June 20, 2024 • 37 mins
PING Director of Golf Science, Dr. Erik Henrikson, joins Shane and Marty on the pod for a deep dive into the world of research, development and innovation. From motion capture lab insights to the conception of crown turbulators, they discuss what goes on behind the scenes to develop PING's industry leading products and technologies.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The guys from Ping. They've kind of showed me how
much the equipment matters. I just love that I can
hit any shot I kind of want.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
We're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about
what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Welcome back to the Pink Proving Grounds Podcast. I'm Shane
Bak and join this always by Marty Jerts and Marty.
We're about the nerd out on some golf stuff. I'm
excited for this episode of today.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
It's about time. We've been looking forward to having doctor
Eric Hendrickson, my colleague who leads our golf science efforts
at PING, which is Shane. I think where the good
stuff happens. We talk a lot about the products that
come to market, how we're designing it, but Eric leads
the group and himself personally has worked on a lot
of the very fundamental things that go into product performance,
(00:43):
human performance, and kind of the foundation on how products
come to be. So welcome on the pod.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Excited to be on Eric.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
First of all, is it weird to be called doctor?
Does that ever kind of throw you for a loop?
Speaker 4 (00:57):
You know at home? It does every once in a while.
The kids will throw out there my doctors over here,
my son is referred to doctor Hendrickson. Over at our club,
he gets called that. Just has a bit of fun,
But you know, it's actually not used around here a
whole lot unless we're doing a podcast or something like that.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
So, can you take us through your journey through ping
before we kind of dive into what we're going to
talk about today.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Yeah, So I've been here about fourteen years. Came in
as a research engineer in our innovation group, so got
early on work on a lot of things involving aerodynamics.
Had an aerospace background. I got my PhD in aerospace engineering,
and so worked on aerodynamics, worked on some motion capture.
We're here in our focal lab, so worked a lot
(01:41):
of motion capture, inertial sensing, so sensing motion, worked on
some things tracking putter motion, did some putter fitting research,
and so then got into fitting. I was the head
of fitting science for a little bit and then came
over and started leading both our innovation group and our
testing group. And now I have kind of migrated over
to focusing a lot on our basic research. As Marty
(02:02):
talked about, so just kind of answering like the why
questions how things work, and feed insights into our design
team and our innovation team. We really feel that like
our best innovations and the technologies that help people play
better emanate out of a better understanding.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Of the physics.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
And that's I mean, that was why Carston was so successful, right.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
It was physics.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
First and then using that to help people enjoy the
game more.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
And it feels like Carston was amazing. It always wanted
to answer the why, right, I mean that was basically
how ping was created, was answering the why to certain
questions that nobody really knew the answer to.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Yeah, and that's Marty I talk a lot about just that,
like a core value of curiosity, right.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
He was always very curious.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Yeah, and out of that curiosity came you know, we'll
go over and visit Carston's office or historian and see
some of the early stuff that Carston was doing. And
it was clearly just him being very curious about how
something worked and then quickly make something and go try
it and learn from it.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Eric, tell us a little bit about air. Getting your
PhD in aerospace engineering. What did that look like, What
classes were you taking, What were some of the labs,
some of the experiments, some of the hands on stuff
like give it go, give a little background on that.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Yeah, So all my graduate work was focused on in
space electric propulsion, so little thrusters to help orient satellites
up in space. I was lucky in that my graduate
work involved a bit of experiment and then a bit
of modeling, so kind of physically, you know, testing out ideas,
(03:37):
but then also using physics and math based models to
kind of predict what would happen, trying to get those
to match up. Because if we can have models that predict,
we can then innovate and make improvements. And so got
to design and build a high vacuum facility, so like
just a big tank that sucks all the air out
and allows you to try these thrusters, you know, here
(03:58):
in a lab, and obviously taking classes in everything from
you know, house satellites orbit around the Earth, to understanding
electromagnetics and the physics based on how do you accelerate
an ionized gas, a lot of thermodynamics, and so it
was a lot of fun, a lot of feeling pretty
(04:19):
inadequate and stupid along the way, but trying to learn
from that. And I think Ultimately it was I think
it prepared me really well for the role I have now,
and that I was constantly having to kind of understand
the fundamentals of how something worked to then be able
to build on it and do something novel.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Ye, and that's a.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Big thing in academia, right, introducing novel insights to kind
of build the academic community.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
So, I mean, Eric, this is advanced stuff you're talking about.
Did you ever think you'd land at a golf company. I
mean it just seems like, I mean you're talking about
science and you're talking about like satellites and things like that,
and you're applying all that stuff to golf clubs and
how to make people better at golf.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
I think in the back of my mind, I mean,
you kind of go through and finish my undergrad and like, okay,
what you know, I'm really enjoying academia. I'm really enjoying
kind of diving into these deep problems and doing research.
So went on to grad school and just some of
the experiences I had let me down the kind of
aerospace route I grew up playing tennis. So there's this
thing in the back of my mind. Everyone you know,
(05:21):
running an analysis or something. I'm like, man, you know,
when I first learned how to do finan ailment analysis,
which is which you use to kind of analyze structures
and how they've been I'm like, man, it'd be pretty
cool to do this with like a tennis racket and
like optimize that.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
But all the opportunities I had were kind of in aerospace.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
As I was finishing up, I was looking at aerospace,
I was looking at opportunities in academia, and honestly, it
was kind of this opportunity at paying popped up and
I was like, that's different, but that'd be a lot
of fun. Grew up in the Valley, so knew of paying.
My grandfather was a Norwegian engineer for Hughes Aircraft, so
he was always telling me about Carston and so I
(05:56):
was like, Okay, that's different, but that could be a
lot of fun. So I, you know, it's men in
my resume, and fortunately got an interview and and here
I am so a bit of a you know, detour
from what I thought I would be doing. But now
fourteen years later, I'm like, man, this is this is.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Like Bield ready to be golfer.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Now, yeah, I definitely have approved a lot along the way.
I got to work alongside Marty and so it's it's
kind of fun too.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Osmosis makes you better.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
But Jane, listen to this. So Eric, when you first started,
tell tell the listeners about your handicap, when you first
started at ping and where you are at today.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
So when I when I first started, I think that
they have you fill out a little like you know
sheet and I have.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
I had some I had some ping.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
I to berrillium copper irons when I started, uh and
you know, some hand me down driver and kind of
a hodgepodge bag.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And I was I think of.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Thirteen when I wrote down my handicap, and maybe I
was being a little you know, generous with my handicap
because I didn't want to. Marty saw me with some
of my early player tests.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
You don't know, right, like twenty two downs or something
like that.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
But yeah, I mean being around the game, being around
some really good players, having the opportunity to test equipment.
I'm now right around scratch play some of the amateur
events around when I can, and when my family let's
me peel away for those. But but yeah, I mean
I love playing the game now and I'm not quite
(07:23):
at your guys's level, but I go and have a
good time.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Eric, going back to I always think about one practical
example from my time in school was mechanical engineering lab.
We went and rode a mountain bike that had gyros
accelerometers GPS on it, brought it back in download the data.
We're playing around with the data, and that kind of
planted the seed for iping, the iping idea. Yeah, you know,
just you know, knowing how those memes and inertial sensors
(07:49):
and all that stuff worked enough, you obviously brought that
to market. I think Shane Eric's group, you know, makes
it very easy on the engineers because we can have
the idea in his him and his team can help
explain how it works or get down to the fundamentals.
Can you think of an example from something in the
academic world, graduate or undergraduate is kind of fed an
(08:11):
idea or a solution or process.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
From my own experience.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Yea, from your own experience, I think, you know, I
mean iping is a great example, and that you know,
inertial sensing and trying to you know, I learned a
lot about using inertial sensors on spacecraft and how they
use those to determine where they're pointed, where they are
in space, and and so you know that fed a
(08:35):
lot of when you came up are like, hey, like
these new devices that Apple is coming out with, I
know they have all these sensors in them. Do you
think we could use it? And it was it's a
great example of saying, Okay, here's a technology and here's
a problem. We're at the same time doing a bunch
of putter fitting research. Yeah, and so it was this
great marrying of a technology and a solution to leverage
(08:56):
this insight we were getting working with our tour players
and working with other players, trying to elevate our fitting
philosophies with partners and so I mean, for me, that's
a great example of one.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
And then getting into the motion capture stuff as well.
It's all about.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Determining where something is in space, three D space, inersal space.
