December 19, 2025 • 23 mins
Shane and Marty are joined at PING HQ by John Oldenburg, Director of Shaft Development, to dive into the world of graphite shafts. They discuss PING's approach to shaft design, the new PING Shaft Lab, and how the new space will be used to elevate PING's holistic approach to club design.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The guys from Ping. They've kind of showed me how
much the equipment matters.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I just love that I can hit any shot 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):
What is up, everybody, It's the Ping Proven Ground Podcast
Shane Baker alongside Marty Jerts and we got John Oldenberg
with us today. We're gonna talk a little bit of shafts,
specifically Ping chefs and building chefs here at Ping. Marty,
I know it's a big, big thing that Ping has
been into, been into for a long time, but specifically
over the last few years.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I think it's fun at Ping because we view our
product development very holistically. You know that the grip, the
shaft in the head all go together as a system
to drive the performance. Very fortunate to be sitting with
John Oldenberg, our director of shaft development, who comes from
a very strong background shaft R and d Olie. I
(00:50):
would love to just have you tell a little bit
about your background and your time at Aldola and some
of the fun products you've worked on in the past
leading up to your career now at Ping.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Sure. I started in the golf shaft business back in
nineteen ninety three, a long long time ago. Before that,
I was in I worked for General Dynamics in the
Space Systems division, So it came out of aerospace. Got
lucky to get a job in golf shafts. Don't really
have experience along those lines, but been loving it for
(01:24):
thirty two years. Worked with al Dula, worked my way
up to vice president of engineering for quite a while there,
and it was a good time. I learned a lot there.
I think we did a lot of good things when
we're at Aldala, at Al Daala. When I started in
ninety three, in fact, Ping was my very first customer.
I was just I started as a design engineer at
(01:46):
Aldola and my first customer was to design Pink shafts.
And you mentioned about, you know, Ping, the history of
the shafts and the way they do things, and you know,
Ping does do things differently in golf shafts. They don't
pick stuff off the shelf, they don't go for a
brand just because the brand is popular. We think the
Ping brand is popular, so we put the Ping brand
(02:07):
on our golf shafts and we do a lot of
work that the other competitors, the other only ms out
there don't work. So through the years, you know, some
of the fun stuff I've done was you know, way
back when doing the Envy the Green shaft, that everybody
talked a lot. A lot of people that are going
to be listening or watching this thing are probably too
young to remember the end, but it was. It was
(02:30):
a very popular product that I did a long time ago.
And then the Voodoo shaft was fun and a little different,
and we did the Rip shaft, and then the Rip
led into the Tour Green shaft, and then the Rogue shaft.
The Rogue shaft became very very popular. So me and
my team at all, we did some good work over
the years and learned a lot of good things, and
(02:51):
hopefully I brought a lot of those learnings over here
to ping with me.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
John, you mentioned interest in the in the in the
shaft development world for most of your time doing it.
What interested you in that world?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
You know, it wasn't shafts that really interest me when
I got into aerospace originally. You know, when a lot
of engineers when you're going up, but we're engineers are
a little different. You probably figured that out already. But
engineers teams tend to figure out very young what they
think they want to do. And what I thought I
wanted to do was work on rocket ships, and that's
(03:23):
what I did out of college. I worked on rocket ships.
Then found out that I don't want to work on
rocket ships because the environment just wasn't the type of
environment just too big, too political, that type of thing.
It was then in my late twenties that I got
into golf, and like a lot of guys, like a
lot of former high school college athlete guys, I got hooked.
(03:44):
I absolutely got hooked.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Was there a reason to get into golf? Like, did
something points you to the golf space?
Speaker 1 (03:49):
What I pointed me to the golf space was they
had a nine hole after work league at General Dynamics.
Again people can yeah, people kept asking me, hey, do
you want a sub into this league? And I didn't
have clubs. I borrowed clubs from people. They gave me
like a forty eight point seven three four handicap, and
I just I just went out and I had a
(04:11):
good time. Was and there was a tolerance on that
like plus minus one on seven, But I just I
got hooked on golf, and then I got my first
set of equipment. And as I started getting more and
more or figuring out more and more that aerospace wasn't
what I wanted to do with my life. An opportunity
(04:32):
arose from an old friend that i'd worked with before.
He said, Hey, I'm at this chef company. We're looking
for a design engineer who wants to apply. I applied.
I got lucky getting the job because, honestly, in the
interview I interviewed with a guy who was also from Chicago.
