September 19, 2024 • 48 mins
Shane and Marty welcome Master Fitter Alex Webb to the podcast to discuss PING’s PLD Custom program. They talk about the history of PLD, the in-person and virtual fitting process for customers, alternative-style putting techniques, and their excitement to pass tour-level fitting and customization options on to the everyday golfer.
"Battle of the Podcast Co-hosts: Marty Jertson vs. Shane Bacon": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1deM6ipAsw
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The guys from Ping.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
They've kind of showed me how much the equipment matters.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
I just love that I can hit any shot.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I kind of want.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
We're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about
what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.
Speaker 4 (00:11):
Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Ping
Proving Grounds Podcast. I'm Shane Bak and joined us always
by Marty Jerts and Marty. We've got a YouTube video
out right now, competitive YouTube golf. Are we now YouTube golfers?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Is that where we live?
Speaker 4 (00:26):
Are?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Yeah? No, I think we're up there with some of
the you know, the view counts going up. Shane and
I don't know about you, but I've had a lot
of feedback from some friends that have really enjoyed the content,
and you know, I don't want to we don't want
to tease what happens at the end there, but let's
just say we had quite a competitive match out there
at Estancia earlier this year.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Yeah, shout out to James and the team. They did
a great job of shooting it and the drone footage.
I mean, Astoncia is one of the great desert golf
courses in the world, not just in the state of Arizona.
It's one of my favorite courses, if not my favoravorite
course in the state of Arizona. And let me just
say it photographs well and it drones well.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
It does. Yeah, it is. It is also the number
one ranked course in Arizona, just head of Force Highlands Canyon,
which is more of a more of a tree line
course up north. But Stancy is quite a treat. That
was a fun battle and for those of you that
haven't watched it, i'd suggest going on there on there
and watching it on YouTube.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Yeah, that's on the paying YouTube page. We'll add a
link in the notes for this episode as well, so
you could check that out. Today, Marty, we're gonna talk
about Putters, which I think is the most excited I've
been about talking about a golf club in the existence
of this podcast. And we've got somebody awesome to chat
with us, Marty. I'll give you the opportunity to introduce him.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Yeah, mister Alex Web Alex, thanks for coming on the pod.
Super excited to have you and talk about PLD Putters.
I think what's what I'm very excited about what we've
done with PLD over the last three, four or five years,
Shane and Alex. You know, we'll deep dive on this topic.
Is you know, we've kind of prided ourselves at Ping
(02:05):
of making everything that the tour player can get access
to available to the everyday golfer, and that's a big
part of what we've done with PLD PLD custom is
to pass along that personalization, that custom fitting aspect and
making it available to everyday golfer. Alex been on our
team as a fitter for quite some time and really
(02:25):
hunkered down in going super deep on putter fitting, so
he handles all of our PLD custom fittings that we
do with his colleagues here at the Ping Proving Grounds. Alex,
Welcome to the podcast and look forward to having a
good chat with you.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Awesome guys. Thank you so much for having me. Super
excited to be here. Can't wait to talk about.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Putters, Alex.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
I wanted to start with this, can you give people
that don't know the history of PLD, because I think
Ping putters in its history have been talked about a
lot on this podcast, but I'm not sure people to
grasp maybe how new PLD is to the world.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Sure yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
So PLD started around twenty and sixteen when Bubba Watson
came to us wanting to design a custom, fully machined
answer putter for himself, so he worked with our team,
He worked with Tony Serrano to really get down to
the specifics of exactly what he wanted to see out
(03:27):
of this answer putter. So that was kind of the
birth of PLD. From there, over the years, we worked
with all the tour players or most of the tour
players that were coming through to really hone into what
we want PLD to be, and it's fully machined putters,
really really focusing on the fine details of these putters,
(03:51):
and it all started at the tour level, and then
probably twenty twenty twenty one time period is when we
started to really think about, hey, we should offer this
two consumers, ramp up to provide these putters to consumers,
and then all of this was in preparation for March
(04:11):
twenty twenty two, and that's when we launched to the
general public.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
PLD Custom awesome and Alex, just your own personal story
on the fitting side. I mean, you came into ping
as a fitter, and we trained our fitters and you
have experience fitting all clubs in the bag. What was
your gravity towards the putter space and the putter category?
What makes you so interested and passionate about putters above
(04:38):
and beyond all the other clubs in the bag?
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Well, growing up, I was always one of those gearheads.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
I always liked.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
The tinker, always liked to build different clubs, but putters
was always special to my heart, pink putters especially. I
had quite a few pink putters growing up, and I
collected putters growing up as well, So putting, just in
the sense of that was what I was most interested in.
It's the club that's most used in the bag, and
(05:07):
why not fit the club that's most used in the bag?
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Alex?
Speaker 4 (05:11):
What's the collection like now? I mean, you know, obviously
I think you could. You probably get them for free.
I'm sure you can, maybe, you know, put a couple
in the car to go home and work through the process.
What's your collection looking like these days?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I probably have fifty to sixty putters on hand at
any time. I do a lot of testing, but the
majority of the PLD customs stay in house other than
a couple that are my own. But yeah, yeah, it's
a cycle. But I'm always big on sticking with one
specific putter, one type of putter that fits my stroke,
(05:46):
fits my game, and that's what I stick to.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Alex. So, PLD, I think folks may have heard of PLD,
which stands for Putting Lab Design. They've seen our logo
out there, they've seen beautiful machine putters used by our
tour players. Paint a little picture of the different, you know,
variants of PLD. So you know PLD Custom, PLD milled,
Special Edition, PLD. Can you give a little overview of
(06:11):
the entire program and more folks can can go to
get access to these different tiers of PLD.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Absolutely, So let's start with PLD milled. PLD milled is
going to be the putters that you can just purchase
off the rack. You can go into your local golf shop,
you can order it through any authorized ping account. Your
big box stores are going to have PLD milled putters.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
These these are our.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Retail putters that we have to offer, and from there
we'll kind of branch into PLD milled Plus, we branch
into the special editions, we branch into PLD Custom, But
PLD milled Plus is kind of that next tier that
next step up from PLD milled. They're also available at
(06:58):
retail through authorized Ping retailers, and it kind of bridges
that gap between PLD milled and PLD Custom. So PLD
milled Plus we have five specific models that start blank.
The head start blank. From an alignment standpoint, you can
add all kinds of different alignment features. You can do
(07:20):
engraving on some of the putters, you can do some
lasering on the putters as well, So it's kind of
jumps into that custom tier without going fully custom, which
PLD Custom is. From PLD milled Plus, we go into
PLD Special Edition or PLD milt Special Edition, which these
(07:41):
are drop ins that we'll do to our accounts, so
specific accounts will get these limited edition or special edition putters,
will mill out a certain amount of them. This past
year we did the Answer thirty. We did a hobby
version of the Special Ed and so those are also
(08:02):
available in a limited amount to our accounts or to
purchase through our accounts. And then from there, next tier
up is this PLD Custom, So PLD Custom is a
fully customizable putter. First thing you do with that is
you book on Ping pld dot com. Top right hand
corner of pin pld dot com.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
There's a spot.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Where you can dive into what ping pld custom actually
is and to book appointments. So we do virtual and
in person appointments for ping pld custom.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Alex, buddy of mine Mike, did the custom fitting on
the app and we played in rain the other day
and he brought a backup putter out because he didn't
want is his custom PILDD deal with. He was like,
this is going to be my backup. It was a
pin putter as well, but he said, my custom PLD
is perfect condition putter. Like that's how much he loves
(08:57):
his custom putter and how much he appreciates it.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
That's awesome, very very cool.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah, so PLD customer, Alex, that's where you can do
literally kind of whatever you want, right, And let's let's
talk a little bit about that experience. So somebody could
come into the lab and why don't you just start
there talking about a little bit of the difference in
the process what somebody will go through whether they come
(09:23):
into the proving grounds into the lab here to go
through their fitting experience and work directly with you, Colton
and the team, versus what does that experience look like remotely,
if somebody can't make it into Phoenix, how do we
service them and provide some great service during that PLD
custom experience.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Awesome?
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, so PINGPLD dot com. You book on the website,
you can book virtual or you can book in person.
So the in person you get the full experience.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
So we we.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Pride ourselves on treating you like a tour pro, going
through the same exact process that a tour.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Pro is going to go through. So we start in.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
The putting lab, will collect some data, will take some video,
and we usually try to start with the player's gamer putter.
If they have the ability to bring their gamer putter,
that gives us a baseline for that. So we're using
ipin two point zero to collect data, which is a
proprietary app that we designed in house. It's measuring the forces,
(10:30):
the torques, the accelerations that the player's applying to the putter.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
It kicks back a lot of data to us.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
A PGA pro, LPGA Cornferry, any of the pros that
come through go through the same thing. We put them
on Iping two point zero as well. We take the
video work to kind of hone in on iline on
link the putter to make sure that li angle's good
on that. So we'll start by collecting the data or
(10:58):
the club data using ipling two point zero. From there
we'll transition to Quintech. Quintech's a ball data system that
we use where we can collect ball data to analyze
the role of the ball. And then we do a
lot of work outside as well. We have a green outside.
(11:19):
After we've kind of dialed in in the putting lab,
will transition to the outside experience and really fine tuned
the loft, the lie on the putter, look at people's
breaking putts, you know if they have or if they
have struggles with right to left, left, the right potts,
really taking a look at that speed control. And that's
(11:41):
the process with the in person is you get the
full go the tour experience. We're diving into everything that
we possibly can as far as the virtual fitting goes.
