months ago, and we've slowly kind of started to adapt him into his world and trying to play a little bit of golf. I think I got the hook though. I got some grips sent to me. I think Super Strokes sent kind of a media pack got a couple of weeks ago, and they were superhero themed grips. My son is obsessed right now with Spider Man.
I slapped that Spider Man grip on his He has dialed It's like, Dad, when are we going to play golf? So it's like the one little hook you need to get him to get him involved. I wanted to ask you before we dive a little deeper into Prodigy and how it can kind of help junior golfers a I wanted to ask you what's the first junior golf memory you have, because I was thinking about mine and I
think I've got mine. I was just wondering if you had a moment in junior golf when you're growing up, what age you were that you really maybe remember either competing, playing in a tournament, winning something, whatever the case may be. And when did you switch to golf? Only because you mentioned it with your kids and it's something I'm going to be dealing with as well when you go from they're playing soccer and baseball and basketball, and I'm obviously
a big proponent of that. I wanted you to play as much things as possible, But when did you flip to golf? Specifically.
Yeah, I flipped a golf specifically, Shane. I remember this. I was, I was pretty decent. I was. I'm a lefty throw lefty right. So I played first base. I pitched, and I was I wasn't like a super fan a pitcher, but I could throw like a lot of junk curve balls. Man. I even threw like a knuckleball, you know. But I had a really good pickoff move. So a lot of guys got on first, but I could pick them off. I had some good moves there, you know.
Marty, did you have that? Did you have the first pickoff move that was slow and then you went to the second one was the real one? Or okay, that's I'm a lefty pitcher too, like same thing. It's like the first one you threw was super obvious, and then your actual pickoff mood was way.
Just yes, exactly, my pickoff move was better than my pitches, you know. So but so I played baseball and I love basketball too. I just I wasn't you know, I wasn't great, and I think I was like, okay, I'm gonna I remember between eighth grade and my freshman year, I was like, I'm gonna go out for the basketball team, you know, And I went out for the tryouts, in a first practice or tryout or whatever. I got absolutely cooked, and I was like, I'm out. I'm out, Like running
suicide wasn't in good enough cardio shape. Man. That's why I was like, Okay, I'm going all in on golf. I remember that moment, Jane, did you?
Did you have a junior tournament that stood out to you, like even even before then, that you remember where either you remember the golf course or you remember cafeting, maybe you remember the score you posted, because you know these are like you and I were talking about, these junior golf moments are so big even when you get to be thirty and forty, like you remember those types of things. They mold you.
Oh man, I have. My brain is just loaded with junior golf memories. I think, you know, I think I remember playing probably my first tournament where I walked myself. You know that. Now I'm out there still caddying for my kids, and then there's right at that separation point, my ten year old could be totally out on his zone, totally fine and good enough. But I remember playing junior golf of Arizona and it was a leisure World, this little retirement community in East Mesa, and it was super hot.
It's June. We drive our, you know. I lived in a small town like two hours east of Phoenix, So my parents would wake me up at four in the morning or whatever. You'd have a six forty two tea time out at leisure World Number one. We'd leave the house at three point thirty. My parents wake me up, put me in the car at sleeping car and I remember playing leisure World. I was probably seven eight years old out there. You know. It was super hot and I was playing what I thought was decent with some
other Phoenix kids, which was kind of intimidating. I'm from the small town. And there was a woman who had a little patio home out there and she was serving lemonade and I'm like, this is not like the eighth hole, and I'm just hot, thirsty. We all go over there get like this lemonade and it was like the best refreshment ever. Out on the golf course. I think I made a par coming in and that was like my first memory of a tournament golf and I was out
there by myself. It wasn't my dad there helping me, and I think that was a big moment where I felt that kind of like independence, which was fun.
Yeah, I had a similar experience. I remember I played an event and it was again it was like one of the first times that you feel kind of adulty when you're playing junior golf. Is again to your point, as it was an eighteen old golf tournament, there was you know, again there was like some good players in
the field. I remember I shot seventy eight I think, and finished third, and so I remember they gave me like the sign where they write your names down and the scoring and they write your third next to it, put a star around it.
Yeah.
