January 18, 2024 • 36 mins
Shane and Marty discuss the recent addition of Blueprint S and Blueprint T to PING’s iron landscape. They chat about blended iron sets, the latest update to the gapping app within PING Co-Pilot, the early success of Blueprint S on Tour, and what’s currently in Marty’s bag.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The guys from Ping.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
They've kind of shown me how much the equipment matters.
I just love that I can hit any shot.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Welcome back to the Ping proven Grounds podcast. I'm Shape Bacon,
joined as always by Marty Jerts and Marty. I remember
the days when Ping had a couple of offerings irons
and that was kind of it. That is not the
case anymore, and with these new lines coming out, the
options are relatively endless for the golfers. So I wanted
(00:31):
to dive into all the new irons that Ping is
offered in twenty twenty four and maybe give people at
least a directional idea of where they might go. So
are you up for it?
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah? That sounds good, Shane. I mean that was my
first kind of familiarity with the brand. Is the I too.
It didn't matter who you were, you're playing the two
iron back in the day. But we got a lot
more options now, we could get a lot more nuanced
in how we design these things.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
It's not just options, Marty, I think what is so
cool and we've seen this happen over the last couple
decades in golf. But I feel like Ping is almost
pushing golfers to consider mixing up their golf bag. It's
something I do in my own bag. I mix up irons.
I have I two thirty four iron and then I've
got blueprint s throughout the bag to that point, I mean, there,
(01:20):
it feels like that's not just an option now, but
it feels like it's it's almost an avenue for players
as well.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah, so we can we can do mixed sets within
your irons and then also even open the door for
playing like a four hybrid or a five hybrid or
high lofted fairway. Would I mean, we've built some amazing
tools for our fitters out there within ping co pilot
our gapping app to help answer those questions, because it
does it can be overwhelming for the golfer, like, Okay,
(01:51):
should I play a you know, a hybrid? Should I
play high lofted fairwood? Which one should I piece together?
How far are they going to go? You know, we've
seen golfers get a you know, a five wood and
then a three hybrid and then going too similar in distance.
So we want to build the tools to help optimize
and dial in your gapping. But doing blended iron set
(02:12):
Shane is a big part of that equation. And when
it comes to our iron family in twenty twenty four,
we have built our players irons, so our players iron
Shane our irons where basically one way to think about
it is the player themselves is bringing the speed to
the table. Right. We got our other irons, like our
G four thirty iron, where we're going to supplement some
(02:35):
of the distance, like the face is going to flex
a little bit more, We're gonna infuse some ball speed
into it and supplement the player speed. But with the
I two thirty and then the blueprints in the blueprint
t that's where the players bring in the speed to
the table and those are all built to be able
to configure in any number of different ways from a
(02:57):
blended set or mix set perspective.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
So, Marty, when you hear the term blueprint, I'm sure
a lot of people's mind immediately goes to that small
blade that Tony Fenow has played for years. That's not
the case in terms of what the new lines look like.
So could you just kind of run through the new lines,
what they look like, how they play, and maybe the
differences between the new families.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, I think golfers are gonna think Blueprint. They're gonna
think the small blade iron, the Tony Fenw iron, the
Preston Summer Hayes iron that's played on the PGA Tour.
We basically bifurcated that iron into two irons, so now
it's gonna be a two iron family. We have the
Blueprint T that's gonna be very similar. It's gonna be
(03:42):
like the ultra pure muscle back, small blade, length, thin sole,
the optimal for workability and extracting the golf blow the rough.
It's gonna generate different performance in different conditions, different turf
interaction with the T and the way I kind of
think about the branding of it is the T stands
(04:04):
for Tour. That's our tour inspired iron. Then we have
the blueprint S, which is this iron is gonna be
most similar to our I fifty nine iron, And we
chose S because it's a lot of the inspiration in
terms of the turf interaction we're going to talk about
today came from the S fifty five iron. We had
(04:28):
a lot of tour players who love that S fifty
five iron, and a big part of it was the
turf interaction in the Soul design. And so now we
have the Blueprint as bifurcated into two irons, the T
for tour, the S which is kind of inspired by
our S series iron S fifty nine and S fifty
five family Historically.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Marty, are you seeing a lot of tour players that
are marrying those two together to make up their iron
set up? I mean it feels like it would only
make sense to have you know, you have a player
that has the S in the four, five, and six
perhaps and then maybe seven eight nine is the T
Are you seeing that so far?
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah? I think a good example and he actually got
a couple wins on the DP World to or the
end of twenty twenty three was Louis Eustasen. He's he
was like we worked with him a lot on our
blade style irons over the years. Louis obviously a pure
ball striker, you know, has played the blue the original
blueprints over the years. He's playing the Blueprint as in
(05:29):
the four and five iron, then he switches to the
Blueprint T in the sixth through pitching Wench I think
that is the perfect example and what you're gonna get
if you play the blueprint ass in some longer irons,
you're gonna get a little more ball speed and a
little more launch and spin, and ultimately you're gonna be
(05:49):
able to hit the ball a little bit higher, and
with the blueprint s a little larger blade length and
more forgiveness, just a little more protection, a little more forgiveness. Obviously,
even even a player like Louis might not hit those
long irons perfectly every single time, so you're gonna get
that benefit. But then every golfer is going to be
(06:11):
a little bit different maybe where they pick that transition
point if you are going to do a blended set
into the blueprint tee in terms of impact, centerness, turf
interaction is a really big deal and being able to
flight the ball a little bit lower. So I think
Louis is like the perfect example in terms of being
able to elevate a few of those long irons that
he needs a little bit of that assistance with and
(06:32):
then transitioning into those those ultimate scoring clubs where he
wants to fly them a little bit lower. Anytime you
make the blade length a little bit shorter, You're also
going to be able to work the ball a little
bit easier. You're going to be able to kind of
like having a you know, a sports car. You're gonna
be able to you turn the wheel and it's responding immediately.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
That's a really good analogy when it comes to, you know,
smaller blade length irons and the benefit you get as
a player.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
What about gaping when you start to mix sets, because
you know, you go, like even somebody like Louie Righty
goes from blueprint S five iron into a Blueprint T
six iron. How do you make up in terms of
gapping to make sure there isn't a gap in a
set of for somebody's skill level of luiustes And I
mean obviously he wants to know the exact number he's hitting.
He doesn't want to have a ten or fifteen yard
(07:22):
gap between irons, right.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yeah, totally. I think we made a very concerted effort
to design the loft. Standard lofts on our I two
thirty blueprint S Blueprint T are exactly the same. Okay,
And remember these irons don't the face doesn't really deflect
a lot the players bringing the speed, So the loft
is the primary factor. Then because of that, that's going
(07:47):
to drive the gapping. But there is also a way
to think about gapping. It's not only distance gapping. You're
also gapping the height right the peak height in the
landing angle. So we've actually launching with this iron. In
pin Co Pilot, our ultimate one stop shop fitting software,
we have our gaping app, which is my favorite app.
In there, we now have the ability to do a
(08:09):
virtual what if experiment to say, hey, what if I
played I two thirty four iron instead of blueprint ass
how much higher will that go? It also does specific
to the golfer's launch conditions, tell you will it increase
their carry yardage, their impact on their rollout. But you
can really now make without having to go hit all
(08:30):
those irons. That's the power of Copilot. The power of
the Gaping app is you can go in there, get
your seven iron fitting numbers, so hit our AFS Fitting Club,
put it into the gaping app, and now you can
do trade off experiments because we know how all these
different models are going to perform. With our robot testing,
player testing, tour player testing is you can do that
(08:53):
virtual gapping analysis and you can say what if I
played I two thirty four and five iron then went
to Blueprints. Or you can do this same thing between
Blueprints and Blueprint T. You can say, what if I
played the Blueprint S four, five six iron then switch
to the T What'll that do to my carry and
peak height and be able to play around with that
(09:15):
without having to go hit all those clubs or do
a lot of trial and air experimentation. Shane, I am
so excited about this feature. It's the first time we've
been able to do blended sets within the Gapping app.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
And you mentioned turf interaction being a huge part of
kind of the options for the player out there. Can
you dive a little bit more into maybe the turf
interaction between the blueprints.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yeah, definitely, I think to talk about turf interaction blueprint s.