And then that really helped me as we brought in
one of my first projects is trying to get us
up and running with motion capture and using that to
gain insights. I think for me that was maybe the
easiest one I could think of right now of kind
of marrying what I learned in school and through my
(09:31):
experience there, and then you know, leveraging it to do
research here.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
When did you see motion capture kind of take off
in golf? Because obviously we're seeing, you know, not just
the interest in every day golfers, but the pro golfers.
I mean, you guys got a big player coming through
later today that's interested in it. I mean, I know,
you've had major winners that aren't even peeing, players that
have come through at times that are interested in just
seeing what the technology is about. When did it become
a thing in golf?
Speaker 4 (09:53):
You know, I think it's interesting to look at the
different technologies along the way that have been used to
you know, a the golf swing and the flight of
the ball. I think two thousand and eight it was
probably when like TrackMan and these are the launch mars
became a lot more accessible in common and there you're
kind of like, Okay, great, we're doing a great job
measuring what the ball's doing.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
And then as engineers.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
Were like trying to then infer from what the ball did,
what the club did, how it was delivered. And then
last mars got a little bit better about measuring the
club and impact and its orientation. But there was some
early I think in golf, some early systems probably pre
twenty ten they were doing some motion capture. But then
I think post twenty ten is when you really saw
(10:38):
you know, some of these systems like gears. Our first
generation of focal or early kind of motion capture system
was called Enzo. It was something that a company called
Vaikon developed with Fujikura, and I think that helped us
then bridge, Okay, we can now measure what the ball
is doing.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
We need to know what the club's doing, right, and.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
How that was oriented and impact and how it's moving
through space, kind of working our way back from the
ball flight, getting more insight into the why we got
the ball flight we did. And the motion capture allows
you to do that through the full swing and then
start measuring what the human's doing. So you got to
work your way back from the ball to the club,
you know, to the shaft and the grip and the human.
And so I would say probably like twenty twelve twenty
(11:20):
thirteen is when you really saw it, you know, being
used in fittings and research a bit more heavily.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
But yeah, Eric tell us a little bit. We're sitting
in the launch pad here at the proving grounds, and
we're in the where with the Focal cameras, which is
our new, latest and greatest three D motion capture system.
Tell tell the listener a little bit about focal, how
it works, you know, specs on the cameras, how many
there are, and then we'll get into how we use it.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Yeah, definitely, so you can see maybe you can see
Alli behind me. So we have eight of these optical
cameras that are tracking small markers on our club.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
So it's the same technology.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
See when they develop motion pictures and you have the
guy with like looks like ping pong balls all over them, right,
So same technology, and we're leveraging that to measure what
the club's doing, how it's bending, accelerating, how it's oriented.
Through the golf swing, we operated about eight hundred frames
per second, so every second we're getting eight hundred data points.
So through a swing, you're getting over a thousand different
(12:20):
snapshots of how that club's oriented, how it's accelerating, and
that helps us understand what the player does, helps us
do some schaft research, club head research. And then we
have two kind of cameras that help us find where
the ball is because that helps us go, Okay, here's
the club. We now know where the ball is, and
we can if we don't get a snap shot right
(12:41):
at that point of impact, we can then infer because
we know where the ball is, called extrapolations, some mathematical
method to kind of move forward and predict where that
head was right at the point it was kissing the ball.
And so again we've been leveraging this. It's about twenty
eleven and we've gained I mean, we have a huge
database of swings. We use that to run optimizations, We
(13:03):
use that to mine out insights to build our fitting
you know, algorithms with like copilot and our shaft fitting
algorithms that are in there, and so huge enabling technology
for us to kind of complete the full picture and
marry that with the ball flight we see in Marty.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
A good episode for the podcast.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
If you don't watch it on YouTube, this is a
good episode to jump on the YouTube and watch it
on the back end because we're going to throw in
some images and some of the stuff that we're talking
about right now to kind of help explain what's going on.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, definitely part of part of my brain sometimes hurts
when I think about how the club is moving in
three D space, and it's three D space, and then
it's transient, it's moving over time. Eric, I think one
of the fun things about our three D system is
that we've built the infrastructure to run tests with a
lot of players. Like give a little comparison of a
(13:53):
traditional motion capture system used in athletics other sports versus
how we use it here at the proving grounds.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:01):
So, I mean my first exposure of motion capture was
my lab was right next to a motion capture lab
where they were developing prosthetics. And so they'd have somebody
come in and maybe run on a treadmill and then
you know, take some you know, they'd be marked up,
they'd record some data, and then they'd spend the next
day or two like trying to build the skeleton and
(14:22):
map out the measurements that they wanted. And it was,
you know, pretty cumbersome to go from the actual measurement
of the data to then an insight. And so we've
been able to develop a lot of pipelines and processing
where we can, you know, in a day, let's say
we're testing two different shafts we don't know how you know,
players react and how they behave with different players. Let's
(14:45):
say we want twenty players. We can get twenty players
through here hitting both those shafts, say ten times, and
do that in a day and a half, and then
by the end of that second day hit generate report
and we have a full report like giving us the
stats and the com garrisons of those two different shafts,
and it's all databased, so we can go reference that
like ten years later, right, and and and start to
(15:08):
build insights over time, and those ultimately kind of compound
right over time as we build more and more information
and store that in that database.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Tell us a little bit about because I think a
lot of golfers out there are like, oh, they might
see shafts being tested on a robot. I think that's
a great way to test it, right, Tell the listener
about why we do most of our shaft testing here
in focal and not necessarily on ping man we use.
We use that generally for different reasons, different different test designs.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
Yeah, so we have a bunch of different tools we use.
Each has their strengths and their weaknesses. One of the
really interesting things with shafts is uh, players behave differently
depending on what they feel. It's this big feedback loop
with the player, right, the brain's experiencing things. There's tactile sensations,
(16:01):
you know, they experience reaction forces as that shaft bends differently.
Ping Man doesn't care, right, ping Man's program to swing
the same way every time, whereas with the human you
know that's not the case. And you and I could
do the same shaft tests and have two very different
(16:21):
responses or outcomes between those two shafts because we respond differently.
And that's where the fun comes in and where this
is really important, because we need to capture that, and.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
We actually have so important.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
We have two different We have a system here and
we have a system over at our performance research center
in the UK that's also being used to do a
lot of that human club interaction research. Doctor John Shepherd's
leading that group over there really trying to answer a
lot of similar questions that we are here because it's
just such an important interaction.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Between the club and the player.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Eric, I mean, ping Man, I'm assuming is great for
data when you need that, but you're building golf clubs
for humans. I mean sense when you want a human
to come in here and swing it, because again, the
robot can just doesn't. Like you said, the robot doesn't care.
The golfer does.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
Exactly exactly, and you can't. He's not robot's not going
to tell you how it felt coming down, right.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
So there's another big piece of it.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Was like, you know, hey, you know, this is what
I'm experiencing as I swing these two different chafts or
even different clubheads.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And Eric.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
One of the funnest meetings I know, Shane and I
have talked about in the podcast that I enjoy coming
to every week or every two weeks is our Golf
Science meeting. And this is our meeting. We've been doing
this for a long time, probably over ten years now.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
How many people, Marty, how many people are in that meeting?
Speaker 2 (17:36):
We probably have between eight to ten core.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Yeah, well, and.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
It was interesting so now that we've you know, initially
there's only so many people would fit into a.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Room, right and have a discussion.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Get a bigger room, and right around COVID we started
doing a lot more things virtual and now it's actually
probably eight to ten core guys in the room that
are doing most of the discussion. But then we have
another twenty to thirty that are calling in to listen
in on the discussion, and the whole goal of that
meeting is to just make everybody smarter through discussion.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Plant seeds, you know, for ideas, right, Yeah, Yeah, And
a lot of.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
The curiosity, right, A lot of the emanates from you know,
looking at the data. A lot of players in there
kind of saying, well, these are my experiences. Some scientists
that aren't players that are kind of going, well, it
could be this, and it just it serves as a
great opportunity to kind of feed the curiosity and gain
some insight.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
What is What are some examples Eric of some questions
either that came from Tour or Shane. As you know,
we have a lot of avid golfers in our Ensturing group,
So scenarios where maybe an engineer goes and plays golf
on the weekend or something. They come in they're like,
this seems weird and we don't understand why. Right, that
have kind of fed through projects through your group in
(18:54):
that meeting.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
Yeah, so I get I think if two I think
they both involve moisture.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
One of them was Tour.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
You mentioned Tour coming in and playing in the rain
with the driver, and there's this sensation that like, okay,
you know, the ball kind of squirts a little right
in the rain, and that, you know, there's this sentiment
that like, hey, the ball's not going as far is it.