Remember I took it home and put it on the back of my door and all that stuff, and I was, it's funny. It's funny you say eighth to ninth grade, Marty. That was the same for me, is I was playing competitive baseball get into golf, started to show some promise, and I remember when I went to high school, I made the decision that I was going to stop playing baseball and focus mainly on golf. And that was kind
of my jumping off point to get into golf. And you know, you slowly start to lose other sports and maybe other hobbies and focus on golf. But we're gonna talk about junior golf. I think you and I probably both agree how important it is to be a relatively well rounded junior. You know, you don't have to be you know, focused and obsessed with golf right away. But something Ping is done that I think is super cool.
They've introduced this product g Set, which I mentioned. I've got one for Henry and I'm sure eventually we'll get one for Charlotte as well. But what I find so cool is you measure your children. I did it with Henry. Was super easy, you know. And you measure height and I think it's from arms down and link of arms and things like that age, and they build a set
like they build a set for you and me. And what is so cool about Prodigy is as they start to grow and as they get taller and they get bigger, yeap Ping allows you to send this set back once and they will rebuild it with the new sizing of your children and sit it back to you for free. So basically this is allowing people to get two sets of golf clubs for the price of one for their juniors. It's like one of the best golf programs out there.
If I had no affiliation with Ping Marty, I would still tell people about this program because I think it's that important and that's special and that cool that juniors can jump into this.
Yeah, totally, Shane, and and the motivation for this. And I was kind of in this boat and a bunch of us that are developing product. You know, we're buying other you know, sporting goods for our kids, and we're all faced with this with this dilemma, Like I got my kids a mountain bike, and it's like, oh, man, should I get them the cheap one? Totally? You know, should I give them the cheap one because they're going
to grow out of it in a year? In this in this other company had this program where hey, you can buy it. It's like a pretty night It's like the Prodigy version, you know, premium, nice, highly engineered version of of a little mountain bike. But they have this trade up program so you can send it back in or if little or if a younger brother wants it.
Theyk got this a nice little program. Same thing with for skis, right, it's kind of that same thing, like you know next season they're going to be bigger, but you don't want to you don't want to buy them too big, like you don't want to buy a bike too big. I mean, this is a safety issue and all kinds of other stuff, so you want to get them in the sweet spot. And so golf equipment is very similar. And so that's why how we came up with that Get Golf Growing program so that we don't
want the parents. There is a mistake that's very easy to make. It I don't blame them in the same boat. You know, uh to buy an invest in golf equipment that's too big for them. So it's going to last longer because they'll develop bad habits. You know, it's too long, they're going to grip down too much, too heavy, too hard to swing, things of that nature. So that's why
we developed that Get Golf Growing program. You can use it to you know, either get two sets in one and have that product last several, two or three years for one kid or a lot of siblings playing the game. You can you can you can adjust the clubs the opposite way. If you've got a twelve thirteen year old that's on the tigh end of our Prodigy and then you got younger brother, younger sister there at eight or nine, they're going to grow up. Older sibling grows out of them.
You can send them in for the Get Golf Growing program and adjust them shorter. That's no problem. That kind of fits fits the model of that program.
Marty, What is the kind of like what are the age windows for Prodigy? Like, what do you guys tell people that this program is specific for in terms of maybe that age window from start from earliest to maybe the oldest ll age out of it.
Yeah, Well, our original Prodigy, which we're just launch a new one, new Prodigy, it was about eight to twelve years old. Okay, it was like fifty two to sixty two inches in height, but I mean we had so much demand for younger kiddos getting into the game that with the new Prodigy that we're just launching, that's going from forty eight inches to sixty two, which covers most
kind of seven year olds. Now, so we were kind of eight to twelve or thirteen depending on your height, and now we're definitely in that you know, average sized seven year old, taller six year old can get in there. Although we up to a twelve or thirteen year old.
Marty, You're obsessed with like finding the answers in terms of the equipment for golfers, right, I mean that's something that you've done your entire career is trying to build golf clubs that help the average golfer, the high handicapper, but it also helps somebody like you who can shoot under part and win big golf tournaments and play major championships.
How do you dive into junior golf equipment and using your expertise and the team at PING that is so and so advanced, how does that team dive into something as simple quote unquote as junior golf equipment and use the same advances in the technology that we see in our equipment for junior golfers.