You sign up for the virtual fitting. When you sign
up for the virtual fitting, you get a zoom link,
so it's a zoo link for the customer that's linked
(12:02):
to my personal or Colden Tunnel. He's our other PLD
Master fitter two hour calendars and that triggers the welcome
kit process. So what we do from there is we'll
send out a welcome kit to the consumer. This kit
goes out approximately ten to twelve days before they're virtual fitting.
(12:24):
Inside the welcome kit's going to be an iPod touch,
a pin cradle, so an iPod cradle, and a putting disc.
Once you power that iPod touch on, it's going to
walk you through the process. We have a different version
of iping that's built into these iPod touches that's extremely
(12:45):
streamlined and it just walks you through the process. So
from there, the person is going to clip it to
their putter. They're going to go through three sessions of
five put seeds, so they'll take fifteen total putts, and
at the very end of those three sessions, it's going
to be submit to ping. It says submit to ping.
(13:07):
It comes directly two hour inbox. So we have that
data and from there we can create a really nice
presentation where we can go over all of that data
with the consumers. We can talk about the forces, the torques,
the accelerations that they're applying to the putter. We spend
the first half of the virtual fitting doing that. The
(13:29):
second half we go through the putters that we have available,
and we're mentioning the best putters that that we think
that fit their stroke based off of the data that's collected.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
Marty is is ping, Like, does ping run ninety five
percent of the iPod touches in the world now.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
I think we do.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
I just want to I'm wondering what other business still
uses iPod touches. I did Virtual Alex probably a year
and a half ago, and it popped in that it
came out of the box of like the iPod Touch. Man,
I haven't seen one of these couple of years.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
It was kind of like a throwback.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
But I mean, I like, I've done both Alex, I've
done virtual, I've done in person, and you get similar data.
You get similar numbers if you do it at home
yourself or obviously if you get a chance to come in.
You've talked a little bit about what you're looking at
when you're diving into a player's stroke, Can you just
expand a little bit more on that, Like what's the
data you're pulling from, you know, the thirty minutes or
(14:24):
an hour you're spending with the player?
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Ipaying measures five different metrics The first one's closing angle
was just just the amount of rotation that the player's
applying from the top of their backstroke to impact, So
that's really going to help us diagnose what type of
stroke type we need to fit a player into. The
next metric is impact angle. This is just a relative
(14:50):
measurement from where they are at set up with the
putter face versus where they are at impact with the
putter face. So this really lets us know where the
face is is relative to where they set up, and
this can let us know how a player aims the
putter and that can also lead into further conversations once
we get deeper into the process about alignment as well.
(15:13):
Next one would be tempo, So that's just measuring the
backstroke time divided by the forward stroke time it kicks
back a ratio kicks back an overall stroke time as well.
Tempo really helps us dive into the.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Headweight of a putter.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Everybody has different has a different tempo, and if everybody
has a different tempo, then we can kind of target
different headweights with those different individuals. From there, we're looking
at the impact li angle, So this is just measuring
the li angle. The putter at impact, and that kind
of helps us diagnose whether we need to take a
(15:49):
putter flatter, we need to take it more upright, or.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
If it's just good to go.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
And then the last category that we look at, or
the last metric that we look at, is going to
be shaft clean at impact. So this is if somebody
has the shaft clean forward, hands forward, de lofting the putter,
it's back adding additional loft.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Or if you're neutral.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
What this does is this really helps us dial in
the loft or the dynamic loft of a putter for
that player. So we're looking at those key five metrics,
and then with the virtual process, it's a conversation as well.
We're getting to know these players. We're asking them about
their tendencies of their game, of their putting stroke, and
(16:33):
then that can kind of help us get to the
end goal of having a putter that's perfectly fit or
very very close to be perfectly fit for them.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Yeah. I think that what's fun OLEX is that the
folks going through PLD custom at home, we are it's
you know, I've seen some other fitting processes where you
just take a video of your stroke or do something
like that, right, we're actually taking these It's kind of
like getting a live m on your putting stroke, right,
so that that face angle or stroke type that we
(17:07):
have in there is a proxy for how much torque
somebody or twisting about the shaft that somebody's putting on
that putter. Right. And then you talked about tempo and
total time. I think these are a couple things that
even the most astute fitter has a hard time seeing
with the naked eye, right. So, I think a big
challenge in putter fitting, club fitting in general is when
(17:30):
do you need to bring in some outside technology to
measure these things that you could not other that you
might be misleading if you look at them with the
naked eye. Right. So, Alex, talk a little bit about,
you know, what any trends you've seen there on the
tempo side and total time? You know, have you seen
folks that have a fast total time but a slow
(17:53):
tempo ratio or a slow total time and a fast
tempo ratio? What have you seen in that little nuance
and and how does that inform where you go with
that player from a headwaight or other putter characteristic standpoint.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah, absolutely, so Ipin kicks back a ratio. We'll start
with the ratio average ratio, and iping is one point
eight to two point two if we meet right in
the middle two point zero, so a two to one ratio.
So that can kind of help us diagnose whether that
player is maybe slightly more abrupt or slightly more deliberate
(18:29):
with their stroke. But another thing iping also provides us
is total time. It provides us total time but also
their backstroke and forward stroke time. So we usually try
to use about one thousand to one thousand and fifty
milliseconds as a baseline. That's a standard stroke time. It's neutral,
(18:50):
its average, it's not fast, it's not slow. And let's
say ipin kicks back a two point four ratioh and
a twelve hundred on the overall stroke time. Well, what
that's letting us know is now that player has a
slightly slower or more deliberate stroke, and we see that
(19:13):
in the data. And if we see that in the data,
we now know that like, hey, okay, they have a
slightly slower, more deliberate stroke, we probably need to go
with something maybe slightly heavier for stability purposes, or let's
say it's the exact opposite to where it kicks back
one point seven, one point eight ratio, something a little
(19:35):
bit on the faster side. The overall stroke time is
eight hundred and fifty nine hundred milliseconds. Well, now we
know that that player has a slightly faster or more
abrupt stroke, and I'm probably not leaning towards a heavy
mallet with that style of player.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
I'm leaning toward wide.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Body, blade blade style, something lighter.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Oh that's super interesting because I think of some golfers
may have heard, or even fitters out there may have heard.
You know, two to one is two or average. Therefore
I need to try to get my player to two
to one tempo ratio. From a teaching or instruction standpoint,
but from a fitting and fitting science standpoint, we were
using total time and tempo ratio to really match players
(20:20):
to the specific headway. Alex, what about face angle? So
we have a delivered face angle, So that's like where
the face is delivered relative to the setup is a
metric in iping? Are we trying to get players to
be zeroed out like so to aim and also deliver
the face at zero or have you've seen good players
(20:41):
have a consistent open or closed bias and if so,
by how much.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
So, this is definitely not a category where we're trying
to zero out a player. I tell everybody this when
they come in, and if you're negative, if you're positive,
if you're zeroed out. The biggest thing with this is
I'm focusing on consistency. If you're going to be negative
seven tenths of a degree closed at impact, I want you.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
To do it over and over and over again. I
want it to be consistent.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Typically for a right handed player, if we see a
negative number, it kind of leads us to believe that
that right handed player could be a touch of a
right aimer, and then to get back to square at impact,
they have to come in slightly closed and then opposite
for the positive number as well. If it's positive point
(21:33):
five or plus zero point five on the impact angle,
it usually lets us know that that player is potentially
a little bit of a left aimer. But we tell
everybody we're not trying to zero you out with this.
It's consistency. The majority of the pros that come through,
the majority of the pros that we work with, or
plus or minus something. It is pretty rare to be
(21:55):
zeroed doubt on this and whether we do it consciously
or unconsciously, the stroke is going to correct foreign aim
bias one way or the other.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Alex, is anybody zero like you mentioned, few people are
zeroed out? Is there anybody on staff that gets to zero?
Like anybody that you know is consistently on that number?
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Not that I can think of off the top of
my head, Marty.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Maybe I try to be I'm always striving for it.
I'm looking.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
I'm looking for that Alex when you're when you're fitting someone.
I think about this a lot with fitting in general.
But when you're fitting somebody for a putter, they're aiming right,
they're aiming left, They're doing little things that you guys
are finding out either by the eye or by this test.
How much are you leaning on putting them in the
right putter versus maybe letting them know something they're doing
(22:46):
wrong because you're not in it necessarily, an you're not
in their instructor, you're not their teacher, right, but there
are little things you can help correct them when you
see all this data come back your ways. So how
do you balance that? It seems like it'd be a
tough thing to kind of balance an obvious. It takes
years of experience to get really comfortable in.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
That sure and that's one of those things where you
have to skate that fine line of teaching and fitting.
The majority of the people that are coming in they're
looking for a fitting, and it's my goal to fit
them into the best putter possible for the stroke that
they're bringing. Now, we see from time to time where
(23:23):
somebody might have a significant amount of ford shaft line,
and at that point, the first thing I'm doing is
taking a look at.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Their ball position.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
They might be too far back in the stands and okay,
now we have a lot of ford shaft lien. Hey,
let's kick that ball up, you know, a ball, a
ball and a half forward in the stands, and let's
see what that does to the shaft lien. Not always
the case that it's going to automatically change it, but
we'll make small little tweaks or small little suggestions from
(23:53):
a setup standpoint that can potentially get this player to
a better spot or have a more consistent stroke.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Yeah, Alex, I want to kind of shift gears a
little bit to alignment markings. Right, So we talked about aim.