We had a few of our tour players that absolutely
love the S fifty five and the big part when
we were diving into it was just how it went
through the turf. I mean, Bubba was a heavy user
of the S fifty five over the years. Handful of
other players, some non staff players that have now switched
(09:58):
into the blue Print ass we're using fifty five for
a very long period of time.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Marty, what are tour players looking for in terms of
turf interaction? What is you know, what's the note that
hits the year for them?
Speaker 1 (10:12):
It's I think to me, Shane, it's a very mysterious
thing to think about. It almost feels like an artistic thing.
But we when we get to the science of it,
the science of the art, it's all about the timing.
It's the timing of the turf interaction and creating the
right pressure. Which pressure is spreading the force over a
(10:32):
certain area right, So it's getting the right pressure in
the right timing. For when for a player with a
certain delivery characteristic when they hit the golf ball, the
ball launches upward and you get a downward force applied
on the club. Right equal and opposite force applied to
the club. That's what creates the dibot. So a player
(10:54):
like Bubba Watson, he we all know he takes huge
dibots and he manipulates the face a lot, so he's
got a very open face to path on some shots.
He's got a very close face to path on others.
He has very high speed. He tends to have a
downward angle attack with that as well, so he takes
very big dibots, So a player like him can be
(11:14):
very hyper sensitive to the timing of that turf interaction
in the impact of that timing on the expected result.
In the expected result is the size and shape of
the divot, how that's going to give them feedback acoustically
to their ear and if the timing that is not right,
(11:34):
it can definitely influence the ball flight with their expected
trajectory as well. And so we're looking at things how
do we influence all that in the design chain would
be we can influence the heel toe camber, how flat
this curvature is from the heel to toe. We can
influence the kind of initial bounce, the lead edge bounce,
(11:56):
the bounce height, and then the surf the camber or
the curve mature from front to back, and then how
wide the soul is. So all of those factors kind
of go into us creating the right timing that's gonna
I think the player they want to get a certain
reaction to their shot that matches what they expect. And
(12:17):
when we can marry those two things together, which we've
done on the blueprint, ass the player is just infused
with a lot of confidence.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
So if you have players that come to you and
they go, we love turf interaction with the S fifty fives,
how do you take technology from I mean, what is
that a five six seven year old iron? Is that
probably how old those those irons are? How do you
go back to that level of technology and infuse that
into a new iron with updated technology? How do you
(12:45):
find that kind of perfect marriage because it seems like
it'd be extremely complicated to grab something from twenty fourteen
and put it into something that's out there in twenty
twenty four Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
I think in this case, we just needed to test.
We just needed to test it and prototype it, and
I cannot think of an iron in my twenty years
at Ping that We spent more time doing very detailed
nuance testing with our tour players with both the Blueprint
ASS and the Blueprint t Now, the Blueprint TEA is
(13:16):
a little more of an evolution on the original blueprint,
so we spend a little less time with the tour
players on that one, But we really hunkered down with
the Blueprint ASS and prototyped it and went out and
tested it with our players in a variety of different lies,
turf conditions and The big part of these Irons, Shane
(13:37):
is shot making. And when we look at the players
that are playing the Blueprint ass they are pure shot makers.
They like to carve it against the wind. I mean,
we look at Louis, he loves carving a little draw
and carving a little fade and he hits little baby shots.
I mean, we look at Bubba as another example of
somebody who curves the ball a lot. We talked to Sahith,
(13:58):
he is a shot maker. He loves manipulating the golf
ball and hitting a number of different shots. He won
with these irons on tour immediately, which was really really
fun to watch. And I think that's a testament in
the case of marrying the sole design of the AS
fifty five into the technology of the blueprint s, which
we can talk about was doing a lot of product
(14:19):
testing with the tour players because they are so nuanced
in their feedback.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
When you introduce a new club and you bring it
to tour players, is the level of success in an
engineer's mind, how quickly it goes into the bag. Because
you know, tour players are finicky, right, I mean great players.
It feels like it takes a lot of time to
maybe get something new in the bag. But on the
other end of that, if they see something they love,
(14:43):
they might throw it in right away. So when you
bring a new iron blueprint s out on tour and
you show it to Baba or Tyrrel Hatton or Thigala
and they fall in love with it right away, I mean,
what does that do to somebody like you, who's obviously
kind of awaiting what they have to say about it.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Yeah, it's kind of It's almost like us in engineers.
We sometimes take bets and how good, how viral we
think a product's going to do on tour. I personally
was so bullish about the blueprint ass interest before we
launched it, and it was awesome to see at the
end of twenty twenty three how many players won with it.
(15:21):
I mean we had non staff players playing it, winning
with it immediately putting into play right after some the
Ryder Cup, for example, we had sawhith win with it.
We had Walkee Nieman win with it. Down in Australia,
we had Louis win with it two weeks in a
row there doing the split set designs. We had Harrison
(15:43):
Endicott dominated Q School with the blueprint ass So it's
been amazing to see how viral this iron has gone,
and it just has a buzz amongst it on the
professional tours, which is really fun to see. So I
was bullish on it, but at the same time, you know,
once it gets out there in the wild, you kind
of you never know what exactly is going to happen.
(16:06):
And I'm excited finally in early twenty four here that
we're going to get this iron finally into our customer's hands,
because this has been one of those one of those
products that we were very we can't wait to get
it into our customer's hands. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
I had a couple of buddies of mine I was
playing golf with a couple of weeks ago, and they
hadn't seen the s yet, and they pulled it out
and they said, this is the best looking ping iron
that I've ever seen. I mean, they were I would
be surprised if my friends have not purchased or ordered
these or early early adopters to the blueprint. Ess, can
you take us through the ballflight differences between the two
blueprints and maybe include I two thirty on there as well.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yeah, definitely it's going to be very easy for the
golfer in our club hitters to understand the I two
thirty is going to go the highest blueprint s a
little bit lower right in between, and blueprint T the
low st and that's a combination of ball speed and
launch primarily that's going to create those three windows. So again, Shane,
when we come back, when it comes back to if
(17:04):
you want to do a blended set or a mix set,
very easy to understand. That very easy to understand. I
two thirty is going to go the highest blueprint s, medium,
blueprint T the lowest. Now, one really fun thing on
the blueprint s that's allowed us to kick the ball
up in the air a lot with the long irons
has been this really cool pocket forging technology that allows
(17:27):
us to create a cavity in the middle of the club.
And this is really fun when we look at blade irons. Historically,
if you ever go to like look at antique blades
and you lay them down on a table and you
look at the heel toe length, the wedges actually used
to be bigger, like longer heel to toe than the
long irons, right. And the challenge that designers had back
(17:50):
then is you had to make the heads lighter in
the long irons. The only way they could do it
was to make them smaller. Right. It wasn't like, oh,
let me make these long iron small and the wedge
is big for any other reason. They just couldn't do it.
So what this pocket forging does for us, it allows
us to put a lighter density material in the middle.
(18:13):
We get a little face flexing out of it, But
the primary reason we do that is to save about
ten grams of mass from the middle of the club.
That allows us to make the iron a little bit bigger. Right,
not they're not big, but we don't have to reverse
the sizing of the iron like the old school traditional blades.