Yeah, it's really fun. It's fun to take our product development philosophy, our research, our testing horsepower, Like we all these systems developed, Like we know how to run player testing. We pump people you've met at the proving ground. Shame we got two or three stations pumping all day long road player testing, and so it's fun to throw that horsepower and expertise at junior product So we'll bring in. There's some great junior programs around the valley, and we'll
get all the kids in there. We'll schedule them, they come in, parents bring them in, and we run them through player testing in exactly the same tools they're hitting on track Man. We're doing gapping analysis, we're doing a B testing. We're doing qualitative questions, how's the weight and balance of this feel, We're measuring their stat areas. We're
looking at launch conditions. We're running through our optimal launch and spin tools that we have for the mainline product and looking at stat areas and things of that nature. We're doing advanced modeling to try to get the headweight and the momentum figured out and all that stuff. So it's super fun to be able to throw all that horsepower at the junior product. And that's how we end up with things like you know, the driver loft being
fifteen degrees right. This is from plugging it into our optimal launch and spin knowing that his speeds are down.
Launch is more important than spin and things of that nature, and being able to dial all those characteristics in of the club and then also using what's really fun about the project products is we're using these same design designers, design engineers in manufacturing tools and capabilities like the driver is centrifically cast, thin wall machine, variable thickness, space, turbulators, counterbalance shaft. I mean, all those that all the same
philosophies and design techniques. We're leaning into all that and leveraging it for our Prodigy product and being delivered it to the juniors. And when we do competitive testing with the Prodigy versus some of the other junior stuff on the market. I mean, it's just absolutely incredible. The performance games we see.
What is something that has surprised you from the testing with junior golfers, Like something you thought you know going into it, you thought you knew maybe about how junior golfers swing or what they do things like that. What is something that maybe was completely different than where your mind would have sat before you guys got into the testing.
I think the easy thing to do, and we find this a little bit of a Lady's product a little bit as well, Shane, is that it's not always it's not always best to go continue to go lighter and lighter. There's a sweet spot. It sounds easy like hey, you know, yes, if you cut down, you know, dad's old eight iron
and go hit it's gonna be too heavy. But you can also make a mistake go on too light, and if you go too light on the headweight or the club weight, the kiddos will have a hard time, like finding the bottom of their swing or their low point. Is kind of the from a technical standpoint, but you know, what you see with the kids is they'll fin it, they'll top it. Now have a hard time getting that connection with their with their brain of figuring out where
the bottom of the swing is. So that's the big thing is that you know, we've done some stuff, you know, looking at some numbers on paper and saying, hey, we should go lighter and lighter in the headway for reasons X, y and z, to get more ball speed, more launched, what have you. But then we go out and have the kids hit it and have a hard time finding the ground, finding the bottom. So there's a sweet spot
there on headway. I think that's probably one of the biggest things, is how important it is to hit that sweet spot, not too heavy, not too light.
What fitting advice do you have for parents that are either thinking about, you know, getting their kids clubs or they're thinking about, you know, investing into Prodigy. What do you tell parents about fitting for their kids for their juniors, even if they're maybe five or six years old, they're kind of just outside that window that Prodigy is offering.
Yeah, I think it's you know, you want to kind of lean on just you can lean on just static information about your kid, you know, like how tall they are, what their height is, what the risk of Florida Shane. I would love to take you through at this point that fitting advice. Well, I think the overall fitting advice is use our new fitting app, Junior Webfit, Junior Webfit Junior Webfit, because it will guide you through how to think about, you know, what are the important things for
your kiddo? Right? Should we should we jump in and do it? Yeah, let's do it live demo.
Yeah, this is my favorite Marty stuff.
You go.
By the way, if you're if you're listening to this on your phone or at the gym or driving, you can also watch these episodes on the Ping YouTube page, which is beneficial for things like this because you'll be able to see this. So check all of the episodes out on our YouTube page. That's all under the Ping umbrella. There Marty's getting it dialed up right now.
Yeah, So Shane, we built webfit Wedge, you know, when we launched the S one fifty nine wedges in a kind of make you know again, that same philosophy as let's make the complex simple, which is you have all these grinds, you have all these loss we we built
in gapping information. And so when it came time to think about, hey, how can we help both are both parents and our fitters build a tool that makes fitting and guiding somebody through Prodigy and how to fit it easy, We're like, okay, we got to design that for the kiddos, right, Because one of the fun things about Prodigy is that it's kind of an all a cart set. You can start with less clubs, you can add clubs as you go, you can start with the driver. We're not a box set.