We're not necessarily trying to get folks to get the
face back zeroed out relative to where they aim. We've
seen good players, players of all different skill levels, maybe
aim a little off and their stroke kind of gets
(24:23):
it back to get that putter face online to their
intended start line. What about alignment markings, We have a
lot of offerings. If we look at PLD custom you
can kind of do whatever you want. If you look
at mill plus you have some customizations options there with
the alignment markings. You know, what type of player finds
themselves in a dot on the top rail, no alignment
(24:46):
marking at all on an answer putter versus lines that
frame the ball versus a line in the cavity. What
does that process look like and what trends are you
seeing from that perspective? And do you use how a
player or maybe what golf ball and ballmarking they use
to inform that process?
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Yeah? Absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
The first thing I always ask when we start talking
about alignment is how do they line their put up?
Do they have a line on the ball, do they
use the markings on the ball. Are they pointing that
line or are they pointing that marking at a target?
Are they pointing it at the whole. It's just trying
to figure out the tendencies of this player, how they align.
(25:29):
And we'll see a lot of times where people might
be spot aimers. It's like, Okay, I'm aiming to a
spot that's three foot in front of the ball, and
I line that line up to that. Well, that's where
it could be beneficial to have a top rail line
because now that top rail line acts as an extension
from the line on the ball, and now we can
(25:52):
point that top rail line at our target. Same thing
with flange line as well. It's just you have that
slight separation the two. But then we'll get a lot
of players that are face aimers versus people who are
aiming alignment lines, who are aiming the logos on the
ball at the target. So for the face aimer players,
(26:14):
usually that's where I'll lean more towards the dot or
even the top rail line, just because that gives us
a centering point. We have a centering point with the
back of the ball. Now we can aim the face
at that centering point, and ball with features can.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Really help out with that as well.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
So if you have a potter that has really nice
ball with features that are built into it.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Whether we've cut.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Ball with lines or not, we have that dot on
the top and we just have a lot of things
that can help us frame the ball center with the
back of the ball, and from there we're just aiming
the face at the target that we've picked out.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
I mean, Marty, this is such a big part of
modern golf is the you know, you think about the
golf balls that have come out over the last few years.
Right on You've gone from the original pro v that
I don't think had lines on it, to then having lines,
and then now the golf balls have triple tracks. You know,
there's so much alignment out there for the player. And
(27:13):
I'm a player that doesn't like the lines.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
You know.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
I'm a guy that I like to set it up
where I see the name of the golf ball kind
of facing me straight up because I get a little
too technical when I'm trying to get the line of
my putter on the line of the golf ball and
then I'm trying to hit. I almost feel like I'm
trying to hit the perfect putt versus like letting my
feel take over. I think this is something that people
have to figure out almost before they even do a
(27:36):
fitting is how best do I see a putt? How
much does the putt make sense to me when I'm
thinking about where to aim? How far out to go?
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Am I a feel putter?
Speaker 4 (27:46):
I mean, these are things that I think are important
to kind of go over yourself.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
It's almost party.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
It's your MRI analogy you made earlier. It's like people
get nervous about AMRI. They get nervous about fitting at
times as well. But it's going over some of the
things you can go over your before you go into
the process, so you can actually answer some of these questions.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, I think how you mark your golf ball,
what works good for you, and we and we could
sort of as part of PLD will will help evaluate
that for you. You know, maybe somebody struggles with start
line on short puts only start line is more important
than speed on short putts. Maybe you want to use
a line on your ball on short putts and have
a model that can help you with that there. But
(28:24):
let you be more speed speed focus feel focus on
the longer puts because that priority of speed to face
angle kind of changes depending on the putts. So that's
I think a big part of what Alex and his
team does is understand that if you're a golfer that
keeps diligent stats on your putting, maybe through Arcos or
(28:46):
another stats tracking tool or your own little system, certainly
bring those into the putting putter fitting process because we're
gonna want to understand that, you know, not not only
does your memory think maybe your recency by think that
you struggle on longer putts because you just three putted
the last hole you know they was an important match
or something, but is that persistent over time? You know?
(29:09):
And I think that's something really fun. We get access
to in the shot Link data from the tour players,
but we want to be able to pass that level
of service to the to the everyday golfer. And yeah,
it's been fun to see all the different markings on
golf balls. And speaking of golf balls, we in the
Lab Alex have pretty much every majority of the most
popular golf balls out there because part of Balnamic Shane
(29:31):
that you know, is we ask for your feel sound
preference with the golf ball on short game. You know,
we've we've both hit balls that you can barely hear
them when you putt, and the others that are louder
and clickier. Now, a big part of the nuance of
the perfect putter, which appeld custom is all about, is
getting the acoustics dialed in. So, Alex, let's dive into
(29:54):
sound feel, how a player's golf ball might inform that
and what are some of the tech chniques we can
use with milling patterns, et cetera to inform and influence
that through the POD process. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Absolutely, So it's we always ask the player what golf
ball they're playing, and we you're right, we keep a
quite a few of the most popular brands in the lab,
different covers, whether it's something softer, something firmer, and if
we don't ad the ball after the fact, we usually
(30:29):
go out and get it.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
Yeah, but Alex, you can't ask Marty that question, by
the way, it be like a twenty minute answer if
you said, Marty, golf ball play to go? What month
is it?
Speaker 3 (30:38):
What the wind? But uh, go ahead out. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
So that's the first thing we always ask when they
come in the lab is what golf ball are you playing?
Because that's going to dictate or help us determine what
milling pattern.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
We need to do.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
On the face of the butter or what milling pattern
the player might like on the face, and the butter
feel and sound is extremely important and putting, and we
have different milling patterns, different milling depths that we can
achieve on these PLD custom putters to help provide positive acoustics,
(31:15):
positive feedback to the players and what they want to hear.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
So the smoother you.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Go on the face, the clickier the sound's going to be,
the more feedback you're going to get. And then we
offer smooth, shallow, deep milling. We also have some horizontal
milling that we can do on the faces as well.
But if we're looking at just the smooth face, completely
smooth firnest off the face, the most feedback, so the
(31:43):
most click.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
As we get to the.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Shallow mill, it's a little bit softer.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Than your smooth face.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
It's a little bit of a more muted sound to it,
but you still get feedback, you still get some click
to it. As we start to transition into that deeper milling,
that more aggressive milling on the face, it's a little
bit softer off the face. But the thing that most
players notice is the sound difference, because sound and feel
(32:12):
go hand in hand. With the deeper milling, it tends
to be a little bit more of a thuddier sound,
so a little bit deeper sound. If we hear something
that's a little bit deeper or something that's a little
bit thuddier, we're automatically going to think that it's a
little bit softer off the face as well. And one
thing with the milling pattern, and this is something that
(32:33):
we've tested over time, is there's not necessarily a performance
difference between smooth and deep. From a rollout perspective, they're
very very similar. A lot of this is just going
to be player preference. So if you prefer to hear
something more muted, feel something a little bit softer, that's
when we go with more of that deeper or more
(32:55):
aggressive milling. But if you're somebody that likes to hear
a lot of feedback or wants to hear here's some
click sound, that's when we start to move more towards
the shallow or the smooth face.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Alex, you talked earlier on about Bubba being kind of
the origin of the PLD journey for us, and which
one of the milling patterns that we use do we
call the Bubba groove. That's what we've always called it
for slang here, right.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
So the Bubba groove would be a horizontal milling, and
there's a couple different versions of this. Hovelin has the
same thing. So Hovelin has a ball with horizontal milling
on the face. It's about four to five thousands deep
on the face. And if you're comparing that to the
circular milling that we offer, circular milling, the shallow mill
(33:43):
is going to be four thousands deep on the face.
So those feel and sound very very similar. Same thing
with the Bubba groove. The Bubba groove's going to be
about that four to five thousands deep on the face,
and his are full face horizontal.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Yeah, So we can use that ball with milling for
a golfer who's either left eye dominant, depend on how
they set up. They can see the loft on the face,
see the face a little bit, and that can help
them frame the golf ball a little bit as well.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Alex correct.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Absolutely, we always ask eye dominance as well, whether somebody's
right or left eye dominant.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
It's kind of.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
A gray area for us, but there is some of
it that plays into it, especially from an alignment and
an offset standpoint.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
Alex, are we talking millions of options in terms of customization?
I mean, is it infinite? Like, do you have an
idea of what the number be in terms of how
much you could customize your PLD.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
It's a lot. We try to provide as much as possible.
And if it's something that we haven't done before, I'm
gonna ask about it. Okay, So if a customer wants
this type of alignment versus this type of milling versus
this type of engraving, and we haven't done it before, absolutely,
(34:58):
I'm going.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
To inquire about it. If we can do it, We're
going to do it.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Alex, tell us about a time, you know, you know,
you Colton and in our team here at the proving grounds,
it's work with players day in and day out on
these most nuanced topics and preferences. Tell us about a
time where we've identified maybe a gap in our product offerings. Right,
so you're seeing a certain trend or tendency or something
(35:22):
in the lab that we've kind of turned into a
product offering. You know, where we've seen a gap in
one of these attributes. It's so important to putter performance.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, so we actually noticed something within the past couple
of years and introduced to special edition putter this past
year to fill this gap. So if we're looking at
iping data, we have millions and millions of data points
in ipaying, so we're able to identify what's the most
(35:55):
the most closing angle, the least amount of closing angle,
how many people fit into certain types of closing angles.