(18:33):
So it's really fun to combine some modern technology into
a very pure looking blade iron. And again the benefit
there is we can kick the ball up in the
air in the long iron, so we have that technology
in the three four five iron with the blueprint s.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
When you at paying think about game improvement irons versus
a blade iron, what are you trying to accomplish? I mean,
I'm assuming with the blade to work a bill, he
is an important part of the iron. Game improvement might
be more consistency, or maybe hitting the ball a little
bit farther. What are the main focuses when you're kind
(19:10):
of looking at those two worlds, because those worlds are
so different when you're really thinking about the golfer.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yeah, my colleague Eric Henderson has a great visual. Maybe
we'll grab it and throw it in as a screen
chair and those folks can go on YouTube and check
it out. Where in our focal system we can look
at the impact stat area on the face and how
that changes by players handicap Shane and it is amazing.
You see the tour players. It's a heat map that
(19:39):
we have. We'll put this image together and show it.
And the heat map for the tour players is tiny, right,
what is that penny? Oh? Yes, it's like a dime
or a penny. You know. We can throw statistics at that,
and then the question is, well, what do we do
with that information? Because the better player hits the center
of the face more often, we can on prioritize and
(20:01):
we did this on the blueprint, ass maximizing the inertia
of the iron because they simply put that is a
less important attribute. It's it's still important. We want to
do it and we have done it. But it's relatively speaking,
a less important attribute and we can then focus on
things Shane, which what we did on the blueprint as
(20:21):
of lowering the CG. We have found that lowering the
CG better aligns where the tour players hitting the ball
a majority of the time, and that is a main
reason why the blueprints feels so good. We're aligning the
CG better with where they're hitting, and then we can, again, Shane,
(20:44):
put priorities on different things like making the blade smaller
right so the clubs can get through the turf better.
They're better at shots out of the rough for the
better player. And one big thing we found why when
we've made the blade length shorter is that the tour
player can turn the ball over a little bit easier.
(21:06):
And again that's something that better player. If you give
them a big iron, even if it has some offset
on it, they'll struggle to draw the ball and a
lot of the tour players want to be able to
hit this nice, tight little trap draw with their ballflight.
And on top of that, Shane, a big thing we've
worked on with the tour players is they don't want
(21:26):
an iron that has too low of spin. Okay, when
when you give the tour player an iron that doesn't
spin enough, that freaks them out right, that says flyer
to them, that says unpredictability. They want to be able
to put an ample amount of spin on the golf ball.
So we have more relaxed lofts. We have a face
(21:47):
friction and groove design pattern that generates more spin for
the tour player because they, unlike the everyday golfer, which
we'll talk about, they hit a majority of their shot.
Seventy percent of their sh with their irons are from
the fairway or the tee. Now, if you look at
the everyday golfer, and when we're talking about distance iron Shaine,
(22:08):
they hit only fifty percent of the shots from their
fairway and then fifty percent from the rough, and the
everyday golfer comes up short a lot with their irons.
We see this in the ARCOS data. I think strategically
you could take more club, but from a design standpoint,
we're okay with them having a little bit less spin
because it's going to help get that ball trundling up
(22:30):
on the green. Right. So there's those are some of
the big high level differences in between a tour iron
precision iron versus maybe our distance iron for the high handicapper.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah, I know, with a blueprint te the rough performance
was big for somebody like Tony Fenow. I know that
was something that he talked a whole bunch about when
he introduced Blueprint into the bag for the first time,
was rough performance and spin out of the rough and
kind of working to improve that with blades because as
you said, you know, I mean a lot of blame,
especially old school blades out of the rough can kind
(23:02):
of come out a little bit nucky.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Yeah, rough performance is a big deal, and we spent
a lot of time with our tour players on blueprint
S and T talking to them about the groove design
and the face friction. A big part of that rough
performance with the blueprint T is the surface area. Right.
You just make the surface area that iron small, it's
going to be able to basically knife through the rough
(23:26):
you know, a lot easier, right. But the big thing
we kind of made a little transition in our groove
design with the blueprint S and T this go round
was the tour player said, Hey, when I'm in the
fairway or when I'm hitting T shots on a par three,
I want this ball to spin. Right, I need spin.
(23:47):
That's what they're asking for. Give me spin, Give me spin,
Give me spin. Now, if a tour player needs less spin,
they tweak it through loft, shaft length and golf ball right,
So those are all fitting levers we have if you
have a tour player that needs to reduce spin. So
we put a big priority on our groove design, and
(24:08):
what you'll see from us is that we have we
kind of approach grooves very differently across our Our groove
optimization on wedges, very different than our groove optimization on
long irons, short irons of mid iron.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
So you're gonna see, Marty, what's the difference, Like, what
what is the difference in the like if you're thinking
about a wedge groove versus a four iron groove, is
it is it deeper? Is it thicker?
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Like? What?
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Just for the layman, what's the difference?
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Yeah, great, great question, Shane. So what you'll see from us,
like in our S one fifty nine wedges, is we
have more grooves, right, So more grooves. It's like having
more treads on your tire. And how you use your
wedges is fundamentally different than how you use your irons,
you're going to use your highest lofted wedges a ton
hitting chips and pitches out of the green side rough, right.
(24:53):
We see that from our big data. That's what the
tour players want and need, and so by having more grooves,
you're gonna you're gonna shed more of that debris or
matter out of the way. Right. But with your irons,
for a tour player, they're telling us, Hey, when we're
in the fair way, that's our time to score. Give
me a groove design that's gonna spin so I can
(25:14):
control the spin, control the distance, control the trajectory. So
you're gonna see less grooves from us in the irons
and the blueprint s and t or you're gonna see
more grooves in the wedges.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Okay, interesting, Interesting. What do you say to people, Marty
that you know there's always kind of been the stigma
about blades, right, I mean, blades are only for the
professional golfer. Nobody that's an average player or even a
five handicap can hit them. They're scary. You're always introducing
new technology into a blade if somebody is interested, like
I've always been interested. I played blades when I was
(25:48):
twenty three you know, I've always been interested in maybe
getting back into the world of a true blade like
the Blueprint te What do you say to people that
maybe are fearful of giving them a shot, or maybe
scared of the inability to hit them. What do you
say to those people that look at them like it's
you know, it's it's an it's an old school technology,
if you will.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Yeah, no, we've we've even though like our Blueprint T
looks very traditional like a muscle, right, we have a
lot of tech.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
They're beautiful, they look they look off, they look like
you'd put you'd frame them and put them on your wall.
I mean, you know, like Marty's holding up you know,
one of the blades right now if you're watching on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Yeah, the Blueprint T is designed to inspire you, you
know when you pull out the bag, and that's a
big part of it, right, that's a big part of it.
But we have a we have a lot of technology infused.
Even though this looks like a very traditional blade iron,
you know, it has relatively high MLI for the size.
That's a good way to think about blade irons. Like,
(26:44):
we've also done some fun research, Shane, this is super
cool that if you give a one skill level of
golfer a smaller club a smaller blade, their impact stat
area will get smaller with it interesting, very very very
cool study. Right, It's kind of like the aim small
miss small type of approach. So that being said, blades
(27:09):
should be considered even if you're like a single digit
handicap player. Let's call it the you know, I would
consider blow both the blueprint ass and the blueprint T
blade irons. Blueprint as is going to have a lot
more cavity to it, but the blade length itself isn't
a ton bigger. It's just a little bit bigger. It's
a much bigger jump to go all the way to
I two thirty, for example. But we also pack in
(27:31):
a lot of forgiveness into both of these irons. High
density toe weight tungusen toe weight counterbalanced with a high
density weight that we put in the hozzle when we
go to build these irons. Right, we've walked through our
assembly area, and I think that's a really big deal.