But because we're not a box set, I think some parents are fitters are like, oh, it's too open ended, right, So what you know? I got too many options here. So we designed junior webfits so it's junior dop webfit dot ping dot com to kind of help some help a parent and we're a fitter through how to configure the bag and Shane, we have some really fun stuff built in here. So my advice would be use junior webit. Let's jump in.
Here, by the way, Marty. On the first page before you get going, it says it takes less than two minutes to receive recommendations. So if you're thinking I got to spend half an hour doing this literally, on the front page it says it takes less than two minutes to get this dial.
Yes, super easy, super easy. So you dive in, you get started, and the first question is tell us about your junior skill level, right, and what this is. You know, we got kind of a beginner, intermediate or expert that plays often. What this is gonna do Shane, and in the algorithms is because there's a lot of parents out there, like I don't know if my kid's gonna like golf or no or not, I'm gonna send them to junior
camp this summer. I just wanted to get started. So if you click beginner right, we're going to give the kiddo less clubs in the bag, okay, because it reduces the investment. You know, it takes a de risk it for the parents a little bit. They don't need as many clubs, right, if they're not hitting it as far, not playing as much golf, playing as much turnm golf.
If you put expert in there, my kiddo's playing all the junior stuff and PGA Junior League, et cetera, we're gonna we're gonna put more clubs in the back basically, right. So you know, I'll kind of answer this for my kiddos. I would call him intermediate. You know, this summer they're kind of playing a little bit more often. But I put intermedia there, and then you put in how old is your junior? Okay, so we're going to do something really fun with this, which i'll show at the end.
So I'll do this for my ten year old ten year old? How tall? And he? I measured him this morning to get his numbers. Here, let me see you he's exactly four to nine. So we default this to the average for the age that you put in. Okay, make it kind of easy. So he's four foot nine fifty seven inches. Then it says calculating the average risk to floor. So what we do here, Shane is let's say grandparents shopping for the grandkids for Christmas? Right, forgive
him some prodigy. We default this to the average risk of floor for that height. Okay, right, so yes, it helps if you measure it, but it's not super mission critical to get really good spec information. My kiddo was twenty six and a half, so kind of longer arms, right, So this will impact the li angle of his clubs. They're gonna be a little bit flatter. He's got longer arms, twenty six and a half. So I'm gonna put that in there if you need help with how to measure it.
We got a little helper text along the way. You know, wear shoes, not super tall shoes, but wear shoes, wear exactly to measure this information on the wrist of floor.
I like to you idiot proof these things because these are questions that I would ask being, you know, a general idiot, and so it's nice that you do all that stuff to tell people like me out. I'm like, where do you start at the wrist? It actually shows you where to start the measurement on.
The wrist exactly. And so we even put in here, Hey, ping estimates the risk of floor to be twenty eight if if that's kind of average for that height, right,
then you click continue. So this is super fun. So based on a ten year old, the average ten year old swing speed, you know, with good launch conditions and average kind of a fairway firmness, will hit their driver about one hundred and sixty five yards total carry plus roll right, So it defaults to that, So we estimate the driving distance is one sixty five right now, my kiddo, because I have a little radar and I like having my kids swing out a little radar at the range,
which is super fun. I would highly advise that if you want to kind of gamify and get your kiddo focus in on swing speed a little bit. He swings his driver at seventy two miles an hour, so about five miles an hour faster than the average, right, So you can go in there and do that. So it's like minion, he's working on it. He's working on it. It is an advantage. So if you have your kiddo
go on a launch monitor. So if you're a fitter and you want to use this in a bay fitting bay, just have them go in there and swing the driver. You don't even need to have them get perfect launch conditions or maybe even focus over focused on smash factor. Maybe then that might be missing around the face a
little bit. This just gives you their potential because the big thing we want to do with the junior club chain is tell the kiddo and the parents, like, what is their potential as they improve their skill the quality of their ball striking. Right, so we put in seventy two miles an hour. Again, you can default it to what the average is. Then you go in here and you haven't picked their putter. My seven year old and ten year old they're very different. My ten year old's kind of conservative.
What's an answer?