And we notice that with the slight arc category that
we had the answer potter, which is going to hang
or have forty forty three forty two degrees of toehang
(36:15):
to it. And then from there we go down to
face balance options or a double bend shaft with a
slight amount of toe hag.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
So there's a gap there.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
So we go from zero amount of toe hag all
the way up to forty plus amount of toe haang
and where's the in between there? So what we did
is we created the answer thirty, which sits right in
between that. So your traditional answer hangs the forty forty
two to forty three degrees, We go to the face
(36:48):
balance potter that's at zero, and then we have the
answer thirty. The reason why we call an answer thirty
it is because it hangs at thirty degrees.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
So if we look.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
At this from a rotation standpoint, and if we're identifying like, okay,
five point five degrees six degrees of rotation in iping,
is an answer style putter three point five is to
cut off for that straight stroke? What about those players
that sit around four degrees of rotation three point seven
(37:20):
degrees of rotation? Where do those players fit in? What
type of putter can we provide to them? And that's
where the answer thirty came in is because we had
that gap and we wanted to fill that gap.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, is that where most models come from,
Alex the idea of filling a gap because you know, Marty,
Marty's building new drivers. Mary's Marty's leaning into the technology
to come up with the latest and greatest that's going
to go a lot, little bit longer, a little bit
straighter for the player, and he's going to kind of
test those numbers and test those limits. How does it
go in terms of introducing new putters. Is it just
(37:54):
simply we don't have a putter model for this space
and we need one.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Yeah, yes, and yeah absolutely. So with that we had
a gap there, we needed to fill that gap.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
We filled that gap.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Another way that we figure out if we need new models,
if we need to maybe tweak this model here and there.
It's just working with our tour players. They're very, very
valuable to us and what they want to see. Where
we can go from a design perspective, what gaps need
(38:29):
to be filled, Like if we have this player. Let's
take camp Champ for instance, and he's one of the
reasons why we made the answer thirty putter is because
he's not in the straight stroke, but he's not full
slide arc. He has some rotation in his stroke, but
he kind of floats in between those two. So we
(38:49):
needed to fill that gap. That's why we created the
answer thirty. And we get a lot of feedback from
our tour players what they want to see. The answer
too deep utter is a fine example or a good
example of that. We worked with Tony fenw on that putter.
That putter was designed for him. We made it our
goal to design a putter that looked good to his
(39:11):
eye but also performed how a tour level putter should perform.
So we worked hand in hand with Tony to design
to answer two D. Same thing with Victor Hoblin and
the DS seventy two putter. That putter was designed for him.
He worked with our team. He worked with Tony Serrano
to design this putter. So a lot of it starts
(39:33):
from the tour level, where we get the feedback from
the guys out on tour, the tour pros out on tour,
and then it just kind of filters down from there.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
I remember playing with Victor when he first got that putter.
I got paired with him at the Phoenix Open and
that putter was brand new. It was like everything's fresh.
The milling right in the middle, Alex is the same
model he uses now. It was before it really putina
and got some little dings on him, But that putter's
served him pretty well, especially a year ago here in
(40:04):
the in the FedEx Cup, Alex. Let's let's talk a
little bit about alternative style putting. Right, We're seeing more
folks putting with what I like to call mid length
you know Victor, Yeah, Victor was doing that, you know
five years ago, four or five years ago now putting
kind of mid length style where they grip down on
the putter. You know, are you seeing folks dabbling with
(40:26):
armlock a little bit more? Not so much. How about
folks doing long putters. We're seeing some younger, younger generation
dabbling in the long putter space. What are you see
in amongst the alternative style putting techniques and you know,
what are some of those typical builds like for an
armlock or a midlength putter.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, so we.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
See a lot of people interested in the mid length putters.
They're very popular, they're very trendy right now. We have
quite a few pros that have come through that have
wanted to dabble with them, have wanted to test them out.
At the top of my head, Seamous Power came through
earlier this year. We had built him a mid length
(41:06):
putter and we looked at data with it. Data looked awesome,
really really good, super super consistent with it. So these
middlength putters are just providing a lot of stability for
players who are maybe struggling a little bit with traditional
putters or they just want to try something completely new.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
And we see a lot of that right now.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
To where they're trying the mid length and usually from
a typical mid length build, I'm asking that player what
they're typically playing from their traditional putter. So let's take Victor,
for instance, is Victor Hoblin's putter is thirty six inches
and length he chokes down to thirty four inches. Usually
with a lot of these mid length putters, we like
(41:50):
to see about two inches to three inches above where
they're gripping the putter, and that's just to provide the
additional stability. And we've had some players test out some
long putters. You know, Marty is big advocate for the
long putter here, so of course we have to build
some long putters for our tour pros as well who
(42:12):
are wanting to test these out. Long putters have been
around for a long long time and they really haven't
gone anywhere, but they're starting to have a little bit
of a reassurgence now and it's exciting to see just
because it's another alternative to potentially help make a player better,
(42:34):
help them make more putts. Armlock putters, we see some
armlock putters as well. I would say that the midd
length putters are more on trend than the armlock putters
right now, but armlock putters are still a thing, so
we're still fitting some armlock putters for some of the
players that are coming through.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Here's the question, Yeah on armlock. On armlock, Shane is
what's a typical loft you fit a player to an armlock,
you know, on average.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
So first thing we look at with armmock is going
to be the amount of shaft line the player applies
with armmock. It's anchored into their if there right in
a player into their left arm. So usually they apply
a fair amount of ford shaft lin and kind of
that target loft on that five and a half six
degrees range is usually where we're targeting, assuming that they
(43:29):
have a fair amount of a fore shaft line with
the armmrock style.
Speaker 4 (43:33):
Putter, Alex, what are you rocking? I mean you're the
you're the putter guy. You know you got the collection.
What is the what's the gamer look like right now?
How have you customized it?
Speaker 2 (43:43):
So I don't have a ton of rotation in my stroke,
more of that straight back, straight through type of stroke.
Speaker 4 (43:50):
So so you're telling us, thank you, that's what.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
You're good. You're good at it.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Okay, impact tangle looks pretty. I've gravitated towards the Oslo putter.
I've tried some other putters, some other face balanced style
or just a touch of toe hang style putters. I
play a double bind and the Oslo is the bread
and butter for me. I've built up a few other putters,
(44:18):
I've tested a couple other putters, and I just always
go back to this Oslo putter. It's available in pel
D milled, it's available in PLD milled plus, it's something
that's available in PLD custom and you can do all
the different hozzle options with the OSLO head. One thing
I like about the Oslo is it just sits super flat.
(44:41):
It sits super square. It doesn't open, it doesn't close.
With some mallets. You might see that from time to time,
but this Oslo just sits so square on the ground
and it's inspires so much confidence.
Speaker 4 (44:56):
I mean the PLD program, I mean we talked off
the top. It's not been around that long. I mean,
these putters are unbelievable. They look like pieces of art.
They're exciting to get. I mentioned my buddy Mike Havin
one my buddy Andrew, I know, was messing around with
Marty's putter a few months ago and he got himself
a new PLD and he's been rolling it as good
as he's ever rolled it. I mean, this is so
(45:18):
cool to see being such a part of the Pink
family because again having that final piece, I mean, great wedges,
great iron players, I mean, ping has been a great
putter company for so long, but having that next level
of putter just feels like it pops the bag a
little bit. And I get so excited, Marty when I
see PLD putters in players bags because you know they've
(45:38):
gone through the process to perfect that part of their bag.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
Yeah, it's been fun for me, Shane to see. I mean,
one thing we haven't talked about a lot is how
popular PLD has been with our college golfers, our college teams.
I go to the Mini Tour now, I play in
the Arizona Open. A few weeks ago. I saw tons
of PLDs on the putting green, which was really fun
with our good tournament tournament players. I played with Nico Galletti,
(46:05):
who's on the your DP World Tour this year, at
a sweet PLD putter. So it's been fun. But but
what I love is being again being able to pass
that level of customization service to the everyday golfer as well.
And I also love that we're not just only doing
the customization piece, which which is awesome. You want that
emotional connection with your putter. Putting is where you're the
(46:26):
most vulnerable and fragile as a golfer. I aintally so
having having your your your kids initials, there's something personal
on the putter is comforting. But we are embracing and
leaning into that. Every one of our PLDs is custom fit.
Our pod custom is custom fit. Whether you come here
or we send you the iPod, we get that data
(46:48):
and we're throwing our full suite of putter fitting science
at it. That's what I'm super excited about is to
know that everybody who has a pod custom has literally
been through you know, and iping fitting, gotten all that
data to inform him and working with our talented fitters
like Alex and Colton in our team here.
Speaker 4 (47:07):
Alex, It's been a great conversation, great chat with you.
As I said, I was super excited about this because
I remember getting my first PLD when they first came
out and taking it back because I wanted a little
softer and we were adding grooves at the time. And
to kind of fast forward to the PLD I use now,
I mean I can't.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
It will not leave the bag.
Speaker 4 (47:25):
It is my favorite club in the bag and it
remains my favorite club in the bag. And my son
just convinced me to put a Hulk grip on it
because he got a Spider Man grip on his, So
it's a slightly different look than what I'm used to
having right now, I don't know how long it's gonna stay,
but the putter still remains as beautiful as ever, So Alex,
we appreciate the time.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
Party.