When folks see our toe weight, they think, oh, there's
(27:52):
weight on the toe, there's cg's in the toe somehow,
But what they don't see is the invisible weight that's
embedded in the halls, and so if you get a
set where you order them at a heavier swing weight
or based on the build, the heads need to be
lighter heavier. We are perfectly balancing the mass we put
in the toe weight with the weight in the heel
(28:13):
so that it keeps our SIGs nearly perfectly centered right,
And going back to your question, Shane, that also boosts
the moment of inertia the iron relative to the size.
So I think our blueprint t to be honest with you, Shane,
you got to be a ball striker to hit this thing.
It is pretty small, but our blueprint ass is going
(28:34):
to have some massive appeal for the scratch golfer, single
digit handicapped player, and a big part of it this
year is that the cig is very low, so they
feel amazing and we've been able to get higher ball
speeds out of them, not ball speeds from the face flexing,
but better lining the CG with the golf ball during
the impact interval.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Do you like the blended set that I've got going
the I two thirty four iron in the blueprint s
I mean, do you do? You do you think that's
gonna be something that is popular or you are you
into this planet set? Do you feel like I should
go blueprint s four iron as well?
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Now, one hundred percent, Shane, if you're if you're loving
the two thirty love that is absolutely why we designed
the lofts and uh, you know, the shaping everything to
be very blendable like that. I think we're gonna we
see it on tour, you know. I think the fore
iron for faster swing speed players like you and I
as always that kind of tipping point club. Like you know,
(29:29):
should I still be in the blueprints or BLUEPRINTEE, or
should I go to the next model up? It's a
little bigger, a little more forgiving, gets a little more height,
a little easier to get that golf ball in the air.
I think the fore iron is a great club there.
I think we're gonna see, Shane, some players play I
to thirty three or four iron, go Blueprint as up
to maybe a six seven eight iron and then transition
to the Blueprint te We could see a three club
(29:52):
combo set. For sure, we're gonna see that.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
I mean, it's it's just again, I mean, we've talked
so much about the technology, we've talked so much about
the offerings online and as you've said, I mean so
many options to dial you're set in without actually having
to go to a range and hit a whole bunch
of golf balls. But the fact that the offerings are
available is so cool because again you think about the
old Schooway of order and irons, and it was the
(30:16):
order set irons and they show up and that's what
you had, and then to get a blended set was
a bit of a backbreaker. And now you can literally
go online. You can literally go on Copilot and boom,
build the blended set that makes the most sense for you,
and see what the distance is and the carry and
the launch and I almost think, you know, there are
(30:38):
times on this podcast that we've had guests on that
have said things that have given me confidence in my
own game just by simple statistics. And I feel like
with Copilot a time, it actually adds confidence to the
golfer as well, because you can actually see what the
numbers are going to be and you can believe in
those numbers even before you go to the driving range.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Yeah. Absolutely, Shane. And one thing, the note on the
fitting on the custom fitting side of the blueprint S
and T is. This is our first iron we launched
with the Ladies product. With the latest product in fall
of twenty twenty three, a brand new fitting Technology fitting
head called the AFS three D. Okay, so what is it.
We've had an AFS fitting iron, which is our Fitting
(31:19):
Club seven iron spin in the market pretty much the
same design for over ten years. Now we launch AFS
three D which is now part of Blueprint S and
Blueprint T. It's all of our fitting accounts have this
iron which you can fit multiple color codes with one head,
and you can also hit the blueprint S and the
(31:41):
Blueprint T in our power spec setting. So if you're
a player that wants to get a little distance back,
see how the iron will behave for you with a
little less bounce in a little less loft and see
if that's better for hitting your spin window for you.
You can do that with our AFS three D head
and this head. Shane uses a sleeve that looks like
(32:03):
our driver metalwood sleeve and the iron. A lot of
times you hit a fitting iron, it doesn't look so
good like our previous fitting iron had a kind of
a big nut look, kind of mechanical looking. The ANFS
three D looks pure in the playing position. Right. So
what's great now about fitting blueprint s and t is
you can go hit both of them, get launch and
(32:26):
spin numbers. Then our fitters can plug that those launching
spin numbers from their launch monitor into Pink Copilot gapping
app and you can have a lot of fun playing
with potentially doing a mixed set design. Marty.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
One of my favorite questions to ask on this podcast,
what's in your bag right now?
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Oh? I got blueprint ass all the way through. I
got them all the way through. I got the fore iron.
I build a half inch longer and that gives me
a little boost in speed and a little more dynamic law.
And so my gamer set right now is is blueprint
as four through pitch. And I think time is going
(33:10):
to be a really good judge of this Blueprint ass iron.
How viral it's been on the PGA Tour and all
the worldwide tours early is a really good sign. Uh,
It's got a lot of virality to it.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah, I mean, like I said, I mean I had
I had people looking at the iron that I would
consider critical golf people, and I mean to them for
them to say this is you know, one of the
more beautiful irons I've ever seen is obviously a testamon.
You know, it's so funny, right, We talk so much
about technology that goes into it, but the way certain
things look is very, very important to a golf bag.
I mean you mentioned it about blueprint tea like blade.
(33:45):
People like blades because they look beautiful.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
You know, Yeah, the blueprint ask for me. Shane has
checked all the boxes, like I want. I wanted to
sound good and feel good. It's got a kind of
a quiet It might sound a little cliche, but it's
got that kind of quiet, muted sound to it and
impacts which I've absolutely fell in love with. The turf
interaction matches what I think is going to happen with
(34:09):
the turf interaction happens right right, but it's forgiving, Like
if I get a little steep on it, it's got
ample bounce to get through the turf. I've been able
to manipulate the trajectory in both the vertical plane and
the horizontal plane so I can hit them. I can
hit the short irons high and low on command. I
can hit little cuts, little jaws. If I need to
(34:30):
playing around with wind or pin positions and the long
irons go high, right that I want a blade iron
where the long irons go relatively high. And that pocket
forging has really been the kicker with the blueprint s.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
It's so you know, I didn't realize S for blueprint
s stood for S fifty five in that same family.
And I don't think you know this. I probably I
would say that the S fifty five's are the irons
that I've had in my bag the longest. If you
look at my golf bag the last twenty years, I
I remember I had S fifty fives. Remember when you
put the W for the works that were on the
(35:04):
toe of the club. I had those S fifty five's
probably in my bag for six seven years. Love those
irons so so cool that you know, you you learn
that a lot of the inspiration for the blueprint s
in twenty twenty four is playing off of set irons
that I liked as much as so many other tour
players did.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Yeah, Shane, you're you're you know a lot in common
with a bunch of players, and we wanted to crack
that code, like what is it about that iron that
gave it the magic? And we put that right into
the blueprint s. So if you're one of those, if
you're one of those that's like Shane out there that's
hanging on to your S fifty five, the time is now.
The time is now to go check out the blueprints
(35:43):
we've got.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
We've got very good news for you, Marty. This was
this was great. I was I was fired up to
open the box when it came. I was fired up
to put them in play, And uh, they're gonna be
a big part of my twenty twenty four sou blueprint
S is gonna be mine. Maybe Blueprint T is yours.
But check out Copilot and get in and everything that's
out there in terms of potential blended sets as well,
(36:04):
because again, the options are endless at this point, and
you'd be silly not to lean into that if you're
looking at a new set.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Irons couldn't agree more. It's gonna be such an exciting year.
This is the most excited I've been for our comprehensive
Iron family, both on the hot you know, kind of
the everyday golfer irons and the G four to thirty
and what we have going on in that space and
our tour irons are precision Irons could not be more
excited and optimistic and golfers are going to have a
(36:32):
field day with these in the new year. Here Shane,
this is a blueprint ass podcast apparently. I mean the
whole team's playing blueprint as for goodness sakes, I mean
get on board, get.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Involved as well, Marty, great stuff. We'll chat with you
next week. This is the Paining Proven Grouts podcast.