Yep, yep. He's like, oh, I show him this page. He's like, oh, yeah, answer for sure. My seven year old he's a little rebellious, you know, and trying to you know, put a stake in the ground. He's like he looks at the time. He's like, oh, that one for sure, that one looks cool. Yeah. So that is fun. With the new Prodigy, we have two different putter offerings. This is new for us, awesome because previously we had
the boss putter. Now we got a classic answer three hundred and twenty gram had or you got the time you know better aiming in alignment and ball captured capabilities, you can pick up the ball with it a little bit easier, and things of that nature, a little more modern and contemporary. The headweight slightly heavier at three forty, so it's fun to have now with the new progy, two different options. So my ten year old he hey,
he wants to go with the answer. And then we also new to the Prodigy this year, Shane, we have two different bag colorway all awesome, awesome yep. So we got a kind of more traditional black and then the white green white combination over there. And when I show this to my kiddos, they're like, I love the green and white, So we picked that one. And then you know,
here we're finalizing the Junior's golf back. So what we're doing with this is where we got a bunch of algorithms in the background that are looking at all these things in the text that the top heire. Shane says, because you're junior is intermediate ten years old, driving distance one eighty, we recommend a set with nine clubs. As they get started, you can always add more as they grow. Okay, right, again,
we built the logic in this experience. Took a couple minutes to go through as if you're getting fit by our fitters, our engineers at the Pink proven Grounds. This tool is now available to all the parents and all of our fitters out there. So it shows the entire bag. It shows the driver, the Fairrywood. You can look at all the specs. You can go over here, click this button chain which says ready to order, and we give
you all the specs, the lanths relative to standard, the lingle. Again, my kid who has a little bit longer arms, so is color code is one degree flat red color code? Right? Yeah?
So, and Marty just like to look at the clubs that you're mentioning. It was nine golf clubs. It's driver Fairlyywood Hybrid. There's an iron in there? Is there multiple irons in there.
It looks like we got six seven eight pitching wedge.
Yep, and then a wedge of potter yep, and then the bag.
I mean it's as awesome yep. So get you all that information. So hey, if you want to stop there, you're going to be like boom, that's perfect. Okay, Now check this out, Shane, we go down here. What we're scrolling down to is my kiddo's gapping report. So again, let's say we put in intermedia, but you're like, A, I don't know if my kiddo needs nine clubs, right, we recommend nine by default, but you're like, they might not play that much. I kind of want to just
get them started a little lighter. You can go in and hit this. What we're looking at here for those folks listening is this little toggle and I'm moving. I'm moving this little slider from nine clubs down to seven. And we tell you the parent that the average gap is going to change to twenty three yards. So if you pump this up, their average gap is going to get tighter. Or if you want to go all in and get all eleven clubs, their average gap is going
to be fourteen yards. So we provide this optionality. And Shane, if we put at the beginning of the junior webfit that the golfer was more of a beginning golfer, we would default that to seven clubs. Okay, okay, right, So that's kind of what's happening in the logic there. And then Hey, Shane, I gotta tell you I've been to a lot of junior tournaments the last couple of years. Nobody knows how far they hit the golf. Okay, the kids don't know, the parents don't know. They're out there.
They're like, I don't know what club to hit. You know, I don't know if I'm gonna hit it good or not. You know, they're not on a launch monitor. So check this out. We built this junior yardage report based on how far you know, if you don't even need to know the swing speed, you just say the age and you'll go in here and it gives you a gapping report for both carrie and total, because that's super important. Hey can I carry that water? Can I carry that bunker?
Can I do whatever? Total? In an average rollout of all the different clubs. There's a lot of assumptions in here because the kiddos don't always hit it perfect. So hey, this is if you hit it relatively solid. This is your potential that you can hit all these clubs. It gets even better. Shame. We're gonna click this button here says download your gapping report. And what's happening is now it's generating a PDF. Look at that you get to
print out. You can change the size of this thing, laminate it, put it on your golf bag when you go play junior tournaments.
I gotta find I gotta find my laminated Cherry Hills card.
I got it right here.
I think this is going to be just like the Prodigy deal. I got my guy right for the diameter last year. That is so cool. Do you even personalize it? At the top it says Prodigy Blank's yardage Books. You could throw the kids name in there and then you could put it in their yardage book, your yardage book. That is awesome. That is that is great. I mean we're pushing people in theory to buy a Prodigy set
for their kids. They could have this yardage book sheet and not even buy the clubs in theory, right, I mean, this could be just a bonus.