Speaker 4 (47:44):
Always great to chat with you. Excited to see you soon.
Make sure you check out that YouTube battle we had.
It's on the Ping YouTube page if you haven't watched
it yet. Definitely worth your time. This is the Ping
prooven Grounds podcast
The guys from Ping.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
They've kind of showed me how much the equipment matters.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
I just love that I can hit any shot.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I kind of want.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
We're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about
what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.
Speaker 4 (00:11):
Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Ping
Proving Grounds Podcast. I'm Shane Bak and joined us always
by Marty Jerts and Marty. We've got a YouTube video
out right now, competitive YouTube golf. Are we now YouTube golfers?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Is that where we live?
Speaker 4 (00:26):
Are?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Yeah? No, I think we're up there with some of
the you know, the view counts going up. Shane and
I don't know about you, but I've had a lot
of feedback from some friends that have really enjoyed the content,
and you know, I don't want to we don't want
to tease what happens at the end there, but let's
just say we had quite a competitive match out there
at Estancia earlier this year.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Yeah, shout out to James and the team. They did
a great job of shooting it and the drone footage.
I mean, Astoncia is one of the great desert golf
courses in the world, not just in the state of Arizona.
It's one of my favorite courses, if not my favoravorite
course in the state of Arizona. And let me just
say it photographs well and it drones well.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
It does. Yeah, it is. It is also the number
one ranked course in Arizona, just head of Force Highlands Canyon,
which is more of a more of a tree line
course up north. But Stancy is quite a treat. That
was a fun battle and for those of you that
haven't watched it, i'd suggest going on there on there
and watching it on YouTube.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Yeah, that's on the paying YouTube page. We'll add a
link in the notes for this episode as well, so
you could check that out. Today, Marty, we're gonna talk
about Putters, which I think is the most excited I've
been about talking about a golf club in the existence
of this podcast. And we've got somebody awesome to chat
with us, Marty. I'll give you the opportunity to introduce him.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Yeah, mister Alex Web Alex, thanks for coming on the pod.
Super excited to have you and talk about PLD Putters.
I think what's what I'm very excited about what we've
done with PLD over the last three, four or five years,
Shane and Alex. You know, we'll deep dive on this topic.
Is you know, we've kind of prided ourselves at Ping
(02:05):
of making everything that the tour player can get access
to available to the everyday golfer, and that's a big
part of what we've done with PLD PLD custom is
to pass along that personalization, that custom fitting aspect and
making it available to everyday golfer. Alex been on our
team as a fitter for quite some time and really
(02:25):
hunkered down in going super deep on putter fitting, so
he handles all of our PLD custom fittings that we
do with his colleagues here at the Ping Proving Grounds. Alex,
Welcome to the podcast and look forward to having a
good chat with you.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Awesome guys. Thank you so much for having me. Super
excited to be here. Can't wait to talk about.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Putters, Alex.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
I wanted to start with this, can you give people
that don't know the history of PLD, because I think
Ping putters in its history have been talked about a
lot on this podcast, but I'm not sure people to
grasp maybe how new PLD is to the world.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Sure yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
So PLD started around twenty and sixteen when Bubba Watson
came to us wanting to design a custom, fully machined
answer putter for himself, so he worked with our team,
He worked with Tony Serrano to really get down to
the specifics of exactly what he wanted to see out
(03:27):
of this answer putter. So that was kind of the
birth of PLD. From there, over the years, we worked
with all the tour players or most of the tour
players that were coming through to really hone into what
we want PLD to be, and it's fully machined putters,
really really focusing on the fine details of these putters,
(03:51):
and it all started at the tour level, and then
probably twenty twenty twenty one time period is when we
started to really think about, hey, we should offer this
two consumers, ramp up to provide these putters to consumers,
and then all of this was in preparation for March
(04:11):
twenty twenty two, and that's when we launched to the
general public.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
PLD Custom awesome and Alex, just your own personal story
on the fitting side. I mean, you came into ping
as a fitter, and we trained our fitters and you
have experience fitting all clubs in the bag. What was
your gravity towards the putter space and the putter category?
What makes you so interested and passionate about putters above
(04:38):
and beyond all the other clubs in the bag?
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Well, growing up, I was always one of those gearheads.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
I always liked.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
The tinker, always liked to build different clubs, but putters
was always special to my heart, pink putters especially. I
had quite a few pink putters growing up, and I
collected putters growing up as well, So putting, just in
the sense of that was what I was most interested in.
It's the club that's most used in the bag, and
(05:07):
why not fit the club that's most used in the bag?
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Alex?
Speaker 4 (05:11):
What's the collection like now? I mean, you know, obviously
I think you could. You probably get them for free.
I'm sure you can, maybe, you know, put a couple
in the car to go home and work through the process.
What's your collection looking like these days?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I probably have fifty to sixty putters on hand at
any time. I do a lot of testing, but the
majority of the PLD customs stay in house other than
a couple that are my own. But yeah, yeah, it's
a cycle. But I'm always big on sticking with one
specific putter, one type of putter that fits my stroke,
(05:46):
fits my game, and that's what I stick to.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Alex. So, PLD, I think folks may have heard of PLD,
which stands for Putting Lab Design. They've seen our logo
out there, they've seen beautiful machine putters used by our
tour players. Paint a little picture of the different, you know,
variants of PLD. So you know PLD Custom, PLD milled,
Special Edition, PLD. Can you give a little overview of
(06:11):
the entire program and more folks can can go to
get access to these different tiers of PLD.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Absolutely, So let's start with PLD milled. PLD milled is
going to be the putters that you can just purchase
off the rack. You can go into your local golf shop,
you can order it through any authorized ping account. Your
big box stores are going to have PLD milled putters.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
These these are our.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Retail putters that we have to offer, and from there
we'll kind of branch into PLD milled Plus, we branch
into the special editions, we branch into PLD Custom, But
PLD milled Plus is kind of that next tier that
next step up from PLD milled. They're also available at
(06:58):
retail through authorized Ping retailers, and it kind of bridges
that gap between PLD milled and PLD Custom. So PLD
milled Plus we have five specific models that start blank.
The head start blank. From an alignment standpoint, you can
add all kinds of different alignment features. You can do
(07:20):
engraving on some of the putters, you can do some
lasering on the putters as well, So it's kind of
jumps into that custom tier without going fully custom, which
PLD Custom is. From PLD milled Plus, we go into
PLD Special Edition or PLD milt Special Edition, which these
(07:41):
are drop ins that we'll do to our accounts, so
specific accounts will get these limited edition or special edition putters,
will mill out a certain amount of them. This past
year we did the Answer thirty. We did a hobby
version of the Special Ed and so those are also
(08:02):
available in a limited amount to our accounts or to
purchase through our accounts. And then from there, next tier
up is this PLD Custom, So PLD Custom is a
fully customizable putter. First thing you do with that is
you book on Ping pld dot com. Top right hand
corner of pin pld dot com.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
There's a spot.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Where you can dive into what ping pld custom actually
is and to book appointments. So we do virtual and
in person appointments for ping pld custom.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Alex, buddy of mine Mike, did the custom fitting on
the app and we played in rain the other day
and he brought a backup putter out because he didn't
want is his custom PILDD deal with. He was like,
this is going to be my backup. It was a
pin putter as well, but he said, my custom PLD
is perfect condition putter. Like that's how much he loves
(08:57):
his custom putter and how much he appreciates it.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
That's awesome, very very cool.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah, so PLD customer, Alex, that's where you can do
literally kind of whatever you want, right, And let's let's
talk a little bit about that experience. So somebody could
come into the lab and why don't you just start
there talking about a little bit of the difference in
the process what somebody will go through whether they come
(09:23):
into the proving grounds into the lab here to go
through their fitting experience and work directly with you, Colton
and the team, versus what does that experience look like remotely,
if somebody can't make it into Phoenix, how do we
service them and provide some great service during that PLD
custom experience.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Awesome?
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, so PINGPLD dot com. You book on the website,
you can book virtual or you can book in person.
So the in person you get the full experience.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
So we we.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Pride ourselves on treating you like a tour pro, going
through the same exact process that a tour.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Pro is going to go through. So we start in.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
The putting lab, will collect some data, will take some video,
and we usually try to start with the player's gamer putter.
If they have the ability to bring their gamer putter,
that gives us a baseline for that. So we're using
ipin two point zero to collect data, which is a
proprietary app that we designed in house. It's measuring the forces,
(10:30):
the torques, the accelerations that the player's applying to the putter.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
It kicks back a lot of data to us.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
A PGA pro, LPGA Cornferry, any of the pros that
come through go through the same thing. We put them
on Iping two point zero as well. We take the
video work to kind of hone in on iline on
link the putter to make sure that li angle's good
on that. So we'll start by collecting the data or
(10:58):
the club data using ipling two point zero. From there
we'll transition to Quintech. Quintech's a ball data system that
we use where we can collect ball data to analyze
the role of the ball. And then we do a
lot of work outside as well. We have a green outside.
(11:19):
After we've kind of dialed in in the putting lab,
will transition to the outside experience and really fine tuned
the loft, the lie on the putter, look at people's
breaking putts, you know if they have or if they
have struggles with right to left, left, the right potts,
really taking a look at that speed control. And that's
(11:41):
the process with the in person is you get the
full go the tour experience. We're diving into everything that
we possibly can as far as the virtual fitting goes.