Do we need grooves on the driver to increase spin.
(19:22):
Is that it's kind of falling out of the air
and that's why it's not going as far. And so
you would think, well, the driver face is wet, so
it's not going to spin as much. And we started
doing some testing we realized, actually, it's not the spin right,
it's actually like spinning a little bit more because on
a driver it's sliding and then grabbing it, so you
get a little bit more spin. But then we come
(19:43):
out here and we're like dousing balls and water and
looking at the aerodynamics and realize that it's actually this
increase in drag on the ball. There's actually a bit
of moisture that kind of remains in the dimples that's
not removed from the ball, and so it leads to
shorter ball flight. And so it's kind of like, well, no,
we don't need a rain driver with grooves, right. If anything,
you make sure that ball is really dry with a
(20:03):
towel if you can and hold your umbrella right, hold
your umbrella that a lot. I mean I remember already
in that meeting kind of going, you know, thinking back
to his different experiences and different majors when it was
raining and going, man, oh I'm having I'm having my
caddy hold that umbrella right over until I pull the trigger.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Kind of think caddy shouldn't keep the player dry, they
should keep the ball the golf.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
You got the rain gear for the rain, you can
handle that.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
So that test Eric, we we we that was a
good one for ping Man, right, So we we sprits
the golf ball, hit it out there on a perfectly
dry day and saw this strange aerodynamic behavior.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
Yeah yeah, yeah, And then we then we ended up
doing it with players as well to see, okay.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Was there some reaction to that.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
We've also done studies over in the UK where we
had guys in rain gear a motion capture to kind
of understand, okay, is there a difference in you know,
how a player can swing with ranger on. So we
tackle that problem from a lot of different ways, but
ping Man's a great way to just kind of go okay,
we're going to measure the full ball flight, look at
the aerodynamics, look the spin rates, and really get to
the root of what's happening.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah, So I think that's one good example.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
The other one I remember is that this is early on, uh,
I think you and John K went out and played
somewhere locally.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
It was, you know, kind of this time of year.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
A lot of moisture, right, wet rye and John K
was saying man like heads his foreign a couple of times,
and it just felt like it ballooned up on me
and landed short.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
What the heck's going on? Right? That's it's wet.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
It should slide up the face and not balloon up
like it has a ton of spin. It should kind
of launch really high and fall out of the air.
And everybody's kind of end up going on. I don't
know what's going on. And it turns to like I
think I was sitting on the back with Paul and
he's like, you guys got PhDs?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
What does that happen? Why is this doing this? That's
when he gets called doctor. Exactly we don't know.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
And so but then that led us down a huge
path of better understanding friction, particularly.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
On low lofted clubs.
Speaker 4 (21:59):
Doing some modeling, it led us to the surface on
our drivers, right, we have that rush surface on our drivers.
It's actually like a little rough which helps lower spin.
What we realized with a foreign of the moisture is
that it caused the situation where the ball slid and
then still engages with the grooves, and so you end
up with a little more spin in that dewey condition
(22:19):
with a forearn, whereas with a wedge it might just
slide right up the face. But a forearm, because it's
less loft and it's a little more normal impact, you
actually get more spin in that dewey condition. So it's
just an insight that I mean, it's gonna help a
player because I no really know what's going on. And
then obviously the ball is a little wet too, so
it might have a little extra drag. It plays into
that other story we had, But yeah, I mean it's
(22:40):
just again making that understanding more robust through just some curiosity.
But that's then paid dividends and so many different designs
of different products.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
That's a great point, Shane, So I just paint the
picture on that. We go plagolf, we hit a fore iron.
Something weird's happening, and that opens the door to a
practical solution. Rougher face on the driver get lower spin
without having to sacrifice moment of inertia. So now that's
part of our secret sauce on low spin high MI.
And then Eric and his team kicked off a bunch
(23:12):
of research on that understanding, kicked off a bunch of
research on spin generation with wedges, and we've worked with
Chris Como, Stan Utley, Derek Dominski to try to crack
the code on what is generating spin with different three
D deliverty three D deliveries and flat spots. We saw
Victor hovelin in here with his shirt off, all marked
up right, trying to get to the bottom five.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Interesting day, Eric, who goes to whom with more questions?
Do you go to Marty with more questions? Do as
Marty come to you with more questions?
Speaker 4 (23:41):
That's a good question. I've gotten to him with a
lot of swing questions, right a.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Go.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
I mean I think it's a good pairing, right, I think,
you know, there's a lot of as a player, and
Marty's gosh, he's super bright engineer. He's got a lot
of technical experience designing clubs and what can be done
can't be done, and so you know, I think it's
probably pretty scores pretty even Eric.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
I wanted to dive into kind of innovation because you know,
you think about something like turbulators. Marty and I've talked
a lot about turbulators over these episodes of the podcast.
The turbulator has been on the driver. Now, I guess
what four or five iterations of this driver? Why why
do you not change something like that as you're coming
out with new innovation and new product.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
A simple answer is it works.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Okay, you know, I think you know, I'd like to say,
you know, ping's about innovation that lasts. You look at
the different things through.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
The years that Carson introduced.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
And through Johnny and his tenure, came through paying and
now you know currently these are things and technologies that
one they typically break a trade off curve. Right, So
turbulators came about of like, well, how do we keep
a driver with high MI but make it aerodynamics We're
not sacrificing club at speed, and turbulators was an easy
(24:59):
way where it's like, well, we could put these on
and we don't actually have to change the overall shape
of the driver too much to get an aerodynamic gain.
And so ultimately we're looking you know, if it's physics
based and it's built on that foundation, it's going to work.
We're going to understand how it works, so we understand
how maybe other things we introduce on the driver might
hinder it from working anymore. And we're looking to compound
(25:21):
those technologies, right, So we're looking to continue to make
the driver better by leveraging each of these technologies on
top of each other. And so, I mean, Marty, we
talk a lot about kind of effective forgiveness and why,
and you know, moment of inertial is primarily talked about
in terms of mass properties, right or in the business
of moving mass around and making things forgiving. But then
(25:42):
there's these other technologies we've worked on yep, that helped
produce that forgiveness through other methods, Right.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Eric, Why is it that it feels like golf club
companies across the board kind of arrive at the same
ideas around the same time. You know, I think about
the square driver popularity and kind of square drivers coming
to market in the mid to what two thousand and five,
two thousand and six is right now, it's ten k
across the board. The popularity and that idea. Why is
it that it feels like everybody kind of arrives at
(26:11):
these ideas at a similar times.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
That's a good question.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
I think part of it is we're all trying to
solve the same problem, okay, and so you know, if
you have a bunch of people trying to solve the
same problem, inevitably you might end up with some similar solutions.
I think there's probably been over the years, maybe some
there's some situations where you've seen some very different philosophies
(26:37):
on what the problem is and what the solution is.
So like where should the center of gravity of the
driver be? And there was a season there where you had,
you know, one kind of sentiment that was like I
should be low and forward because here's the problem and
here the solution is to move that low and forward.