Yep, that is really a bonus. And we put on there. Hey, as your kids grow, they'll hit it further, because I'm noticing those with my kids. We have these curves that show how much swing speed the kiddos develop over time, and as they grow. You scan the QR code on there, go back through it, make yourself a new sheet. We put the date on there because that's super important to make sure. So we wanted to build this tool, Shane.
This took like two minutes to go through. If you're kind of answering these questions to kind of make it easy, get your custom built set, customize the lengths, the lie goals, everything, all the magic happens with the club weights and things of that nature, but also help you make it fun and solve this problem that a lot of the parents and kids have. How far should I be hitting my clubs? Right?
That's really the question at hand here, And then if you go play a little junior tournament, you can bring this little yarded sheet with you and have some fun. I you know, it's just like, you know, this kind of started with my wife and I driving to a junior tournament and she's cattying from seven year old and she's like, how far does he hit all those clubs? And I'm like, uh, I don't know.
We got to figure something out.
So hey, we built an app for that. You know.
That is so cool, Marty. And one thing I do think with golf equipment in general is there are and Ping does an amazing job with the websites and all the tools and the web tools and apps and things like that. But you can order this directly through this app, right, I mean you can go through the process. There's a button that says ready to order, and boom you can get it ordered and all that after the two minutes you spent building this is that correct?
Yeah, with our Prodigy product, absolutely you can. We'll have a place on our website where you can take these specs and enter them and place the order with us right there on the website. Now being said, I mean our accounts do a wonderful job. Now demo equipment or the Prodigy, certainly we highly encourage that. I think the junior product is kind of in that space where you can really lean on kids just a tight risk of
floor to dial in the specs. Is they get a little more speed, generate more spin, then it gets more important to get them on a launch monitor, start looking at their launching spin. You know, maybe if they're in that you know, very fast thirteen year old you know fast twelve year old range, then you can maybe look at some of other mainline products, especially in the woods, to kind of start dialing in launch conditions, launching spin and things of that nature. But certainly, just leaning on
this app this information could get you started. Shane. One other thing you can do here is send an email, you know, Like again, let's say, yeah, grandparents want to want to buy buy the kiddo's clubs for Christmas. They want the parents to go through here. They can forward
this to the grandparents, right, you can. You can forward it to your golf pro at your course, right or your kiddo's junior teacher who's runding their junior camp things of that nature, email it to them, and that yardage report goes to them as well.
I mean, it's just it's it's so cool because I mean, I think we've talked a lot about like making all of this simpler and making it easier to understand in general, and we're talking mostly on this podcast about equipment for you and me, Marty, and then equipment for my dad or for my buddy Andrew. Right, Like that's the equipment conversations.
We're having to see this much time and investment put into junior golf and into helping junior golfers a find something that works for them and be I mean, this is cool, right, Like you could sit on a computer with your kid and go through this, and I guarantee you kids are gonna be interested by it, right, They're gonna love the fact that they get to plug in their own information and have something built specifically for them, and then see the card on the back end that
tells them how far they should hit certain golf clubs. Like this gets them more interested in the game, you know. I mean, if they're already in love with the game, that's great, but there are opportunities here with how this is structured that you could get kids more interested in the game simply by the three or four minutes it takes to get them set up with Prodigy.
Yeah, totally. My kiddos love going through it.
You know.
Obviously as we're working on the prototype, i'd show it to them and things that nature. I mean, they love how choices, They love that it's not a box set. I can't stress that only you got choices. And that's new to this year's Prodigy. Our new Prodigy product is having the two different putter options, They're having the two different bag options, being able to see, hey, do I have a gapping issue or not? Do I need more clubs or not? And making that dynamic kind of back
and forth super duper fun. Yeah, you know, I'm bringing a little technology. The kids are on the computer a little more they're they're I mean, they'll whizz through this faster than the parent.
Let me tell you, my children or not aven other reason to be on the computer. But if this is the reason, I would be okay with that. We're in that world right now with both kids, I think where they're like, oh, Dad's computers a toy, or like no, this is a no touch situation. But that is awesome and this is so cool. I'm excited to jump into this with Henry in about a year and a half or so, when he gets a little bit bigger and
a little bit more interested. But like I said that Spider Man Gripman, I think it's gonna it's gonna do wonders for the golfing space.