You sign up for the virtual fitting. When you sign
up for the virtual fitting, you get a zoom link,
so it's a zoo link for the customer that's linked
(12:02):
to my personal or Colden Tunnel. He's our other PLD
Master fitter two hour calendars and that triggers the welcome
kit process. So what we do from there is we'll
send out a welcome kit to the consumer. This kit
goes out approximately ten to twelve days before they're virtual fitting.
(12:24):
Inside the welcome kit's going to be an iPod touch,
a pin cradle, so an iPod cradle, and a putting disc.
Once you power that iPod touch on, it's going to
walk you through the process. We have a different version
of iping that's built into these iPod touches that's extremely
(12:45):
streamlined and it just walks you through the process. So
from there, the person is going to clip it to
their putter. They're going to go through three sessions of
five put seeds, so they'll take fifteen total putts, and
at the very end of those three sessions, it's going
to be submit to ping. It says submit to ping.
(13:07):
It comes directly two hour inbox. So we have that
data and from there we can create a really nice
presentation where we can go over all of that data
with the consumers. We can talk about the forces, the torques,
the accelerations that they're applying to the putter. We spend
the first half of the virtual fitting doing that. The
(13:29):
second half we go through the putters that we have available,
and we're mentioning the best putters that that we think
that fit their stroke based off of the data that's collected.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
Marty is is ping, Like, does ping run ninety five
percent of the iPod touches in the world now.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
I think we do.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
I just want to I'm wondering what other business still
uses iPod touches. I did Virtual Alex probably a year
and a half ago, and it popped in that it
came out of the box of like the iPod Touch. Man,
I haven't seen one of these couple of years.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
It was kind of like a throwback.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
But I mean, I like, I've done both Alex, I've
done virtual, I've done in person, and you get similar data.
You get similar numbers if you do it at home
yourself or obviously if you get a chance to come in.
You've talked a little bit about what you're looking at
when you're diving into a player's stroke, Can you just
expand a little bit more on that, Like what's the
data you're pulling from, you know, the thirty minutes or
(14:24):
an hour you're spending with the player?
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Ipaying measures five different metrics The first one's closing angle
was just just the amount of rotation that the player's
applying from the top of their backstroke to impact, So
that's really going to help us diagnose what type of
stroke type we need to fit a player into. The
next metric is impact angle. This is just a relative
(14:50):
measurement from where they are at set up with the
putter face versus where they are at impact with the
putter face. So this really lets us know where the
face is is relative to where they set up, and
this can let us know how a player aims the
putter and that can also lead into further conversations once
we get deeper into the process about alignment as well.
(15:13):
Next one would be tempo, So that's just measuring the
backstroke time divided by the forward stroke time it kicks
back a ratio kicks back an overall stroke time as well.
Tempo really helps us dive into the.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Headweight of a putter.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Everybody has different has a different tempo, and if everybody
has a different tempo, then we can kind of target
different headweights with those different individuals. From there, we're looking
at the impact li angle, So this is just measuring
the li angle. The putter at impact, and that kind
of helps us diagnose whether we need to take a
(15:49):
putter flatter, we need to take it more upright, or.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
If it's just good to go.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
And then the last category that we look at, or
the last metric that we look at, is going to
be shaft clean at impact. So this is if somebody
has the shaft clean forward, hands forward, de lofting the putter,
it's back adding additional loft.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Or if you're neutral.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
What this does is this really helps us dial in
the loft or the dynamic loft of a putter for
that player. So we're looking at those key five metrics,
and then with the virtual process, it's a conversation as well.
We're getting to know these players. We're asking them about
their tendencies of their game, of their putting stroke, and
(16:33):
then that can kind of help us get to the
end goal of having a putter that's perfectly fit or
very very close to be perfectly fit for them.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Yeah. I think that what's fun OLEX is that the
folks going through PLD custom at home, we are it's
you know, I've seen some other fitting processes where you
just take a video of your stroke or do something
like that, right, we're actually taking these It's kind of
like getting a live m on your putting stroke, right,
so that that face angle or stroke type that we
(17:07):
have in there is a proxy for how much torque
somebody or twisting about the shaft that somebody's putting on
that putter. Right. And then you talked about tempo and
total time. I think these are a couple things that
even the most astute fitter has a hard time seeing
with the naked eye, right. So, I think a big
challenge in putter fitting, club fitting in general is when
(17:30):
do you need to bring in some outside technology to
measure these things that you could not other that you
might be misleading if you look at them with the
naked eye. Right. So, Alex, talk a little bit about,
you know, what any trends you've seen there on the
tempo side and total time? You know, have you seen
folks that have a fast total time but a slow
(17:53):
tempo ratio or a slow total time and a fast
tempo ratio? What have you seen in that little nuance
and and how does that inform where you go with
that player from a headwaight or other putter characteristic standpoint.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah, absolutely, so Ipin kicks back a ratio. We'll start
with the ratio average ratio, and iping is one point
eight to two point two if we meet right in
the middle two point zero, so a two to one ratio.
So that can kind of help us diagnose whether that
player is maybe slightly more abrupt or slightly more deliberate
(18:29):
with their stroke. But another thing iping also provides us
is total time. It provides us total time but also
their backstroke and forward stroke time. So we usually try
to use about one thousand to one thousand and fifty
milliseconds as a baseline. That's a standard stroke time. It's neutral,
(18:50):
its average, it's not fast, it's not slow. And let's
say ipin kicks back a two point four ratioh and
a twelve hundred on the overall stroke time. Well, what
that's letting us know is now that player has a
slightly slower or more deliberate stroke, and we see that
(19:13):
in the data. And if we see that in the data,
we now know that like, hey, okay, they have a
slightly slower, more deliberate stroke, we probably need to go
with something maybe slightly heavier for stability purposes, or let's
say it's the exact opposite to where it kicks back
one point seven, one point eight ratio, something a little
(19:35):
bit on the faster side. The overall stroke time is
eight hundred and fifty nine hundred milliseconds. Well, now we
know that that player has a slightly faster or more
abrupt stroke, and I'm probably not leaning towards a heavy
mallet with that style of player.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
I'm leaning toward wide.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Body, blade blade style, something lighter.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Oh that's super interesting because I think of some golfers
may have heard, or even fitters out there may have heard.
You know, two to one is two or average. Therefore
I need to try to get my player to two
to one tempo ratio. From a teaching or instruction standpoint,
but from a fitting and fitting science standpoint, we were
using total time and tempo ratio to really match players
(20:20):
to the specific headway. Alex, what about face angle? So
we have a delivered face angle, So that's like where
the face is delivered relative to the setup is a
metric in iping? Are we trying to get players to
be zeroed out like so to aim and also deliver
the face at zero or have you've seen good players
(20:41):
have a consistent open or closed bias and if so,
by how much.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
So, this is definitely not a category where we're trying
to zero out a player. I tell everybody this when
they come in, and if you're negative, if you're positive,
if you're zeroed out. The biggest thing with this is
I'm focusing on consistency. If you're going to be negative
seven tenths of a degree closed at impact, I want you.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
To do it over and over and over again. I
want it to be consistent.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Typically for a right handed player, if we see a
negative number, it kind of leads us to believe that
that right handed player could be a touch of a
right aimer, and then to get back to square at impact,
they have to come in slightly closed and then opposite
for the positive number as well. If it's positive point
(21:33):
five or plus zero point five on the impact angle,
it usually lets us know that that player is potentially
a little bit of a left aimer. But we tell
everybody we're not trying to zero you out with this.
It's consistency. The majority of the pros that come through,
the majority of the pros that we work with, or
plus or minus something. It is pretty rare to be
(21:55):
zeroed doubt on this and whether we do it consciously
or unconsciously, the stroke is going to correct foreign aim
bias one way or the other.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Alex, is anybody zero like you mentioned, few people are
zeroed out? Is there anybody on staff that gets to zero?
Like anybody that you know is consistently on that number?
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Not that I can think of off the top of
my head, Marty.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Maybe I try to be I'm always striving for it.
I'm looking.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
I'm looking for that Alex when you're when you're fitting someone.
I think about this a lot with fitting in general.
But when you're fitting somebody for a putter, they're aiming right,
they're aiming left, They're doing little things that you guys
are finding out either by the eye or by this test.
How much are you leaning on putting them in the
right putter versus maybe letting them know something they're doing
(22:46):
wrong because you're not in it necessarily, an you're not
in their instructor, you're not their teacher, right, but there
are little things you can help correct them when you
see all this data come back your ways. So how
do you balance that? It seems like it'd be a
tough thing to kind of balance an obvious. It takes
years of experience to get really comfortable in.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
That sure and that's one of those things where you
have to skate that fine line of teaching and fitting.
The majority of the people that are coming in they're
looking for a fitting, and it's my goal to fit
them into the best putter possible for the stroke that
they're bringing. Now, we see from time to time where
(23:23):
somebody might have a significant amount of ford shaft line,
and at that point, the first thing I'm doing is
taking a look at.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Their ball position.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
They might be too far back in the stands and okay,
now we have a lot of ford shaft lien. Hey,
let's kick that ball up, you know, a ball, a
ball and a half forward in the stands, and let's
see what that does to the shaft lien. Not always
the case that it's going to automatically change it, but
we'll make small little tweaks or small little suggestions from
(23:53):
a setup standpoint that can potentially get this player to
a better spot or have a more consistent stroke.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Yeah, Alex, I want to kind of shift gears a
little bit to alignment markings. Right, So we talked about aim.