The guys from Ping.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
They've kind of shown me how much the equipment matters.
I just love that I can hit any shot.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Welcome back to the Ping proven Grounds podcast. I'm Shape Bacon,
joined as always by Marty Jerts and Marty. I remember
the days when Ping had a couple of offerings irons
and that was kind of it. That is not the
case anymore, and with these new lines coming out, the
options are relatively endless for the golfers. So I wanted
(00:31):
to dive into all the new irons that Ping is
offered in twenty twenty four and maybe give people at
least a directional idea of where they might go. So
are you up for it?
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah? That sounds good, Shane. I mean that was my
first kind of familiarity with the brand. Is the I too.
It didn't matter who you were, you're playing the two
iron back in the day. But we got a lot
more options now, we could get a lot more nuanced
in how we design these things.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
It's not just options, Marty, I think what is so
cool and we've seen this happen over the last couple
decades in golf. But I feel like Ping is almost
pushing golfers to consider mixing up their golf bag. It's
something I do in my own bag. I mix up irons.
I have I two thirty four iron and then I've
got blueprint s throughout the bag to that point, I mean, there,
(01:20):
it feels like that's not just an option now, but
it feels like it's it's almost an avenue for players
as well.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah, so we can we can do mixed sets within
your irons and then also even open the door for
playing like a four hybrid or a five hybrid or
high lofted fairway. Would I mean, we've built some amazing
tools for our fitters out there within ping co pilot
our gapping app to help answer those questions, because it
does it can be overwhelming for the golfer, like, Okay,
(01:51):
should I play a you know, a hybrid? Should I
play high lofted fairwood? Which one should I piece together?
How far are they going to go? You know, we've
seen golfers get a you know, a five wood and
then a three hybrid and then going too similar in distance.
So we want to build the tools to help optimize
and dial in your gapping. But doing blended iron set
(02:12):
Shane is a big part of that equation. And when
it comes to our iron family in twenty twenty four,
we have built our players irons, so our players iron
Shane our irons where basically one way to think about
it is the player themselves is bringing the speed to
the table. Right. We got our other irons, like our
G four thirty iron, where we're going to supplement some
(02:35):
of the distance, like the face is going to flex
a little bit more, We're gonna infuse some ball speed
into it and supplement the player speed. But with the
I two thirty and then the blueprints in the blueprint
t that's where the players bring in the speed to
the table and those are all built to be able
to configure in any number of different ways from a
(02:57):
blended set or mix set perspective.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
So, Marty, when you hear the term blueprint, I'm sure
a lot of people's mind immediately goes to that small
blade that Tony Fenow has played for years. That's not
the case in terms of what the new lines look like.
So could you just kind of run through the new lines,
what they look like, how they play, and maybe the
differences between the new families.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, I think golfers are gonna think Blueprint. They're gonna
think the small blade iron, the Tony Fenw iron, the
Preston Summer Hayes iron that's played on the PGA Tour.
We basically bifurcated that iron into two irons, so now
it's gonna be a two iron family. We have the
Blueprint T that's gonna be very similar. It's gonna be
(03:42):
like the ultra pure muscle back, small blade, length, thin sole,
the optimal for workability and extracting the golf blow the rough.
It's gonna generate different performance in different conditions, different turf
interaction with the T and the way I kind of
think about the branding of it is the T stands
(04:04):
for Tour. That's our tour inspired iron. Then we have
the blueprint S, which is this iron is gonna be
most similar to our I fifty nine iron, And we
chose S because it's a lot of the inspiration in
terms of the turf interaction we're going to talk about
today came from the S fifty five iron. We had
(04:28):
a lot of tour players who love that S fifty
five iron, and a big part of it was the
turf interaction in the Soul design. And so now we
have the Blueprint as bifurcated into two irons, the T
for tour, the S which is kind of inspired by
our S series iron S fifty nine and S fifty
five family Historically.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Marty, are you seeing a lot of tour players that
are marrying those two together to make up their iron
set up? I mean it feels like it would only
make sense to have you know, you have a player
that has the S in the four, five, and six
perhaps and then maybe seven eight nine is the T
Are you seeing that so far?
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah? I think a good example and he actually got
a couple wins on the DP World to or the
end of twenty twenty three was Louis Eustasen. He's he
was like we worked with him a lot on our
blade style irons over the years. Louis obviously a pure
ball striker, you know, has played the blue the original
blueprints over the years. He's playing the Blueprint as in
(05:29):
the four and five iron, then he switches to the
Blueprint T in the sixth through pitching Wench I think
that is the perfect example and what you're gonna get
if you play the blueprint ass in some longer irons,
you're gonna get a little more ball speed and a
little more launch and spin, and ultimately you're gonna be
(05:49):
able to hit the ball a little bit higher, and
with the blueprint s a little larger blade length and
more forgiveness, just a little more protection, a little more forgiveness. Obviously,
even even a player like Louis might not hit those
long irons perfectly every single time, so you're gonna get
that benefit. But then every golfer is going to be
(06:11):
a little bit different maybe where they pick that transition
point if you are going to do a blended set
into the blueprint tee in terms of impact, centerness, turf
interaction is a really big deal and being able to
flight the ball a little bit lower. So I think
Louis is like the perfect example in terms of being
able to elevate a few of those long irons that
he needs a little bit of that assistance with and
(06:32):
then transitioning into those those ultimate scoring clubs where he
wants to fly them a little bit lower. Anytime you
make the blade length a little bit shorter, You're also
going to be able to work the ball a little
bit easier. You're going to be able to kind of
like having a you know, a sports car. You're gonna
be able to you turn the wheel and it's responding immediately.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
That's a really good analogy when it comes to, you know,
smaller blade length irons and the benefit you get as
a player.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
What about gaping when you start to mix sets, because
you know, you go, like even somebody like Louie Righty
goes from blueprint S five iron into a Blueprint T
six iron. How do you make up in terms of
gapping to make sure there isn't a gap in a
set of for somebody's skill level of luiustes And I
mean obviously he wants to know the exact number he's hitting.
He doesn't want to have a ten or fifteen yard
(07:22):
gap between irons, right.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yeah, totally. I think we made a very concerted effort
to design the loft. Standard lofts on our I two
thirty blueprint S Blueprint T are exactly the same. Okay,
And remember these irons don't the face doesn't really deflect
a lot the players bringing the speed, So the loft
is the primary factor. Then because of that, that's going
(07:47):
to drive the gapping. But there is also a way
to think about gapping. It's not only distance gapping. You're
also gapping the height right the peak height in the
landing angle. So we've actually launching with this iron. In
pin Co Pilot, our ultimate one stop shop fitting software,
we have our gaping app, which is my favorite app.
In there, we now have the ability to do a
(08:09):
virtual what if experiment to say, hey, what if I
played I two thirty four iron instead of blueprint ass
how much higher will that go? It also does specific
to the golfer's launch conditions, tell you will it increase
their carry yardage, their impact on their rollout. But you
can really now make without having to go hit all
(08:30):
those irons. That's the power of Copilot. The power of
the Gaping app is you can go in there, get
your seven iron fitting numbers, so hit our AFS Fitting Club,
put it into the gaping app, and now you can
do trade off experiments because we know how all these
different models are going to perform. With our robot testing,
player testing, tour player testing is you can do that
(08:53):
virtual gapping analysis and you can say what if I
played I two thirty four and five iron then went
to Blueprints. Or you can do this same thing between
Blueprints and Blueprint T. You can say, what if I
played the Blueprint S four, five six iron then switch
to the T What'll that do to my carry and
peak height and be able to play around with that
(09:15):
without having to go hit all those clubs or do
a lot of trial and air experimentation. Shane, I am
so excited about this feature. It's the first time we've
been able to do blended sets within the Gapping app.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
And you mentioned turf interaction being a huge part of
kind of the options for the player out there. Can
you dive a little bit more into maybe the turf
interaction between the blueprints.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yeah, definitely, I think to talk about turf interaction blueprint s.