And we were kind of always like, actually, I think
(26:59):
the player's going to benefit more if we move that
low and back. And so I think that's an instance
where maybe there's like some disagreement on what the solution
was right, And then ultimately he saw this kind of
migration to low forward CG drivers not maybe as prominent
as it was during the season maybe ten years ago.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
That also kind of opened the door, Shane to us
answering the questions what are optimal launch conditions? Right, because
there was a time where I don't know, seventeen launch
and sub two thousand spin was considered well, you got
to get there, that's the fire hose analogy. You gotta
shoot that thing up high. Well, because of Eric's team
(27:38):
developing good models, that was actually how we developed our
optimal launch and spin chart, right. That described another you know,
I think one of the big things we try to
do is when you see in abnormality or something that
doesn't feel right or an outlier, we should be able
to explain that with the physics. So when Cameron Champ
comes in, he's launching it at s and five and
(28:00):
spin it at twenty eight hundred, it doesn't sit right,
you know that, Hey, he should launch it higher and
spin it less. Well, it's because he has super high
ball speed one ninety plus and he hits down on
the driver and our models actually explain that, right. I
think that's another kind of good example on the fitting side. Yeah, Eric,
we spent time with Rob Griffin, our historian looking at
(28:23):
some of Carson's prototypes, and one of them that I
think was fun to look at is the story and
Rob told the story of the bench shaft, Yeah, which
was kind of how the pistol grip started. Tell us
a little bit about some of the work you've done
on the pistol grip or some other stories from I
think your team being able to get at the root
(28:45):
of what Carson was able to discover on his own
through experiment back in his day.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
So, I mean the balnamic shaft was I don't know,
I had never actually like set up to this bench
shaft on an iron or a post and kind of
actually felt, you know, through the swing through you know,
taking a putt, like just the the sensation of where
that oriented the mass of the head relative to the grip. Ultimately,
(29:12):
it ended up kind of being deemed nonconforming. He designed
a whole set of irons, and there's this great picture
of all the irons up and you can see all
the shafts kind of bent. Uh and and it's his
thought was like, hey, you know, when I set this up,
I want if I look down the grip, I want
that that shaft and that grip pointed right at the ball, right,
And if the.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Shaft's going in at the heel of the club, you
get it the point of the ball.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
You have to bend the top part and you know,
if you're looking down the end of it, So it's
pointed a little forward and a little toward the toe
to get it to aim at the ball. And he
did that, and he swung it, and he's like, well,
that feels pretty good, right, feels very stable. And so
his solution when it became nonconforming, he was like, Okay,
I'm gonna put a little offset into the putter. So
the plumber's neck came out and and I'm gonna I'm
(29:56):
not gonna bend the shaft, but you know, at the time,
gulf part had the inform, so really, I'm gonna tilt
the core a little bit so I can kind of
get that same feeling and orient the center of mass.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Of the putter head relative to the putter grip in
the same way.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
And so you kind of pick up, you know, an
answer putter with his altered and former grip and compare
that to his original balnamic shaft and you're kind of okay,
those those have a very similar feel, a sense of stability,
and so that let us down a path. I've been
trying a bunch of different you know, trying to understand
how the relationship between the center gravity of the putter
(30:32):
head and the shaft influences performance. We started testing pistol
grips versus straight grips and kind of arrived at okay,
there actually is an influence on how a player delivers
the head with the different grips, and so that's fed
into you know, our our fitting philosophies when it comes
to putters. And so it's a pretty cool as so
(30:54):
many meetings where you've been in them, where it's like
we'll come in and we're like we're filming, pretty proud
of ourselves. Found this new new insight, right, and we're
kind of like, okay, this is pretty cool. And and
I wasn't around when Carson was around, but we still have,
you know, the busting of John A being around and
being really involved and he'll kind of, you know, just
(31:16):
quietly raise his hand and go, you know, Carson, you
tried that in like sixty five. I'm going to take
you over to you know, this warehouse and show you
some of the things that Carston did and you're kind
of like, oh, okay, but then I mean, ultimately you
start to marry these things together. And now with the tech,
Christ didn't have a vocal system to like answer this questions.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
It's like when you look at the Pyramids and you're like,
how did they build these things? You know, back in
the day when they didn't have everything we have with
cranes and things that are available. And you think about
Carson's ability to answer questions without you know, rad or
capture and ping man and things like that. I mean,
it's for you, I'm assuming it's got to be incredibly
impressive when you dive back into some of the historical
ideas and answers.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
He came up it one hundred percent is and it
gives me a great deal appreciation.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
And he was always trying to find the best we
have pictures of like high speed cameras back in his
day when he was trying to, you know, make pingman
and trying to understand how do you get ping man
to swing more like a human. And he did high
speed photos and everything, so he was always trying to
find the best way to measure and gain understanding.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Eric what's left?
Speaker 3 (32:18):
I mean, I know that's an easy question to ask,
but you know, you think about obviously leaning into the
player testing, and then you've got focal and you feel
like you're starting to kind of answer some of the
questions that didn't exist answers didn't exist maybe fifteen twenty
years ago. What's the next what's the next step for you?
Where's the black hole and the research that you're going
to dive into next.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
We always have plenty of knowledge gaps that we're looking
to gain understanding. I think still to me, the biggest
mystery is how humans behave Like I say, they're really messy,
and they are when it comes to like understanding how
they react two different shafts. You know, you can change
the center of mass in the head, you know, like
it looks the same like and all of a sudden,
(33:00):
it's like their impact location shifts because you've they just
feel it, and trying to predict and understand that more
understand how what they feel influences performance, Like you know,
it's can we if something sounds a little different, did
they swing it faster? You're kind of like there's no
physics reason, like from like the club design that it
(33:22):
should go any faster because it sounds different. But if
that player's experience is influence influences that, I think that's
a huge area of study for us that I want
to understand better personally. I don't know a lot of
our engineers do. And honestly, there's no shortage of questions
and pain of all of us being you know, a
lot of us being players, pain of the game, and
(33:43):
curiosity of like, how how can we make this better?
And so yeah, it take a whole nother podcast to
explain all my Marty.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
As you're as you're playing golf and questions come up,
I mean you think about the four iron question that
popped up when you're playing. Are you writing these down?
Are they just stuck in your brain? Are you able
to kind of push them out as you're enjoying around
a golf or these things that once something pops up
in your head, is it just is it unavoidable?
Speaker 2 (34:08):
They burn into my brain and you don't have to
write an example. I'll give you an example. I went
to I went to second Stage a Q school because
I had qualified got exemption to second stage accuschool. I
went and played at Bear Creek Mariata, California, and it
was it was in the fall, rained a bunch bermuda
and there's mudd mudballs all over the place. And this
was a Pete No, it was a Nicholas course, but
(34:28):
in his Nicholas small greens, hazards everywhere. And I would
have mudball from one eighty and just guessing what this
thing is going to do. And I came back, I missed,
didn't make it through, and I came back, I'm like,
we need to do an experiment on mudballs. So we
did it with the with Eric's help and our golf
science group. So I think it's.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Would you would you discover by the way, would you
discover from talk about mess there is much mudball experience,
little mudball rules.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
We actually have a blog article on our on our
website and then we put put a little uh kind
of rule sheet on what to do with mud. Well.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
I feel like when you're watching a golf broadcast, it's
like MUDs on the left, the ball is gonna go right.
MUD's on the right, it's gonna go left. Like what
did you guys figure out when you actually tested that
air well?
Speaker 4 (35:12):
And that's that's actually so that's accurate and right and
and so, and that's something that I think at the
time it wasn't as prominent like we.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Was.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
The first thing you do anytime you have a question
is go, well, do somebody already answer it?
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Right?
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Don't want to go reinvent the wheel. And we couldn't
find no research on it. There was no research on it, right, Uh.
And so I was like, well, let's go do it then. Yeah,
and so you know that's what we did. And we
got Phoenix's finest mud. And you know it's like.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Phoenix's finest mud might just be clay, but.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
Yeah, well you know we had a good, important mud.
One of our interns was going around Phoenix trying to
find you know.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
We'll drop some high speed video of the impacts into
the post.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Was like, if you hit a four iron on a
mudball versus an eight iron, was there a big difference there?
Speaker 2 (35:59):
So I think with mud, it's not just that it's
on the right it's gonna go left. It's on the left,
it's gonna go right. It also goes shorter. Okay, it
has more variants. So you need to as a golfer,
you need to aim way more conservatively right and then
the impact on distance is huge. That's the biggest piece.
If you have mud on the ball, and then it
(36:19):
depends on where it is top, bottom, front, back. If
it's between the club, gonna get in between the club
and the face, you lose massive amount of ball speed
goes lower, is more variable, so you gotta have kind
of rules on exactly where it is. But we've used it.
We've used that research for more than just playing. It's
also informed some of our ball flight, you know, understanding
(36:39):
of aerodynamics.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
Last mudball question for you, Marty, you've got one fifty,
which is I'm assuming kind of a nine iron for you,
you've got a mudball or you hit an eight.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yes, depending on where the trouble is, I would hit
an eight. Hit it lower, hit it a little bit
softer would be generally big.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Keep it out of the air as much as possible.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Yeah, minimize the flight time and just give yourself or
margin for air. Yeah, little little gripped down. Yeah, but
yet you just have to be way more conservative on
your on your aiming strategy if the whole allows for it.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Eric Eric jumped into a mudball conversation he was not
ready for. I don't know, I don't know if you
were prepared for the mudball com Another day of ping,
Another day of ping. Well, Eric, we really appreciate the time.