We're not necessarily trying to get folks to get the
face back zeroed out relative to where they aim. We've
seen good players, players of all different skill levels, maybe
aim a little off and their stroke kind of gets
(24:23):
it back to get that putter face online to their
intended start line. What about alignment markings, We have a
lot of offerings. If we look at PLD custom you
can kind of do whatever you want. If you look
at mill plus you have some customizations options there with
the alignment markings. You know, what type of player finds
themselves in a dot on the top rail, no alignment
(24:46):
marking at all on an answer putter versus lines that
frame the ball versus a line in the cavity. What
does that process look like and what trends are you
seeing from that perspective? And do you use how a
player or maybe what golf ball and ballmarking they use
to inform that process?
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Yeah? Absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
The first thing I always ask when we start talking
about alignment is how do they line their put up?
Do they have a line on the ball, do they
use the markings on the ball. Are they pointing that
line or are they pointing that marking at a target?
Are they pointing it at the whole. It's just trying
to figure out the tendencies of this player, how they align.
(25:29):
And we'll see a lot of times where people might
be spot aimers. It's like, Okay, I'm aiming to a
spot that's three foot in front of the ball, and
I line that line up to that. Well, that's where
it could be beneficial to have a top rail line
because now that top rail line acts as an extension
from the line on the ball, and now we can
(25:52):
point that top rail line at our target. Same thing
with flange line as well. It's just you have that
slight separation the two. But then we'll get a lot
of players that are face aimers versus people who are
aiming alignment lines, who are aiming the logos on the
ball at the target. So for the face aimer players,
(26:14):
usually that's where I'll lean more towards the dot or
even the top rail line, just because that gives us
a centering point. We have a centering point with the
back of the ball. Now we can aim the face
at that centering point, and ball with features can.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Really help out with that as well.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
So if you have a potter that has really nice
ball with features that are built into it.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Whether we've cut.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Ball with lines or not, we have that dot on
the top and we just have a lot of things
that can help us frame the ball center with the
back of the ball, and from there we're just aiming
the face at the target that we've picked out.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
I mean, Marty, this is such a big part of
modern golf is the you know, you think about the
golf balls that have come out over the last few years.
Right on You've gone from the original pro v that
I don't think had lines on it, to then having lines,
and then now the golf balls have triple tracks. You know,
there's so much alignment out there for the player. And
(27:13):
I'm a player that doesn't like the lines.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
You know.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
I'm a guy that I like to set it up
where I see the name of the golf ball kind
of facing me straight up because I get a little
too technical when I'm trying to get the line of
my putter on the line of the golf ball and
then I'm trying to hit. I almost feel like I'm
trying to hit the perfect putt versus like letting my
feel take over. I think this is something that people
have to figure out almost before they even do a
(27:36):
fitting is how best do I see a putt? How
much does the putt make sense to me when I'm
thinking about where to aim? How far out to go?
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Am I a feel putter?
Speaker 4 (27:46):
I mean, these are things that I think are important
to kind of go over yourself.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
It's almost party.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
It's your MRI analogy you made earlier. It's like people
get nervous about AMRI. They get nervous about fitting at
times as well. But it's going over some of the
things you can go over your before you go into
the process, so you can actually answer some of these questions.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, I think how you mark your golf ball,
what works good for you, and we and we could
sort of as part of PLD will will help evaluate
that for you. You know, maybe somebody struggles with start
line on short puts only start line is more important
than speed on short putts. Maybe you want to use
a line on your ball on short putts and have
a model that can help you with that there. But
(28:24):
let you be more speed speed focus feel focus on
the longer puts because that priority of speed to face
angle kind of changes depending on the putts. So that's
I think a big part of what Alex and his
team does is understand that if you're a golfer that
keeps diligent stats on your putting, maybe through Arcos or
(28:46):
another stats tracking tool or your own little system, certainly
bring those into the putting putter fitting process because we're
gonna want to understand that, you know, not not only
does your memory think maybe your recency by think that
you struggle on longer putts because you just three putted
the last hole you know they was an important match
or something, but is that persistent over time? You know?
(29:09):
And I think that's something really fun. We get access
to in the shot Link data from the tour players,
but we want to be able to pass that level
of service to the to the everyday golfer. And yeah,
it's been fun to see all the different markings on
golf balls. And speaking of golf balls, we in the
Lab Alex have pretty much every majority of the most
popular golf balls out there because part of Balnamic Shane
(29:31):
that you know, is we ask for your feel sound
preference with the golf ball on short game. You know,
we've we've both hit balls that you can barely hear
them when you putt, and the others that are louder
and clickier. Now, a big part of the nuance of
the perfect putter, which appeld custom is all about, is
getting the acoustics dialed in. So, Alex, let's dive into
(29:54):
sound feel, how a player's golf ball might inform that
and what are some of the tech chniques we can
use with milling patterns, et cetera to inform and influence
that through the POD process. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Absolutely, So it's we always ask the player what golf
ball they're playing, and we you're right, we keep a
quite a few of the most popular brands in the lab,
different covers, whether it's something softer, something firmer, and if
we don't ad the ball after the fact, we usually
(30:29):
go out and get it.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
Yeah, but Alex, you can't ask Marty that question, by
the way, it be like a twenty minute answer if
you said, Marty, golf ball play to go? What month
is it?
Speaker 3 (30:38):
What the wind? But uh, go ahead out. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
So that's the first thing we always ask when they
come in the lab is what golf ball are you playing?
Because that's going to dictate or help us determine what
milling pattern.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
We need to do.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
On the face of the butter or what milling pattern
the player might like on the face, and the butter
feel and sound is extremely important and putting, and we
have different milling patterns, different milling depths that we can
achieve on these PLD custom putters to help provide positive acoustics,
(31:15):
positive feedback to the players and what they want to hear.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
So the smoother you.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Go on the face, the clickier the sound's going to be,
the more feedback you're going to get. And then we
offer smooth, shallow, deep milling. We also have some horizontal
milling that we can do on the faces as well.
But if we're looking at just the smooth face, completely
smooth firnest off the face, the most feedback, so the
(31:43):
most click.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
As we get to the.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Shallow mill, it's a little bit softer.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Than your smooth face.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
It's a little bit of a more muted sound to it,
but you still get feedback, you still get some click
to it. As we start to transition into that deeper milling,
that more aggressive milling on the face, it's a little
bit softer off the face. But the thing that most
players notice is the sound difference, because sound and feel
(32:12):
go hand in hand. With the deeper milling, it tends
to be a little bit more of a thuddier sound,
so a little bit deeper sound. If we hear something
that's a little bit deeper or something that's a little
bit thuddier, we're automatically going to think that it's a
little bit softer off the face as well. And one
thing with the milling pattern, and this is something that
(32:33):
we've tested over time, is there's not necessarily a performance
difference between smooth and deep. From a rollout perspective, they're
very very similar. A lot of this is just going
to be player preference. So if you prefer to hear
something more muted, feel something a little bit softer, that's
when we go with more of that deeper or more
(32:55):
aggressive milling. But if you're somebody that likes to hear
a lot of feedback or wants to hear here's some
click sound, that's when we start to move more towards
the shallow or the smooth face.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Alex, you talked earlier on about Bubba being kind of
the origin of the PLD journey for us, and which
one of the milling patterns that we use do we
call the Bubba groove. That's what we've always called it
for slang here, right.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
So the Bubba groove would be a horizontal milling, and
there's a couple different versions of this. Hovelin has the
same thing. So Hovelin has a ball with horizontal milling
on the face. It's about four to five thousands deep
on the face. And if you're comparing that to the
circular milling that we offer, circular milling, the shallow mill
(33:43):
is going to be four thousands deep on the face.
So those feel and sound very very similar. Same thing
with the Bubba groove. The Bubba groove's going to be
about that four to five thousands deep on the face,
and his are full face horizontal.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Yeah, So we can use that ball with milling for
a golfer who's either left eye dominant, depend on how
they set up. They can see the loft on the face,
see the face a little bit, and that can help
them frame the golf ball a little bit as well.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Alex correct.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Absolutely, we always ask eye dominance as well, whether somebody's
right or left eye dominant.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
It's kind of.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
A gray area for us, but there is some of
it that plays into it, especially from an alignment and
an offset standpoint.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
Alex, are we talking millions of options in terms of customization?
I mean, is it infinite? Like, do you have an
idea of what the number be in terms of how
much you could customize your PLD.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
It's a lot. We try to provide as much as possible.
And if it's something that we haven't done before, I'm
gonna ask about it. Okay, So if a customer wants
this type of alignment versus this type of milling versus
this type of engraving, and we haven't done it before, absolutely,
(34:58):
I'm going.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
To inquire about it. If we can do it, We're
going to do it.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Alex, tell us about a time, you know, you know,
you Colton and in our team here at the proving grounds,
it's work with players day in and day out on
these most nuanced topics and preferences. Tell us about a
time where we've identified maybe a gap in our product offerings. Right,
so you're seeing a certain trend or tendency or something
(35:22):
in the lab that we've kind of turned into a
product offering. You know, where we've seen a gap in
one of these attributes. It's so important to putter performance.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, so we actually noticed something within the past couple
of years and introduced to special edition putter this past
year to fill this gap. So if we're looking at
iping data, we have millions and millions of data points
in ipaying, so we're able to identify what's the most
(35:55):
the most closing angle, the least amount of closing angle,
how many people fit into certain types of closing angles.