We had a few of our tour players that absolutely
love the S fifty five and the big part when
we were diving into it was just how it went
through the turf. I mean, Bubba was a heavy user
of the S fifty five over the years. Handful of
other players, some non staff players that have now switched
(09:58):
into the blue Print ass we're using fifty five for
a very long period of time.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Marty, what are tour players looking for in terms of
turf interaction? What is you know, what's the note that
hits the year for them?
Speaker 1 (10:12):
It's I think to me, Shane, it's a very mysterious
thing to think about. It almost feels like an artistic thing.
But we when we get to the science of it,
the science of the art, it's all about the timing.
It's the timing of the turf interaction and creating the
right pressure. Which pressure is spreading the force over a
(10:32):
certain area right, So it's getting the right pressure in
the right timing. For when for a player with a
certain delivery characteristic when they hit the golf ball, the
ball launches upward and you get a downward force applied
on the club. Right equal and opposite force applied to
the club. That's what creates the dibot. So a player
(10:54):
like Bubba Watson, he we all know he takes huge
dibots and he manipulates the face a lot, so he's
got a very open face to path on some shots.
He's got a very close face to path on others.
He has very high speed. He tends to have a
downward angle attack with that as well, so he takes
very big dibots, So a player like him can be
(11:14):
very hyper sensitive to the timing of that turf interaction
in the impact of that timing on the expected result.
In the expected result is the size and shape of
the divot, how that's going to give them feedback acoustically
to their ear and if the timing that is not right,
(11:34):
it can definitely influence the ball flight with their expected
trajectory as well. And so we're looking at things how
do we influence all that in the design chain would
be we can influence the heel toe camber, how flat
this curvature is from the heel to toe. We can
influence the kind of initial bounce, the lead edge bounce,
(11:56):
the bounce height, and then the surf the camber or
the curve mature from front to back, and then how
wide the soul is. So all of those factors kind
of go into us creating the right timing that's gonna
I think the player they want to get a certain
reaction to their shot that matches what they expect. And
(12:17):
when we can marry those two things together, which we've
done on the blueprint, ass the player is just infused
with a lot of confidence.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
So if you have players that come to you and
they go, we love turf interaction with the S fifty fives,
how do you take technology from I mean, what is
that a five six seven year old iron? Is that
probably how old those those irons are? How do you
go back to that level of technology and infuse that
into a new iron with updated technology? How do you
(12:45):
find that kind of perfect marriage because it seems like
it'd be extremely complicated to grab something from twenty fourteen
and put it into something that's out there in twenty
twenty four Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
I think in this case, we just needed to test.
We just needed to test it and prototype it, and
I cannot think of an iron in my twenty years
at Ping that We spent more time doing very detailed
nuance testing with our tour players with both the Blueprint
ASS and the Blueprint t Now, the Blueprint TEA is
(13:16):
a little more of an evolution on the original blueprint,
so we spend a little less time with the tour
players on that one, But we really hunkered down with
the Blueprint ASS and prototyped it and went out and
tested it with our players in a variety of different lies,
turf conditions and The big part of these Irons, Shane
(13:37):
is shot making. And when we look at the players
that are playing the Blueprint ass they are pure shot makers.
They like to carve it against the wind. I mean,
we look at Louis, he loves carving a little draw
and carving a little fade and he hits little baby shots.
I mean, we look at Bubba as another example of
somebody who curves the ball a lot. We talked to Sahith,
(13:58):
he is a shot maker. He loves manipulating the golf
ball and hitting a number of different shots. He won
with these irons on tour immediately, which was really really
fun to watch. And I think that's a testament in
the case of marrying the sole design of the AS
fifty five into the technology of the blueprint s, which
we can talk about was doing a lot of product
(14:19):
testing with the tour players because they are so nuanced
in their feedback.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
When you introduce a new club and you bring it
to tour players, is the level of success in an
engineer's mind, how quickly it goes into the bag. Because
you know, tour players are finicky, right, I mean great players.
It feels like it takes a lot of time to
maybe get something new in the bag. But on the
other end of that, if they see something they love,
(14:43):
they might throw it in right away. So when you
bring a new iron blueprint s out on tour and
you show it to Baba or Tyrrel Hatton or Thigala
and they fall in love with it right away, I mean,
what does that do to somebody like you, who's obviously
kind of awaiting what they have to say about it.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Yeah, it's kind of It's almost like us in engineers.
We sometimes take bets and how good, how viral we
think a product's going to do on tour. I personally
was so bullish about the blueprint ass interest before we
launched it, and it was awesome to see at the
end of twenty twenty three how many players won with it.
(15:21):
I mean we had non staff players playing it, winning
with it immediately putting into play right after some the
Ryder Cup, for example, we had sawhith win with it.
We had Walkee Nieman win with it. Down in Australia,
we had Louis win with it two weeks in a
row there doing the split set designs. We had Harrison
(15:43):
Endicott dominated Q School with the blueprint ass So it's
been amazing to see how viral this iron has gone,
and it just has a buzz amongst it on the
professional tours, which is really fun to see. So I
was bullish on it, but at the same time, you know,
once it gets out there in the wild, you kind
of you never know what exactly is going to happen.
(16:06):
And I'm excited finally in early twenty four here that
we're going to get this iron finally into our customer's hands,
because this has been one of those one of those
products that we were very we can't wait to get
it into our customer's hands. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
I had a couple of buddies of mine I was
playing golf with a couple of weeks ago, and they
hadn't seen the s yet, and they pulled it out
and they said, this is the best looking ping iron
that I've ever seen. I mean, they were I would
be surprised if my friends have not purchased or ordered
these or early early adopters to the blueprint. Ess, can
you take us through the ballflight differences between the two
blueprints and maybe include I two thirty on there as well.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yeah, definitely it's going to be very easy for the
golfer in our club hitters to understand the I two
thirty is going to go the highest blueprint s a
little bit lower right in between, and blueprint T the
low st and that's a combination of ball speed and
launch primarily that's going to create those three windows. So again, Shane,
when we come back, when it comes back to if
(17:04):
you want to do a blended set or a mix set,
very easy to understand. That very easy to understand. I
two thirty is going to go the highest blueprint s, medium,
blueprint T the lowest. Now, one really fun thing on
the blueprint s that's allowed us to kick the ball
up in the air a lot with the long irons
has been this really cool pocket forging technology that allows
(17:27):
us to create a cavity in the middle of the club.
And this is really fun when we look at blade irons. Historically,
if you ever go to like look at antique blades
and you lay them down on a table and you
look at the heel toe length, the wedges actually used
to be bigger, like longer heel to toe than the
long irons, right. And the challenge that designers had back
(17:50):
then is you had to make the heads lighter in
the long irons. The only way they could do it
was to make them smaller. Right. It wasn't like, oh,
let me make these long iron small and the wedge
is big for any other reason. They just couldn't do it.
So what this pocket forging does for us, it allows
us to put a lighter density material in the middle.
(18:13):
We get a little face flexing out of it, But
the primary reason we do that is to save about
ten grams of mass from the middle of the club.
That allows us to make the iron a little bit bigger. Right,
not they're not big, but we don't have to reverse
the sizing of the iron like the old school traditional blades.