Great inside, I mean, the focal has been amazing to
just kind of watch, and obviously it's been amazing for
you guys. So thanks for the time, great chat and
we'll have you on soon.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
I had a ton of fun. Thanks. This is the
Ping proven Grounds podcast.
The guys from Ping. They've kind of showed me how
much the equipment matters. I just love that I can
hit any shot I kind of want.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
We're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about
what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Welcome back to the Pink Proving Grounds Podcast. I'm Shane
Bak and join this always by Marty Jerts and Marty.
We're about the nerd out on some golf stuff. I'm
excited for this episode of today.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
It's about time. We've been looking forward to having doctor
Eric Hendrickson, my colleague who leads our golf science efforts
at PING, which is Shane. I think where the good
stuff happens. We talk a lot about the products that
come to market, how we're designing it, but Eric leads
the group and himself personally has worked on a lot
of the very fundamental things that go into product performance,
(00:43):
human performance, and kind of the foundation on how products
come to be. So welcome on the pod.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Excited to be on Eric.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
First of all, is it weird to be called doctor?
Does that ever kind of throw you for a loop?
Speaker 4 (00:57):
You know at home? It does every once in a while.
The kids will throw out there my doctors over here,
my son is referred to doctor Hendrickson. Over at our club,
he gets called that. Just has a bit of fun,
But you know, it's actually not used around here a
whole lot unless we're doing a podcast or something like that.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
So, can you take us through your journey through ping
before we kind of dive into what we're going to
talk about today.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Yeah, So I've been here about fourteen years. Came in
as a research engineer in our innovation group, so got
early on work on a lot of things involving aerodynamics.
Had an aerospace background. I got my PhD in aerospace engineering,
and so worked on aerodynamics, worked on some motion capture.
We're here in our focal lab, so worked a lot
(01:41):
of motion capture, inertial sensing, so sensing motion, worked on
some things tracking putter motion, did some putter fitting research,
and so then got into fitting. I was the head
of fitting science for a little bit and then came
over and started leading both our innovation group and our
testing group. And now I have kind of migrated over
to focusing a lot on our basic research. As Marty
(02:02):
talked about, so just kind of answering like the why
questions how things work, and feed insights into our design
team and our innovation team. We really feel that like
our best innovations and the technologies that help people play
better emanate out of a better understanding.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Of the physics.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
And that's I mean, that was why Carston was so successful, right.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
It was physics.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
First and then using that to help people enjoy the
game more.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
And it feels like Carston was amazing. It always wanted
to answer the why, right, I mean that was basically
how ping was created, was answering the why to certain
questions that nobody really knew the answer to.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Yeah, and that's Marty I talk a lot about just that,
like a core value of curiosity, right.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
He was always very curious.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Yeah, and out of that curiosity came you know, we'll
go over and visit Carston's office or historian and see
some of the early stuff that Carston was doing. And
it was clearly just him being very curious about how
something worked and then quickly make something and go try
it and learn from it.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Eric, tell us a little bit about air. Getting your
PhD in aerospace engineering. What did that look like, What
classes were you taking, What were some of the labs,
some of the experiments, some of the hands on stuff
like give it go, give a little background on that.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Yeah, So all my graduate work was focused on in
space electric propulsion, so little thrusters to help orient satellites
up in space. I was lucky in that my graduate
work involved a bit of experiment and then a bit
of modeling, so kind of physically, you know, testing out ideas,
(03:37):
but then also using physics and math based models to
kind of predict what would happen, trying to get those
to match up. Because if we can have models that predict,
we can then innovate and make improvements. And so got
to design and build a high vacuum facility, so like
just a big tank that sucks all the air out
and allows you to try these thrusters, you know, here
(03:58):
in a lab, and obviously taking classes in everything from
you know, house satellites orbit around the Earth, to understanding
electromagnetics and the physics based on how do you accelerate
an ionized gas, a lot of thermodynamics, and so it
was a lot of fun, a lot of feeling pretty
(04:19):
inadequate and stupid along the way, but trying to learn
from that. And I think Ultimately it was I think
it prepared me really well for the role I have now,
and that I was constantly having to kind of understand
the fundamentals of how something worked to then be able
to build on it and do something novel.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Ye, and that's a.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Big thing in academia, right, introducing novel insights to kind
of build the academic community.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
So, I mean, Eric, this is advanced stuff you're talking about.
Did you ever think you'd land at a golf company. I
mean it just seems like, I mean you're talking about
science and you're talking about like satellites and things like that,
and you're applying all that stuff to golf clubs and
how to make people better at golf.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
I think in the back of my mind, I mean,
you kind of go through and finish my undergrad and like, okay,
what you know, I'm really enjoying academia. I'm really enjoying
kind of diving into these deep problems and doing research.
So went on to grad school and just some of
the experiences I had let me down the kind of
aerospace route I grew up playing tennis. So there's this
thing in the back of my mind. Everyone you know,
(05:21):
running an analysis or something. I'm like, man, you know,
when I first learned how to do finan ailment analysis,
which is which you use to kind of analyze structures
and how they've been I'm like, man, it'd be pretty
cool to do this with like a tennis racket and
like optimize that.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
But all the opportunities I had were kind of in aerospace.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
As I was finishing up, I was looking at aerospace,
I was looking at opportunities in academia, and honestly, it
was kind of this opportunity at paying popped up and
I was like, that's different, but that'd be a lot
of fun. Grew up in the Valley, so knew of paying.
My grandfather was a Norwegian engineer for Hughes Aircraft, so
he was always telling me about Carston and so I
(05:56):
was like, Okay, that's different, but that could be a
lot of fun. So I, you know, it's men in
my resume, and fortunately got an interview and and here
I am so a bit of a you know, detour
from what I thought I would be doing. But now
fourteen years later, I'm like, man, this is this is.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Like Bield ready to be golfer.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Now, yeah, I definitely have approved a lot along the way.
I got to work alongside Marty and so it's it's
kind of fun too.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Osmosis makes you better.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
But Jane, listen to this. So Eric, when you first started,
tell tell the listeners about your handicap, when you first
started at ping and where you are at today.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
So when I when I first started, I think that
they have you fill out a little like you know
sheet and I have.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
I had some I had some ping.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
I to berrillium copper irons when I started, uh and
you know, some hand me down driver and kind of
a hodgepodge bag.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And I was I think of.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Thirteen when I wrote down my handicap, and maybe I
was being a little you know, generous with my handicap
because I didn't want to. Marty saw me with some
of my early player tests.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
You don't know, right, like twenty two downs or something
like that.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
But yeah, I mean being around the game, being around
some really good players, having the opportunity to test equipment.
I'm now right around scratch play some of the amateur
events around when I can, and when my family let's
me peel away for those. But but yeah, I mean
I love playing the game now and I'm not quite
(07:23):
at your guys's level, but I go and have a
good time.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Eric, going back to I always think about one practical
example from my time in school was mechanical engineering lab.
We went and rode a mountain bike that had gyros
accelerometers GPS on it, brought it back in download the data.
We're playing around with the data, and that kind of
planted the seed for iping, the iping idea. Yeah, you know,
just you know, knowing how those memes and inertial sensors
(07:49):
and all that stuff worked enough, you obviously brought that
to market. I think Shane Eric's group, you know, makes
it very easy on the engineers because we can have
the idea in his him and his team can help
explain how it works or get down to the fundamentals.
Can you think of an example from something in the
academic world, graduate or undergraduate is kind of fed an
(08:11):
idea or a solution or process.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
From my own experience.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Yea, from your own experience, I think, you know, I
mean iping is a great example, and that you know,
inertial sensing and trying to you know, I learned a
lot about using inertial sensors on spacecraft and how they
use those to determine where they're pointed, where they are
in space, and and so you know that fed a
(08:35):
lot of when you came up are like, hey, like
these new devices that Apple is coming out with, I
know they have all these sensors in them. Do you
think we could use it? And it was it's a
great example of saying, Okay, here's a technology and here's
a problem. We're at the same time doing a bunch
of putter fitting research. Yeah, and so it was this
great marrying of a technology and a solution to leverage
(08:56):
this insight we were getting working with our tour players
and working with other players, trying to elevate our fitting
philosophies with partners and so I mean, for me, that's
a great example of one.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
And then getting into the motion capture stuff as well.
It's all about.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Determining where something is in space, three D space, inersal space.