And we notice that with the slight arc category that
we had the answer potter, which is going to hang
or have forty forty three forty two degrees of toehang
(36:15):
to it. And then from there we go down to
face balance options or a double bend shaft with a
slight amount of toe hag.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
So there's a gap there.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
So we go from zero amount of toe hag all
the way up to forty plus amount of toe haang
and where's the in between there? So what we did
is we created the answer thirty, which sits right in
between that. So your traditional answer hangs the forty forty
two to forty three degrees, We go to the face
(36:48):
balance potter that's at zero, and then we have the
answer thirty. The reason why we call an answer thirty
it is because it hangs at thirty degrees.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
So if we look.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
At this from a rotation standpoint, and if we're identifying like, okay,
five point five degrees six degrees of rotation in iping,
is an answer style putter three point five is to
cut off for that straight stroke? What about those players
that sit around four degrees of rotation three point seven
(37:20):
degrees of rotation? Where do those players fit in? What
type of putter can we provide to them? And that's
where the answer thirty came in is because we had
that gap and we wanted to fill that gap.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, is that where most models come from,
Alex the idea of filling a gap because you know, Marty,
Marty's building new drivers. Mary's Marty's leaning into the technology
to come up with the latest and greatest that's going
to go a lot, little bit longer, a little bit
straighter for the player, and he's going to kind of
test those numbers and test those limits. How does it
go in terms of introducing new putters. Is it just
(37:54):
simply we don't have a putter model for this space
and we need one.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Yeah, yes, and yeah absolutely. So with that we had
a gap there, we needed to fill that gap.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
We filled that gap.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Another way that we figure out if we need new models,
if we need to maybe tweak this model here and there.
It's just working with our tour players. They're very, very
valuable to us and what they want to see. Where
we can go from a design perspective, what gaps need
(38:29):
to be filled, Like if we have this player. Let's
take camp Champ for instance, and he's one of the
reasons why we made the answer thirty putter is because
he's not in the straight stroke, but he's not full
slide arc. He has some rotation in his stroke, but
he kind of floats in between those two. So we
(38:49):
needed to fill that gap. That's why we created the
answer thirty. And we get a lot of feedback from
our tour players what they want to see. The answer
too deep utter is a fine example or a good
example of that. We worked with Tony fenw on that putter.
That putter was designed for him. We made it our
goal to design a putter that looked good to his
(39:11):
eye but also performed how a tour level putter should perform.
So we worked hand in hand with Tony to design
to answer two D. Same thing with Victor Hoblin and
the DS seventy two putter. That putter was designed for him.
He worked with our team. He worked with Tony Serrano
to design this putter. So a lot of it starts
(39:33):
from the tour level, where we get the feedback from
the guys out on tour, the tour pros out on tour,
and then it just kind of filters down from there.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
I remember playing with Victor when he first got that putter.
I got paired with him at the Phoenix Open and
that putter was brand new. It was like everything's fresh.
The milling right in the middle, Alex is the same
model he uses now. It was before it really putina
and got some little dings on him, But that putter's
served him pretty well, especially a year ago here in
(40:04):
the in the FedEx Cup, Alex. Let's let's talk a
little bit about alternative style putting. Right, We're seeing more
folks putting with what I like to call mid length
you know Victor, Yeah, Victor was doing that, you know
five years ago, four or five years ago now putting
kind of mid length style where they grip down on
the putter. You know, are you seeing folks dabbling with
(40:26):
armlock a little bit more? Not so much. How about
folks doing long putters. We're seeing some younger, younger generation
dabbling in the long putter space. What are you see
in amongst the alternative style putting techniques and you know,
what are some of those typical builds like for an
armlock or a midlength putter.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, so we.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
See a lot of people interested in the mid length putters.
They're very popular, they're very trendy right now. We have
quite a few pros that have come through that have
wanted to dabble with them, have wanted to test them out.
At the top of my head, Seamous Power came through
earlier this year. We had built him a mid length
(41:06):
putter and we looked at data with it. Data looked awesome,
really really good, super super consistent with it. So these
middlength putters are just providing a lot of stability for
players who are maybe struggling a little bit with traditional
putters or they just want to try something completely new.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
And we see a lot of that right now.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
To where they're trying the mid length and usually from
a typical mid length build, I'm asking that player what
they're typically playing from their traditional putter. So let's take Victor,
for instance, is Victor Hoblin's putter is thirty six inches
and length he chokes down to thirty four inches. Usually
with a lot of these mid length putters, we like
(41:50):
to see about two inches to three inches above where
they're gripping the putter, and that's just to provide the
additional stability. And we've had some players test out some
long putters. You know, Marty is big advocate for the
long putter here, so of course we have to build
some long putters for our tour pros as well who
(42:12):
are wanting to test these out. Long putters have been
around for a long long time and they really haven't
gone anywhere, but they're starting to have a little bit
of a reassurgence now and it's exciting to see just
because it's another alternative to potentially help make a player better,
(42:34):
help them make more putts. Armlock putters, we see some
armlock putters as well. I would say that the midd
length putters are more on trend than the armlock putters
right now, but armlock putters are still a thing, so
we're still fitting some armlock putters for some of the
players that are coming through.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Here's the question, Yeah on armlock. On armlock, Shane is
what's a typical loft you fit a player to an armlock,
you know, on average.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
So first thing we look at with armmock is going
to be the amount of shaft line the player applies
with armmock. It's anchored into their if there right in
a player into their left arm. So usually they apply
a fair amount of ford shaft lin and kind of
that target loft on that five and a half six
degrees range is usually where we're targeting, assuming that they
(43:29):
have a fair amount of a fore shaft line with
the armmrock style.
Speaker 4 (43:33):
Putter, Alex, what are you rocking? I mean you're the
you're the putter guy. You know you got the collection.
What is the what's the gamer look like right now?
How have you customized it?
Speaker 2 (43:43):
So I don't have a ton of rotation in my stroke,
more of that straight back, straight through type of stroke.
Speaker 4 (43:50):
So so you're telling us, thank you, that's what.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
You're good. You're good at it.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Okay, impact tangle looks pretty. I've gravitated towards the Oslo putter.
I've tried some other putters, some other face balanced style
or just a touch of toe hang style putters. I
play a double bind and the Oslo is the bread
and butter for me. I've built up a few other putters,
(44:18):
I've tested a couple other putters, and I just always
go back to this Oslo putter. It's available in pel
D milled, it's available in PLD milled plus, it's something
that's available in PLD custom and you can do all
the different hozzle options with the OSLO head. One thing
I like about the Oslo is it just sits super flat.
(44:41):
It sits super square. It doesn't open, it doesn't close.
With some mallets. You might see that from time to time,
but this Oslo just sits so square on the ground
and it's inspires so much confidence.
Speaker 4 (44:56):
I mean the PLD program, I mean we talked off
the top. It's not been around that long. I mean,
these putters are unbelievable. They look like pieces of art.
They're exciting to get. I mentioned my buddy Mike Havin
one my buddy Andrew, I know, was messing around with
Marty's putter a few months ago and he got himself
a new PLD and he's been rolling it as good
as he's ever rolled it. I mean, this is so
(45:18):
cool to see being such a part of the Pink
family because again having that final piece, I mean, great wedges,
great iron players, I mean, ping has been a great
putter company for so long, but having that next level
of putter just feels like it pops the bag a
little bit. And I get so excited, Marty when I
see PLD putters in players bags because you know they've
(45:38):
gone through the process to perfect that part of their bag.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
Yeah, it's been fun for me, Shane to see. I mean,
one thing we haven't talked about a lot is how
popular PLD has been with our college golfers, our college teams.
I go to the Mini Tour now, I play in
the Arizona Open. A few weeks ago. I saw tons
of PLDs on the putting green, which was really fun
with our good tournament tournament players. I played with Nico Galletti,
(46:05):
who's on the your DP World Tour this year, at
a sweet PLD putter. So it's been fun. But but
what I love is being again being able to pass
that level of customization service to the everyday golfer as well.
And I also love that we're not just only doing
the customization piece, which which is awesome. You want that
emotional connection with your putter. Putting is where you're the
(46:26):
most vulnerable and fragile as a golfer. I aintally so
having having your your your kids initials, there's something personal
on the putter is comforting. But we are embracing and
leaning into that. Every one of our PLDs is custom fit.
Our pod custom is custom fit. Whether you come here
or we send you the iPod, we get that data
(46:48):
and we're throwing our full suite of putter fitting science
at it. That's what I'm super excited about is to
know that everybody who has a pod custom has literally
been through you know, and iping fitting, gotten all that
data to inform him and working with our talented fitters
like Alex and Colton in our team here.
Speaker 4 (47:07):
Alex, It's been a great conversation, great chat with you.
As I said, I was super excited about this because
I remember getting my first PLD when they first came
out and taking it back because I wanted a little
softer and we were adding grooves at the time. And
to kind of fast forward to the PLD I use now,
I mean I can't.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
It will not leave the bag.
Speaker 4 (47:25):
It is my favorite club in the bag and it
remains my favorite club in the bag. And my son
just convinced me to put a Hulk grip on it
because he got a Spider Man grip on his, So
it's a slightly different look than what I'm used to
having right now, I don't know how long it's gonna stay,
but the putter still remains as beautiful as ever, So Alex,
we appreciate the time.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
Party.
Speaker 4 (47:44):
Always great to chat with you. Excited to see you soon.
Make sure you check out that YouTube battle we had.
It's on the Ping YouTube page if you haven't watched
it yet. Definitely worth your time. This is the Ping
prooven Grounds podcast
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