Yeah. Yeah, And Shane, I think so. Just talking a little bit about the new Prodigy designs, I think some of the one of the funnest things that my kiddos have been using is a prototype. But now it's finally out there, live and available to everybody. Is we took our S one fifty nine half moon grind. In the original Prodigy, we went fifty two and fifty six as
the two wedges. A little bit of a philosophical challenge like do you give the kiddo a fifty eight or sixty you kind of do they get better developing their skills of the fifty six. A lot of debate around this, hours of debate should you make a fifty eight or sixty available to the kiddo. So we feel like we hit the perfect spot where with the wedges we went, we went pitching. The pitching wedge has a lot more loft on it this year has I think three degrees
more loft on it. We kind of regapped the old irons so they go a little bit higher, made the six iron a little easier to hit things of that nature. So we go pitching wedge. Then we go fifty four in the fifty four and the fifty look like players wedges. They're like exactly our s one fifty nine shaping my favorites. The fifty eighth degree it has the h grind, our
half moon grind, bake grind into it. This thing is incredible, like my kiddo's going around the chipping green now being able to open the face, get all the benefits of
that half moon grind. Like it looks phenomenal, like so inspiring for shot making and It's truly been highly beneficial for them because they love spending time, especially my seven year old, around the chipping green, manipulating the face, hit some blow, hit some high open the face, lay the handleback in that h grind is the ultimate grind, super popular on the PGA Tour with our tour players. Now
it's available to the kiddos. That's one of the most exciting design improvements I'm excited about with the new produce set.
I mean, is there anything better than being a kid and just sitting on the chip and green and hitting a million different chip shots like that was easily the best part about being a kid. Like competing, Yes, playing roop ears things like that is awesome, but chipping when you were a kid and you had nothing else to do for three hours but to hit one hundred different bunker shots and to see how this one performed, that
is the most fun. So allowing them offering them an option where they could take one club to the chipp and green in theory and hit fifty different golf shots is a really small improvement.
Yeah, so the way I mean it's that fifty eight degree looks awesome, Like just it's inspiring to see that age grind, you know, half moon grind. Yeah, having a lot of fun around the chipping green. So yeah, I think I talked about, you know, regapping the whole set. So we kind of made seven iron and up a little bit more relaxed loft, make the gapping a little bit better, six irons slightly stronger, and then we go to a hybrid. The hybrid super fun has twenty eight
degrees a loft. Okay, so this is not like a nineteen degree hybrid. You know, this thing gets up in the are super easy. The Fairywood has twenty two degrees a loft on it. I talked about the driver having fifteen, and then Shane, we talked about bringing in like you know, our mad You're engineering horsepower into our products. The driver has spinsistency face design built into it. Okay, so it has a variable Bolden roll shaped to it, and again
all optimized for the kiddo's swing speeds. How much the gear effect is going to impact the spin axis when they mishit it, things of that nature in it showed in our product testing we had tighter SAT area than its predecessor product, more consistent spin regardless where they hit across the face. We tuned in the weight and balance
across the entire set to improve it. We made the driver slightly lighter, not by much, slightly lighter to kind of optimize the headweight in the momentum and help the squaring. And then we have the CTP weights and all the irons which helps dial in the weight and balance and helps us with that give Golf Growing program. If you send them in and get the reweighted, we have the
ability to reweight the headweights. So a lot of fun stuff happening on the technology side, obviously super fun and excited about Webfit Junior and the fitting side of it.
Morty, is there like a ping way. Now you have ping Man that you can use to fit for certain equipment. Do you guys have to like build a ping boy to to have ping Boy roll out and mess around with Prodigy?
We can ramp the ping Man down, you know. One of the funniest things becomes ping boy. That's right, King Man becomes ping boy, you know what I mean. And one of the funnest things about ping Man is we'll have it hit a chip shot that flies like five yards, okay, And in order to do it, because the servo motors
and things of that nature. It still takes the john daily like all the way back and then it comes down and then decelerates the club coming into the impact, So super long swing goes down, slows down, then joint kids a chip like five yards out into the rocks.
It's really funny, like perfect that was still we're hoping to well, this is exciting. I have one last question for you, Marty, and this is kind of post Prodigy. So when you talk to kids, you see junior golfers and they're really into the game and they go through the Prodigy program and they kind of age out. What equipment do they typically move into next once they go from Prodigy to maybe you know, a fuller set of clubs or fourteen clubs?