And then that really helped me as we brought in
one of my first projects is trying to get us
up and running with motion capture and using that to
gain insights. I think for me that was maybe the
easiest one I could think of right now of kind
of marrying what I learned in school and through my
(09:31):
experience there, and then you know, leveraging it to do
research here.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
When did you see motion capture kind of take off
in golf? Because obviously we're seeing, you know, not just
the interest in every day golfers, but the pro golfers.
I mean, you guys got a big player coming through
later today that's interested in it. I mean, I know,
you've had major winners that aren't even peeing, players that
have come through at times that are interested in just
seeing what the technology is about. When did it become
a thing in golf?
Speaker 4 (09:53):
You know, I think it's interesting to look at the
different technologies along the way that have been used to
you know, a the golf swing and the flight of
the ball. I think two thousand and eight it was
probably when like TrackMan and these are the launch mars
became a lot more accessible in common and there you're
kind of like, Okay, great, we're doing a great job
measuring what the ball's doing.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
And then as engineers.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
Were like trying to then infer from what the ball did,
what the club did, how it was delivered. And then
last mars got a little bit better about measuring the
club and impact and its orientation. But there was some
early I think in golf, some early systems probably pre
twenty ten they were doing some motion capture. But then
I think post twenty ten is when you really saw
(10:38):
you know, some of these systems like gears. Our first
generation of focal or early kind of motion capture system
was called Enzo. It was something that a company called
Vaikon developed with Fujikura, and I think that helped us
then bridge, Okay, we can now measure what the ball
is doing.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
We need to know what the club's doing, right, and.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
How that was oriented and impact and how it's moving
through space, kind of working our way back from the
ball flight, getting more insight into the why we got
the ball flight we did. And the motion capture allows
you to do that through the full swing and then
start measuring what the human's doing. So you got to
work your way back from the ball to the club,
you know, to the shaft and the grip and the human.
And so I would say probably like twenty twelve twenty
(11:20):
thirteen is when you really saw it, you know, being
used in fittings and research a bit more heavily.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
But yeah, Eric tell us a little bit. We're sitting
in the launch pad here at the proving grounds, and
we're in the where with the Focal cameras, which is
our new, latest and greatest three D motion capture system.
Tell tell the listener a little bit about focal, how
it works, you know, specs on the cameras, how many
there are, and then we'll get into how we use it.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Yeah, definitely, so you can see maybe you can see
Alli behind me. So we have eight of these optical
cameras that are tracking small markers on our club.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
So it's the same technology.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
See when they develop motion pictures and you have the
guy with like looks like ping pong balls all over them, right,
So same technology, and we're leveraging that to measure what
the club's doing, how it's bending, accelerating, how it's oriented.
Through the golf swing, we operated about eight hundred frames
per second, so every second we're getting eight hundred data points.
So through a swing, you're getting over a thousand different
(12:20):
snapshots of how that club's oriented, how it's accelerating, and
that helps us understand what the player does, helps us
do some schaft research, club head research. And then we
have two kind of cameras that help us find where
the ball is because that helps us go, Okay, here's
the club. We now know where the ball is, and
we can if we don't get a snap shot right
(12:41):
at that point of impact, we can then infer because
we know where the ball is, called extrapolations, some mathematical
method to kind of move forward and predict where that
head was right at the point it was kissing the ball.
And so again we've been leveraging this. It's about twenty
eleven and we've gained I mean, we have a huge
database of swings. We use that to run optimizations, We
(13:03):
use that to mine out insights to build our fitting
you know, algorithms with like copilot and our shaft fitting
algorithms that are in there, and so huge enabling technology
for us to kind of complete the full picture and
marry that with the ball flight we see in Marty.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
A good episode for the podcast.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
If you don't watch it on YouTube, this is a
good episode to jump on the YouTube and watch it
on the back end because we're going to throw in
some images and some of the stuff that we're talking
about right now to kind of help explain what's going on.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, definitely part of part of my brain sometimes hurts
when I think about how the club is moving in
three D space, and it's three D space, and then
it's transient, it's moving over time. Eric, I think one
of the fun things about our three D system is
that we've built the infrastructure to run tests with a
lot of players. Like give a little comparison of a
(13:53):
traditional motion capture system used in athletics other sports versus
how we use it here at the proving grounds.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:01):
So, I mean my first exposure of motion capture was
my lab was right next to a motion capture lab
where they were developing prosthetics. And so they'd have somebody
come in and maybe run on a treadmill and then
you know, take some you know, they'd be marked up,
they'd record some data, and then they'd spend the next
day or two like trying to build the skeleton and
(14:22):
map out the measurements that they wanted. And it was,
you know, pretty cumbersome to go from the actual measurement
of the data to then an insight. And so we've
been able to develop a lot of pipelines and processing
where we can, you know, in a day, let's say
we're testing two different shafts we don't know how you know,
players react and how they behave with different players. Let's
(14:45):
say we want twenty players. We can get twenty players
through here hitting both those shafts, say ten times, and
do that in a day and a half, and then
by the end of that second day hit generate report
and we have a full report like giving us the
stats and the com garrisons of those two different shafts,
and it's all databased, so we can go reference that
like ten years later, right, and and and start to
(15:08):
build insights over time, and those ultimately kind of compound
right over time as we build more and more information
and store that in that database.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Tell us a little bit about because I think a
lot of golfers out there are like, oh, they might
see shafts being tested on a robot. I think that's
a great way to test it, right, Tell the listener
about why we do most of our shaft testing here
in focal and not necessarily on ping man we use.
We use that generally for different reasons, different different test designs.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
Yeah, so we have a bunch of different tools we use.
Each has their strengths and their weaknesses. One of the
really interesting things with shafts is uh, players behave differently
depending on what they feel. It's this big feedback loop
with the player, right, the brain's experiencing things. There's tactile sensations,
(16:01):
you know, they experience reaction forces as that shaft bends differently.
Ping Man doesn't care, right, ping Man's program to swing
the same way every time, whereas with the human you
know that's not the case. And you and I could
do the same shaft tests and have two very different
(16:21):
responses or outcomes between those two shafts because we respond differently.
And that's where the fun comes in and where this
is really important, because we need to capture that, and.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
We actually have so important.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
We have two different We have a system here and
we have a system over at our performance research center
in the UK that's also being used to do a
lot of that human club interaction research. Doctor John Shepherd's
leading that group over there really trying to answer a
lot of similar questions that we are here because it's
just such an important interaction.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Between the club and the player.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Eric, I mean, ping Man, I'm assuming is great for
data when you need that, but you're building golf clubs
for humans. I mean sense when you want a human
to come in here and swing it, because again, the
robot can just doesn't. Like you said, the robot doesn't care.
The golfer does.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
Exactly exactly, and you can't. He's not robot's not going
to tell you how it felt coming down, right.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
So there's another big piece of it.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Was like, you know, hey, you know, this is what
I'm experiencing as I swing these two different chafts or
even different clubheads.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And Eric.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
One of the funnest meetings I know, Shane and I
have talked about in the podcast that I enjoy coming
to every week or every two weeks is our Golf
Science meeting. And this is our meeting. We've been doing
this for a long time, probably over ten years now.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
How many people, Marty, how many people are in that meeting?
Speaker 2 (17:36):
We probably have between eight to ten core.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Yeah, well, and.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
It was interesting so now that we've you know, initially
there's only so many people would fit into a.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Room, right and have a discussion.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Get a bigger room, and right around COVID we started
doing a lot more things virtual and now it's actually
probably eight to ten core guys in the room that
are doing most of the discussion. But then we have
another twenty to thirty that are calling in to listen
in on the discussion, and the whole goal of that
meeting is to just make everybody smarter through discussion.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Plant seeds, you know, for ideas, right, Yeah, Yeah, And
a lot of.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
The curiosity, right, A lot of the emanates from you know,
looking at the data. A lot of players in there
kind of saying, well, these are my experiences. Some scientists
that aren't players that are kind of going, well, it
could be this, and it just it serves as a
great opportunity to kind of feed the curiosity and gain
some insight.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
What is What are some examples Eric of some questions
either that came from Tour or Shane. As you know,
we have a lot of avid golfers in our Ensturing group,
So scenarios where maybe an engineer goes and plays golf
on the weekend or something. They come in they're like,
this seems weird and we don't understand why. Right, that
have kind of fed through projects through your group in
(18:54):
that meeting.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
Yeah, so I get I think if two I think
they both involve moisture.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
One of them was Tour.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
You mentioned Tour coming in and playing in the rain
with the driver, and there's this sensation that like, okay,
you know, the ball kind of squirts a little right
in the rain, and that, you know, there's this sentiment
that like, hey, the ball's not going as far is it.