(18:33):
So it's really fun to combine some modern technology into
a very pure looking blade iron. And again the benefit
there is we can kick the ball up in the
air in the long iron, so we have that technology
in the three four five iron with the blueprint s.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
When you at paying think about game improvement irons versus
a blade iron, what are you trying to accomplish? I mean,
I'm assuming with the blade to work a bill, he
is an important part of the iron. Game improvement might
be more consistency, or maybe hitting the ball a little
bit farther. What are the main focuses when you're kind
(19:10):
of looking at those two worlds, because those worlds are
so different when you're really thinking about the golfer.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yeah, my colleague Eric Henderson has a great visual. Maybe
we'll grab it and throw it in as a screen
chair and those folks can go on YouTube and check
it out. Where in our focal system we can look
at the impact stat area on the face and how
that changes by players handicap Shane and it is amazing.
You see the tour players. It's a heat map that
(19:39):
we have. We'll put this image together and show it.
And the heat map for the tour players is tiny, right,
what is that penny? Oh? Yes, it's like a dime
or a penny. You know. We can throw statistics at that,
and then the question is, well, what do we do
with that information? Because the better player hits the center
of the face more often, we can on prioritize and
(20:01):
we did this on the blueprint, ass maximizing the inertia
of the iron because they simply put that is a
less important attribute. It's it's still important. We want to
do it and we have done it. But it's relatively speaking,
a less important attribute and we can then focus on
things Shane, which what we did on the blueprint as
(20:21):
of lowering the CG. We have found that lowering the
CG better aligns where the tour players hitting the ball
a majority of the time, and that is a main
reason why the blueprints feels so good. We're aligning the
CG better with where they're hitting, and then we can, again, Shane,
(20:44):
put priorities on different things like making the blade smaller
right so the clubs can get through the turf better.
They're better at shots out of the rough for the
better player. And one big thing we found why when
we've made the blade length shorter is that the tour
player can turn the ball over a little bit easier.
(21:06):
And again that's something that better player. If you give
them a big iron, even if it has some offset
on it, they'll struggle to draw the ball and a
lot of the tour players want to be able to
hit this nice, tight little trap draw with their ballflight.
And on top of that, Shane, a big thing we've
worked on with the tour players is they don't want
(21:26):
an iron that has too low of spin. Okay, when
when you give the tour player an iron that doesn't
spin enough, that freaks them out right, that says flyer
to them, that says unpredictability. They want to be able
to put an ample amount of spin on the golf ball.
So we have more relaxed lofts. We have a face
(21:47):
friction and groove design pattern that generates more spin for
the tour player because they, unlike the everyday golfer, which
we'll talk about, they hit a majority of their shot.
Seventy percent of their sh with their irons are from
the fairway or the tee. Now, if you look at
the everyday golfer, and when we're talking about distance iron Shaine,
(22:08):
they hit only fifty percent of the shots from their
fairway and then fifty percent from the rough, and the
everyday golfer comes up short a lot with their irons.
We see this in the ARCOS data. I think strategically
you could take more club, but from a design standpoint,
we're okay with them having a little bit less spin
because it's going to help get that ball trundling up
(22:30):
on the green. Right. So there's those are some of
the big high level differences in between a tour iron
precision iron versus maybe our distance iron for the high handicapper.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah, I know, with a blueprint te the rough performance
was big for somebody like Tony Fenow. I know that
was something that he talked a whole bunch about when
he introduced Blueprint into the bag for the first time,
was rough performance and spin out of the rough and
kind of working to improve that with blades because as
you said, you know, I mean a lot of blame,
especially old school blades out of the rough can kind
(23:02):
of come out a little bit nucky.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Yeah, rough performance is a big deal, and we spent
a lot of time with our tour players on blueprint
S and T talking to them about the groove design
and the face friction. A big part of that rough
performance with the blueprint T is the surface area. Right.
You just make the surface area that iron small, it's
going to be able to basically knife through the rough
(23:26):
you know, a lot easier, right. But the big thing
we kind of made a little transition in our groove
design with the blueprint S and T this go round
was the tour player said, Hey, when I'm in the
fairway or when I'm hitting T shots on a par three,
I want this ball to spin. Right, I need spin.
(23:47):
That's what they're asking for. Give me spin, Give me spin,
Give me spin. Now, if a tour player needs less spin,
they tweak it through loft, shaft length and golf ball right,
So those are all fitting levers we have if you
have a tour player that needs to reduce spin. So
we put a big priority on our groove design, and
(24:08):
what you'll see from us is that we have we
kind of approach grooves very differently across our Our groove
optimization on wedges, very different than our groove optimization on
long irons, short irons of mid iron.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
So you're gonna see, Marty, what's the difference, Like, what
what is the difference in the like if you're thinking
about a wedge groove versus a four iron groove, is
it is it deeper? Is it thicker?
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Like? What?
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Just for the layman, what's the difference?
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Yeah, great, great question, Shane. So what you'll see from us,
like in our S one fifty nine wedges, is we
have more grooves, right, So more grooves. It's like having
more treads on your tire. And how you use your
wedges is fundamentally different than how you use your irons,
you're going to use your highest lofted wedges a ton
hitting chips and pitches out of the green side rough, right.
(24:53):
We see that from our big data. That's what the
tour players want and need, and so by having more grooves,
you're gonna you're gonna shed more of that debris or
matter out of the way. Right. But with your irons,
for a tour player, they're telling us, Hey, when we're
in the fair way, that's our time to score. Give
me a groove design that's gonna spin so I can
(25:14):
control the spin, control the distance, control the trajectory. So
you're gonna see less grooves from us in the irons
and the blueprint s and t or you're gonna see
more grooves in the wedges.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Okay, interesting, Interesting. What do you say to people, Marty
that you know there's always kind of been the stigma
about blades, right, I mean, blades are only for the
professional golfer. Nobody that's an average player or even a
five handicap can hit them. They're scary. You're always introducing
new technology into a blade if somebody is interested, like
I've always been interested. I played blades when I was
(25:48):
twenty three you know, I've always been interested in maybe
getting back into the world of a true blade like
the Blueprint te What do you say to people that
maybe are fearful of giving them a shot, or maybe
scared of the inability to hit them. What do you
say to those people that look at them like it's
you know, it's it's an it's an old school technology,
if you will.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Yeah, no, we've we've even though like our Blueprint T
looks very traditional like a muscle, right, we have a
lot of tech.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
They're beautiful, they look they look off, they look like
you'd put you'd frame them and put them on your wall.
I mean, you know, like Marty's holding up you know,
one of the blades right now if you're watching on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Yeah, the Blueprint T is designed to inspire you, you
know when you pull out the bag, and that's a
big part of it, right, that's a big part of it.
But we have a we have a lot of technology infused.
Even though this looks like a very traditional blade iron,
you know, it has relatively high MLI for the size.
That's a good way to think about blade irons. Like,
(26:44):
we've also done some fun research, Shane, this is super
cool that if you give a one skill level of
golfer a smaller club a smaller blade, their impact stat
area will get smaller with it interesting, very very very
cool study. Right, It's kind of like the aim small
miss small type of approach. So that being said, blades
(27:09):
should be considered even if you're like a single digit
handicap player. Let's call it the you know, I would
consider blow both the blueprint ass and the blueprint T
blade irons. Blueprint as is going to have a lot
more cavity to it, but the blade length itself isn't
a ton bigger. It's just a little bit bigger. It's
a much bigger jump to go all the way to
I two thirty, for example. But we also pack in
(27:31):
a lot of forgiveness into both of these irons. High
density toe weight tungusen toe weight counterbalanced with a high
density weight that we put in the hozzle when we
go to build these irons. Right, we've walked through our
assembly area, and I think that's a really big deal.