Is it?
Is it all over the place or do you see them gravitate toward one set of irons or one set of clubs that make the most sense.
I think in general. So if it's a pretty avid golfer like our I two thirty series is like what I was gonna That's what I's I figured perfect transition head size. We have some great shaft offerings in there. We can we have a lot of loft in live flexibility with a with a waiting system we have built in there, we can we can hit the headway targets
just perfectly. The head size is just the perfect sweet spot where you still can you get that mix of ample mount of forgiveness, but you can still shape the golf ball. So I two thirty set for the avid junior players. Perfect.
All right, one more time before we go. The website for Webfit Junior is.
Junior dot web Fit, dot ping dot com, nice and fiting dot com. You can navigate there on our website just clicking on Prodigy and Junior Fitting too, and.
We'll throw that link in the show notes as well if you need that. But I mean, it's a great program. Like I said, I have it for my son already, I'm going to do it for my daughter. I mean, Marty's obviously be extremely invested in this and making it easier for parents. And I think the cool thing, and Marty mentioned it a couple of times, is the simplicity
of this and we ran through it. Obviously going through point by point you could do it a couple of minutes, but the simplicity of it, even if you don't know all the information, you know, simply the age of the kid, maybe the height of the kid. You ask the parents. This is a very easy thing for somebody that wants to buy golf clubs for a kid in their lives. Doesn't have to be their own children, if it's your
grandkids or a niece, a nephew, things like that. This is an easy program to make it easier on you and the parents to get it exactly specified for the children. And I think that's what's so special about kind of you know, seeing the two point zero version of this is it's going to make it just simply easier to do it. I mean, all we want to do is buy stuff online, right, So if we can make it, you know, cut down on ten minutes of somebody's time, that's what we're trying to do.
I mean, really, Shane, if you think about, all you need is the age and the height of the kiddo, right, and where are they beginning or expert or intermediate? Like are they just barely get into the game or they play a lot? Those are really the only three questions you need. You can get more advance if you want to, but you don't have to, like, you know, just make it that simple. And again, it's fun to be able to pass our our gapping tools. You know, some of
them are kind of reserved for our fitters. Yeah, and so you got to go in and see a fitter to get access to him. This one is available to all the kiddos and parents house.
It's like super consumer based, and that's what's so important about it. Marty. That is awesome. Congrats by the way, on all the on all the kid golf success. I know that's so fun for you as a as a dad. In between, you know, you take it home trophy after trophy after trophy always. I can only imagine, like you said, the nerves of watching, Oh.
Yeah, Shane, Shane, watching the kiddos the highs and there's so many highs and lows with the kids like you experienced it and play bad. I mean I remember shedding some tears after. Oh for sure, you can be embarrassed. You have these expectations. You know. The thing with the kids golf is it's way more variable. Like me and you, I'm gonna shoot between sixty eight and seventy two or three most of the time, right, I got a tight standard deviation. But the kiddos man I mean, you know,
they're shooting low scores. My kids can shoot in the high thirties to the fifties, like it's every day. It's like you don't know what's coming out of there.
What roller coaster we get in today.
As the drive home, it's really good for life skills, you know. It's just a metaphor for life.
Marty, do you do the parenting thing where after the round, you guys drive home and just talk about the entire round on the drive home. It's like one of my.
Favorite kids are getting more into that. I kind of lean on my kiddos to see what their mood is, and they're getting in that mode chain that's just like just like the guys, you're like, tell them the stories happened. I wouldn't have done that, you know. I finish this.
When my dad and I would do that. I remember specifically, I was playing an event in Waco, Texas. It was this junior tournament back in my day called the Starburst, and it was a big junior event in Texas and I played well the final round. My dad was caddying. It was super hot. I think I shot a couple under and moved well up the leader board. It was about a four hour drive home. Three and a half hour drive home, and I think my dad and I talked around the entire drive home.
We got home.
My mom was like, I can't believe you idiots can do that. I can't believe that you people could talk about a golf round for four hours after you've just been four hours doing And I was like, that's the best part of golf is the conversation. But this is super cool. Make sure you check it out. Prodigy line is gonna be awesome. Obviously, the new line more expansive and more options for so many junior golfers. So check that out and get your kids fit. We'll be back
next week with another episode. This is the Pink Proven Grounds Podcast