Do we need grooves on the driver to increase spin.
(19:22):
Is that it's kind of falling out of the air
and that's why it's not going as far. And so
you would think, well, the driver face is wet, so
it's not going to spin as much. And we started
doing some testing we realized, actually, it's not the spin right,
it's actually like spinning a little bit more because on
a driver it's sliding and then grabbing it, so you
get a little bit more spin. But then we come
(19:43):
out here and we're like dousing balls and water and
looking at the aerodynamics and realize that it's actually this
increase in drag on the ball. There's actually a bit
of moisture that kind of remains in the dimples that's
not removed from the ball, and so it leads to
shorter ball flight. And so it's kind of like, well, no,
we don't need a rain driver with grooves, right. If anything,
you make sure that ball is really dry with a
(20:03):
towel if you can and hold your umbrella right, hold
your umbrella that a lot. I mean I remember already
in that meeting kind of going, you know, thinking back
to his different experiences and different majors when it was
raining and going, man, oh I'm having I'm having my
caddy hold that umbrella right over until I pull the trigger.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Kind of think caddy shouldn't keep the player dry, they
should keep the ball the golf.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
You got the rain gear for the rain, you can
handle that.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
So that test Eric, we we we that was a
good one for ping Man, right, So we we sprits
the golf ball, hit it out there on a perfectly
dry day and saw this strange aerodynamic behavior.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
Yeah yeah, yeah, And then we then we ended up
doing it with players as well to see, okay.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Was there some reaction to that.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
We've also done studies over in the UK where we
had guys in rain gear a motion capture to kind
of understand, okay, is there a difference in you know,
how a player can swing with ranger on. So we
tackle that problem from a lot of different ways, but
ping Man's a great way to just kind of go okay,
we're going to measure the full ball flight, look at
the aerodynamics, look the spin rates, and really get to
the root of what's happening.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah, So I think that's one good example.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
The other one I remember is that this is early on, uh,
I think you and John K went out and played
somewhere locally.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
It was, you know, kind of this time of year.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
A lot of moisture, right, wet rye and John K
was saying man like heads his foreign a couple of times,
and it just felt like it ballooned up on me
and landed short.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
What the heck's going on? Right? That's it's wet.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
It should slide up the face and not balloon up
like it has a ton of spin. It should kind
of launch really high and fall out of the air.
And everybody's kind of end up going on. I don't
know what's going on. And it turns to like I
think I was sitting on the back with Paul and
he's like, you guys got PhDs?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
What does that happen? Why is this doing this? That's
when he gets called doctor. Exactly we don't know.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
And so but then that led us down a huge
path of better understanding friction, particularly.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
On low lofted clubs.
Speaker 4 (21:59):
Doing some modeling, it led us to the surface on
our drivers, right, we have that rush surface on our drivers.
It's actually like a little rough which helps lower spin.
What we realized with a foreign of the moisture is
that it caused the situation where the ball slid and
then still engages with the grooves, and so you end
up with a little more spin in that dewey condition
(22:19):
with a forearn, whereas with a wedge it might just
slide right up the face. But a forearm, because it's
less loft and it's a little more normal impact, you
actually get more spin in that dewey condition. So it's
just an insight that I mean, it's gonna help a
player because I no really know what's going on. And
then obviously the ball is a little wet too, so
it might have a little extra drag. It plays into
that other story we had, But yeah, I mean it's
(22:40):
just again making that understanding more robust through just some curiosity.
But that's then paid dividends and so many different designs
of different products.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
That's a great point, Shane, So I just paint the
picture on that. We go plagolf, we hit a fore iron.
Something weird's happening, and that opens the door to a
practical solution. Rougher face on the driver get lower spin
without having to sacrifice moment of inertia. So now that's
part of our secret sauce on low spin high MI.
And then Eric and his team kicked off a bunch
(23:12):
of research on that understanding, kicked off a bunch of
research on spin generation with wedges, and we've worked with
Chris Como, Stan Utley, Derek Dominski to try to crack
the code on what is generating spin with different three
D deliverty three D deliveries and flat spots. We saw
Victor hovelin in here with his shirt off, all marked
up right, trying to get to the bottom five.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Interesting day, Eric, who goes to whom with more questions?
Do you go to Marty with more questions? Do as
Marty come to you with more questions?
Speaker 4 (23:41):
That's a good question. I've gotten to him with a
lot of swing questions, right a.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Go.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
I mean I think it's a good pairing, right, I think,
you know, there's a lot of as a player, and
Marty's gosh, he's super bright engineer. He's got a lot
of technical experience designing clubs and what can be done
can't be done, and so you know, I think it's
probably pretty scores pretty even Eric.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
I wanted to dive into kind of innovation because you know,
you think about something like turbulators. Marty and I've talked
a lot about turbulators over these episodes of the podcast.
The turbulator has been on the driver. Now, I guess
what four or five iterations of this driver? Why why
do you not change something like that as you're coming
out with new innovation and new product.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
A simple answer is it works.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Okay, you know, I think you know, I'd like to say,
you know, ping's about innovation that lasts. You look at
the different things through.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
The years that Carson introduced.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
And through Johnny and his tenure, came through paying and
now you know currently these are things and technologies that
one they typically break a trade off curve. Right, So
turbulators came about of like, well, how do we keep
a driver with high MI but make it aerodynamics We're
not sacrificing club at speed, and turbulators was an easy
(24:59):
way where it's like, well, we could put these on
and we don't actually have to change the overall shape
of the driver too much to get an aerodynamic gain.
And so ultimately we're looking you know, if it's physics
based and it's built on that foundation, it's going to work.
We're going to understand how it works, so we understand
how maybe other things we introduce on the driver might
hinder it from working anymore. And we're looking to compound
(25:21):
those technologies, right, So we're looking to continue to make
the driver better by leveraging each of these technologies on
top of each other. And so, I mean, Marty, we
talk a lot about kind of effective forgiveness and why,
and you know, moment of inertial is primarily talked about
in terms of mass properties, right or in the business
of moving mass around and making things forgiving. But then
(25:42):
there's these other technologies we've worked on yep, that helped
produce that forgiveness through other methods, Right.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Eric, Why is it that it feels like golf club
companies across the board kind of arrive at the same
ideas around the same time. You know, I think about
the square driver popularity and kind of square drivers coming
to market in the mid to what two thousand and five,
two thousand and six is right now, it's ten k
across the board. The popularity and that idea. Why is
it that it feels like everybody kind of arrives at
(26:11):
these ideas at a similar times.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
That's a good question.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
I think part of it is we're all trying to
solve the same problem, okay, and so you know, if
you have a bunch of people trying to solve the
same problem, inevitably you might end up with some similar solutions.
I think there's probably been over the years, maybe some
there's some situations where you've seen some very different philosophies
(26:37):
on what the problem is and what the solution is.
So like where should the center of gravity of the
driver be? And there was a season there where you had,
you know, one kind of sentiment that was like I
should be low and forward because here's the problem and
here the solution is to move that low and forward.