When folks see our toe weight, they think, oh, there's
(27:52):
weight on the toe, there's cg's in the toe somehow,
But what they don't see is the invisible weight that's
embedded in the halls, and so if you get a
set where you order them at a heavier swing weight
or based on the build, the heads need to be
lighter heavier. We are perfectly balancing the mass we put
in the toe weight with the weight in the heel
(28:13):
so that it keeps our SIGs nearly perfectly centered right,
And going back to your question, Shane, that also boosts
the moment of inertia the iron relative to the size.
So I think our blueprint t to be honest with you, Shane,
you got to be a ball striker to hit this thing.
It is pretty small, but our blueprint ass is going
(28:34):
to have some massive appeal for the scratch golfer, single
digit handicapped player, and a big part of it this
year is that the cig is very low, so they
feel amazing and we've been able to get higher ball
speeds out of them, not ball speeds from the face flexing,
but better lining the CG with the golf ball during
the impact interval.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Do you like the blended set that I've got going
the I two thirty four iron in the blueprint s
I mean, do you do? You do you think that's
gonna be something that is popular or you are you
into this planet set? Do you feel like I should
go blueprint s four iron as well?
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Now, one hundred percent, Shane, if you're if you're loving
the two thirty love that is absolutely why we designed
the lofts and uh, you know, the shaping everything to
be very blendable like that. I think we're gonna we
see it on tour, you know. I think the fore
iron for faster swing speed players like you and I
as always that kind of tipping point club. Like you know,
(29:29):
should I still be in the blueprints or BLUEPRINTEE, or
should I go to the next model up? It's a
little bigger, a little more forgiving, gets a little more height,
a little easier to get that golf ball in the air.
I think the fore iron is a great club there.
I think we're gonna see, Shane, some players play I
to thirty three or four iron, go Blueprint as up
to maybe a six seven eight iron and then transition
to the Blueprint te We could see a three club
(29:52):
combo set. For sure, we're gonna see that.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
I mean, it's it's just again, I mean, we've talked
so much about the technology, we've talked so much about
the offerings online and as you've said, I mean so
many options to dial you're set in without actually having
to go to a range and hit a whole bunch
of golf balls. But the fact that the offerings are
available is so cool because again you think about the
old Schooway of order and irons, and it was the
(30:16):
order set irons and they show up and that's what
you had, and then to get a blended set was
a bit of a backbreaker. And now you can literally
go online. You can literally go on Copilot and boom,
build the blended set that makes the most sense for you,
and see what the distance is and the carry and
the launch and I almost think, you know, there are
(30:38):
times on this podcast that we've had guests on that
have said things that have given me confidence in my
own game just by simple statistics. And I feel like
with Copilot a time, it actually adds confidence to the
golfer as well, because you can actually see what the
numbers are going to be and you can believe in
those numbers even before you go to the driving range.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Yeah. Absolutely, Shane. And one thing, the note on the
fitting on the custom fitting side of the blueprint S
and T is. This is our first iron we launched
with the Ladies product. With the latest product in fall
of twenty twenty three, a brand new fitting Technology fitting
head called the AFS three D. Okay, so what is it.
We've had an AFS fitting iron, which is our Fitting
(31:19):
Club seven iron spin in the market pretty much the
same design for over ten years. Now we launch AFS
three D which is now part of Blueprint S and
Blueprint T. It's all of our fitting accounts have this
iron which you can fit multiple color codes with one head,
and you can also hit the blueprint S and the
(31:41):
Blueprint T in our power spec setting. So if you're
a player that wants to get a little distance back,
see how the iron will behave for you with a
little less bounce in a little less loft and see
if that's better for hitting your spin window for you.
You can do that with our AFS three D head
and this head. Shane uses a sleeve that looks like
(32:03):
our driver metalwood sleeve and the iron. A lot of
times you hit a fitting iron, it doesn't look so
good like our previous fitting iron had a kind of
a big nut look, kind of mechanical looking. The ANFS
three D looks pure in the playing position. Right. So
what's great now about fitting blueprint s and t is
you can go hit both of them, get launch and
(32:26):
spin numbers. Then our fitters can plug that those launching
spin numbers from their launch monitor into Pink Copilot gapping
app and you can have a lot of fun playing
with potentially doing a mixed set design. Marty.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
One of my favorite questions to ask on this podcast,
what's in your bag right now?
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Oh? I got blueprint ass all the way through. I
got them all the way through. I got the fore iron.
I build a half inch longer and that gives me
a little boost in speed and a little more dynamic law.
And so my gamer set right now is is blueprint
as four through pitch. And I think time is going
(33:10):
to be a really good judge of this Blueprint ass iron.
How viral it's been on the PGA Tour and all
the worldwide tours early is a really good sign. Uh,
It's got a lot of virality to it.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah, I mean, like I said, I mean I had
I had people looking at the iron that I would
consider critical golf people, and I mean to them for
them to say this is you know, one of the
more beautiful irons I've ever seen is obviously a testamon.
You know, it's so funny, right, We talk so much
about technology that goes into it, but the way certain
things look is very, very important to a golf bag.
I mean you mentioned it about blueprint tea like blade.
(33:45):
People like blades because they look beautiful.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
You know, Yeah, the blueprint ask for me. Shane has
checked all the boxes, like I want. I wanted to
sound good and feel good. It's got a kind of
a quiet It might sound a little cliche, but it's
got that kind of quiet, muted sound to it and
impacts which I've absolutely fell in love with. The turf
interaction matches what I think is going to happen with
(34:09):
the turf interaction happens right right, but it's forgiving, Like
if I get a little steep on it, it's got
ample bounce to get through the turf. I've been able
to manipulate the trajectory in both the vertical plane and
the horizontal plane so I can hit them. I can
hit the short irons high and low on command. I
can hit little cuts, little jaws. If I need to
(34:30):
playing around with wind or pin positions and the long
irons go high, right that I want a blade iron
where the long irons go relatively high. And that pocket
forging has really been the kicker with the blueprint s.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
It's so you know, I didn't realize S for blueprint
s stood for S fifty five in that same family.
And I don't think you know this. I probably I
would say that the S fifty five's are the irons
that I've had in my bag the longest. If you
look at my golf bag the last twenty years, I
I remember I had S fifty fives. Remember when you
put the W for the works that were on the
(35:04):
toe of the club. I had those S fifty five's
probably in my bag for six seven years. Love those
irons so so cool that you know, you you learn
that a lot of the inspiration for the blueprint s
in twenty twenty four is playing off of set irons
that I liked as much as so many other tour
players did.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Yeah, Shane, you're you're you know a lot in common
with a bunch of players, and we wanted to crack
that code, like what is it about that iron that
gave it the magic? And we put that right into
the blueprint s. So if you're one of those, if
you're one of those that's like Shane out there that's
hanging on to your S fifty five, the time is now.
The time is now to go check out the blueprints
(35:43):
we've got.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
We've got very good news for you, Marty. This was
this was great. I was I was fired up to
open the box when it came. I was fired up
to put them in play, And uh, they're gonna be
a big part of my twenty twenty four sou blueprint
S is gonna be mine. Maybe Blueprint T is yours.
But check out Copilot and get in and everything that's
out there in terms of potential blended sets as well,
(36:04):
because again, the options are endless at this point, and
you'd be silly not to lean into that if you're
looking at a new set.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Irons couldn't agree more. It's gonna be such an exciting year.
This is the most excited I've been for our comprehensive
Iron family, both on the hot you know, kind of
the everyday golfer irons and the G four to thirty
and what we have going on in that space and
our tour irons are precision Irons could not be more
excited and optimistic and golfers are going to have a
(36:32):
field day with these in the new year. Here Shane,
this is a blueprint ass podcast apparently. I mean the
whole team's playing blueprint as for goodness sakes, I mean
get on board, get.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Involved as well, Marty, great stuff. We'll chat with you
next week. This is the Paining Proven Grouts podcast.
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