And we were kind of always like, actually, I think
(26:59):
the player's going to benefit more if we move that
low and back. And so I think that's an instance
where maybe there's like some disagreement on what the solution
was right, And then ultimately he saw this kind of
migration to low forward CG drivers not maybe as prominent
as it was during the season maybe ten years ago.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
That also kind of opened the door, Shane to us
answering the questions what are optimal launch conditions? Right, because
there was a time where I don't know, seventeen launch
and sub two thousand spin was considered well, you got
to get there, that's the fire hose analogy. You gotta
shoot that thing up high. Well, because of Eric's team
(27:38):
developing good models, that was actually how we developed our
optimal launch and spin chart, right. That described another you know,
I think one of the big things we try to
do is when you see in abnormality or something that
doesn't feel right or an outlier, we should be able
to explain that with the physics. So when Cameron Champ
comes in, he's launching it at s and five and
(28:00):
spin it at twenty eight hundred, it doesn't sit right,
you know that, Hey, he should launch it higher and
spin it less. Well, it's because he has super high
ball speed one ninety plus and he hits down on
the driver and our models actually explain that, right. I
think that's another kind of good example on the fitting side. Yeah, Eric,
we spent time with Rob Griffin, our historian looking at
(28:23):
some of Carson's prototypes, and one of them that I
think was fun to look at is the story and
Rob told the story of the bench shaft, Yeah, which
was kind of how the pistol grip started. Tell us
a little bit about some of the work you've done
on the pistol grip or some other stories from I
think your team being able to get at the root
(28:45):
of what Carson was able to discover on his own
through experiment back in his day.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
So, I mean the balnamic shaft was I don't know,
I had never actually like set up to this bench
shaft on an iron or a post and kind of
actually felt, you know, through the swing through you know,
taking a putt, like just the the sensation of where
that oriented the mass of the head relative to the grip. Ultimately,
(29:12):
it ended up kind of being deemed nonconforming. He designed
a whole set of irons, and there's this great picture
of all the irons up and you can see all
the shafts kind of bent. Uh and and it's his
thought was like, hey, you know, when I set this up,
I want if I look down the grip, I want
that that shaft and that grip pointed right at the ball, right,
And if the.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Shaft's going in at the heel of the club, you
get it the point of the ball.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
You have to bend the top part and you know,
if you're looking down the end of it, So it's
pointed a little forward and a little toward the toe
to get it to aim at the ball. And he
did that, and he swung it, and he's like, well,
that feels pretty good, right, feels very stable. And so
his solution when it became nonconforming, he was like, Okay,
I'm gonna put a little offset into the putter. So
the plumber's neck came out and and I'm gonna I'm
(29:56):
not gonna bend the shaft, but you know, at the time,
gulf part had the inform, so really, I'm gonna tilt
the core a little bit so I can kind of
get that same feeling and orient the center of mass.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Of the putter head relative to the putter grip in
the same way.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
And so you kind of pick up, you know, an
answer putter with his altered and former grip and compare
that to his original balnamic shaft and you're kind of okay,
those those have a very similar feel, a sense of stability,
and so that let us down a path. I've been
trying a bunch of different you know, trying to understand
how the relationship between the center gravity of the putter
(30:32):
head and the shaft influences performance. We started testing pistol
grips versus straight grips and kind of arrived at okay,
there actually is an influence on how a player delivers
the head with the different grips, and so that's fed
into you know, our our fitting philosophies when it comes
to putters. And so it's a pretty cool as so
(30:54):
many meetings where you've been in them, where it's like
we'll come in and we're like we're filming, pretty proud
of ourselves. Found this new new insight, right, and we're
kind of like, okay, this is pretty cool. And and
I wasn't around when Carson was around, but we still have,
you know, the busting of John A being around and
being really involved and he'll kind of, you know, just
(31:16):
quietly raise his hand and go, you know, Carson, you
tried that in like sixty five. I'm going to take
you over to you know, this warehouse and show you
some of the things that Carston did and you're kind
of like, oh, okay, but then I mean, ultimately you
start to marry these things together. And now with the tech,
Christ didn't have a vocal system to like answer this questions.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
It's like when you look at the Pyramids and you're like,
how did they build these things? You know, back in
the day when they didn't have everything we have with
cranes and things that are available. And you think about
Carson's ability to answer questions without you know, rad or
capture and ping man and things like that. I mean,
it's for you, I'm assuming it's got to be incredibly
impressive when you dive back into some of the historical
ideas and answers.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
He came up it one hundred percent is and it
gives me a great deal appreciation.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
And he was always trying to find the best we
have pictures of like high speed cameras back in his
day when he was trying to, you know, make pingman
and trying to understand how do you get ping man
to swing more like a human. And he did high
speed photos and everything, so he was always trying to
find the best way to measure and gain understanding.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Eric what's left?
Speaker 3 (32:18):
I mean, I know that's an easy question to ask,
but you know, you think about obviously leaning into the
player testing, and then you've got focal and you feel
like you're starting to kind of answer some of the
questions that didn't exist answers didn't exist maybe fifteen twenty
years ago. What's the next what's the next step for you?
Where's the black hole and the research that you're going
to dive into next.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
We always have plenty of knowledge gaps that we're looking
to gain understanding. I think still to me, the biggest
mystery is how humans behave Like I say, they're really messy,
and they are when it comes to like understanding how
they react two different shafts. You know, you can change
the center of mass in the head, you know, like
it looks the same like and all of a sudden,
(33:00):
it's like their impact location shifts because you've they just
feel it, and trying to predict and understand that more
understand how what they feel influences performance, Like you know,
it's can we if something sounds a little different, did
they swing it faster? You're kind of like there's no
physics reason, like from like the club design that it
(33:22):
should go any faster because it sounds different. But if
that player's experience is influence influences that, I think that's
a huge area of study for us that I want
to understand better personally. I don't know a lot of
our engineers do. And honestly, there's no shortage of questions
and pain of all of us being you know, a
lot of us being players, pain of the game, and
(33:43):
curiosity of like, how how can we make this better?
And so yeah, it take a whole nother podcast to
explain all my Marty.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
As you're as you're playing golf and questions come up,
I mean you think about the four iron question that
popped up when you're playing. Are you writing these down?
Are they just stuck in your brain? Are you able
to kind of push them out as you're enjoying around
a golf or these things that once something pops up
in your head, is it just is it unavoidable?
Speaker 2 (34:08):
They burn into my brain and you don't have to
write an example. I'll give you an example. I went
to I went to second Stage a Q school because
I had qualified got exemption to second stage accuschool. I
went and played at Bear Creek Mariata, California, and it
was it was in the fall, rained a bunch bermuda
and there's mudd mudballs all over the place. And this
was a Pete No, it was a Nicholas course, but
(34:28):
in his Nicholas small greens, hazards everywhere. And I would
have mudball from one eighty and just guessing what this
thing is going to do. And I came back, I missed,
didn't make it through, and I came back, I'm like,
we need to do an experiment on mudballs. So we
did it with the with Eric's help and our golf
science group. So I think it's.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Would you would you discover by the way, would you
discover from talk about mess there is much mudball experience,
little mudball rules.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
We actually have a blog article on our on our
website and then we put put a little uh kind
of rule sheet on what to do with mud. Well.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
I feel like when you're watching a golf broadcast, it's
like MUDs on the left, the ball is gonna go right.
MUD's on the right, it's gonna go left. Like what
did you guys figure out when you actually tested that
air well?
Speaker 4 (35:12):
And that's that's actually so that's accurate and right and
and so, and that's something that I think at the
time it wasn't as prominent like we.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Was.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
The first thing you do anytime you have a question
is go, well, do somebody already answer it?
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Right?
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Don't want to go reinvent the wheel. And we couldn't
find no research on it. There was no research on it, right, Uh.
And so I was like, well, let's go do it then. Yeah,
and so you know that's what we did. And we
got Phoenix's finest mud. And you know it's like.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Phoenix's finest mud might just be clay, but.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
Yeah, well you know we had a good, important mud.
One of our interns was going around Phoenix trying to
find you know.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
We'll drop some high speed video of the impacts into
the post.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Was like, if you hit a four iron on a
mudball versus an eight iron, was there a big difference there?
Speaker 2 (35:59):
So I think with mud, it's not just that it's
on the right it's gonna go left. It's on the left,
it's gonna go right. It also goes shorter. Okay, it
has more variants. So you need to as a golfer,
you need to aim way more conservatively right and then
the impact on distance is huge. That's the biggest piece.
If you have mud on the ball, and then it
(36:19):
depends on where it is top, bottom, front, back. If
it's between the club, gonna get in between the club
and the face, you lose massive amount of ball speed
goes lower, is more variable, so you gotta have kind
of rules on exactly where it is. But we've used it.
We've used that research for more than just playing. It's
also informed some of our ball flight, you know, understanding
(36:39):
of aerodynamics.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
Last mudball question for you, Marty, you've got one fifty,
which is I'm assuming kind of a nine iron for you,
you've got a mudball or you hit an eight.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yes, depending on where the trouble is, I would hit
an eight. Hit it lower, hit it a little bit
softer would be generally big.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Keep it out of the air as much as possible.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Yeah, minimize the flight time and just give yourself or
margin for air. Yeah, little little gripped down. Yeah, but
yet you just have to be way more conservative on
your on your aiming strategy if the whole allows for it.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Eric Eric jumped into a mudball conversation he was not
ready for. I don't know, I don't know if you
were prepared for the mudball com Another day of ping,
Another day of ping. Well, Eric, we really appreciate the time.
Great inside, I mean, the focal has been amazing to
just kind of watch, and obviously it's been amazing for
you guys. So thanks for the time, great chat and
we'll have you on soon.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
I had a ton of fun. Thanks. This is the
Ping proven Grounds podcast.
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