I'm in chicagoan and all. We talked about the whole time, Bears, Blackhawks,
(04:53):
and pizza. Forty five minute interview, didn't talk any engineer.
So I got the job.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
You're like, this is perfect.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I got the based on Bears, Blackhawks, John.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
I got a really important question then, I live in
the Northeast, A big battle in terms of the better pizza.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Are you always going to defend deep dish? Is that
your world? Marty?
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Do you have an opinion on this as somebody that
grew up in Arizona.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Arizona, We're whatever. No, I know. That's why I'm asking.
That's you're the person that can kind of make the
definitive answer. I'm more more good pizza fine, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yeah, But that being said, pizzas pizza.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Pizza is awesome, hard to mess up, great when it's good.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, but if if you have to have a hierarchy
of pizza, deep dish is the way up here in
New York styles. New York styles what you go for
when you can't find anything else.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
So I got there, you go, So, John, you brought
in the background in composites. So for the for the
listener out there, just tell the listener described like, what
is a composite material?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Right? And I guess the.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Easy way to describe it if you start with a metal,
and a metal is a single material, and one characteristic
of all metals is no matter which way you pull, push,
or twist them, they have the same stiffness in every direction.
Composites are different composites. The word composite means multiple pieces,
So composite materials are multiple materials mixed into one. And
(06:23):
what we use in the shaft world is carbon fiber
in epoxy resin, carbon fiber being a very very strong filament,
the epoxy resin being a glue that holds the filament together. Now,
one of the biggest advantages of composits, especially carbon fiber.
Composites are very very lightweight, very very stiff, very very strong.
(06:46):
The one drawback is in composites, your strength and your
stiffness go along the direction of the fiber, so it's
very very strong in two directions, in the direction of
the fiber, it's not so strong in other directions. You
have to do some unique things to put a structure
like a golf shaft together and have it function the
way you want it to function. But you still are
(07:07):
able to do that with composites and make a really
really good driver shaft that's sixty grams, or with metal
because of the density of metal and the nature of metal,
it's going to be over one hundred grams for a
driver shaft. So they're different, totally different animals, and actually
you design them totally different and you produce them totally different.
(07:29):
The way a graphite shaft is made is very very
different than the way a steel shaft is made.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
How many different layers of the compositor used in an
average graphite shaft or a Mendo Max type of run.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Mind to max, it's probably ten layers of graphite, and
what Marty's referring to is graphic comes in a pre
preg sheet. It's like a sheet of paper, but instead
of being paper, it's sticky epoxy resin and fibers, and
it comes in a sheet and it's rolled on a tool,
so it's rolled in layers. So typically the menu would
(08:06):
probably use is probably about eight to ten layers. I
think I counted once one of the shafts I did,
a very heavyweight iron shaft that I did years and
years ago, we had thirty six layers of graph fights.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Was that the one hundred and thirty It was.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
One hundred and thirty gram graph flight shaft.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Correct. I remember where'd it go, Marty? It went very straight,
did it? It felt?
Speaker 3 (08:31):
It feels very different than steel, and that's one of
the very unique things actually, John, maybe you could tell
just a little bit of the reasons why you get
such a different feel even if you try to match,
you know, the stiffness profile and the uh the weight
and balance point characteristic.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah, again, they're different materials. And you mentioned, you know
that it did feel different. One of the things that
I've run into in my career because one of the
that carrot that was dangling out in front of us
the graphite guys all these years is iron shafts. Iron
shafts are still predominantly steel, especially with better players. Trying
to develop an iron shaft for better players, because you know,
(09:09):
you get the better players, everybody else follows. I want
to play with that guy's I want to play with
Tiger's playing, I want to play with Rory's playing. So
trying to develop a shaft, so it ended up being
that I could make a shaft that performed every bit
as well as the best steel shaft. But you can't
make a graph flight shaft that feels like a steel shaft,
(09:29):
just because the materials are so different. And one of
the primary reasons for that different is the damping properties
and the way the vibration, the impact of the golf
ball and the club head causes vibration. That vibration then
travels up the shaft eventually through the grip into the hands.
That's what the golfer senses as their impact. Feel and
(09:52):
graph fight because of the construction, mainly because it's multiple
materials that in some way work together, in some ways
fight each other. Fighting each other causes vibration to damp out,
so you don't get the same feel coming up the
shaft with a graphite shaft that you do with the
steel shaft. So again, you can match everything else. You
(10:12):
can match the weight, you can match the stiffness, and
you can match the torque, and you can match the balance.
You just you can't match the field.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
How about the shaft lab. What about the introduction of
that here at Ping and the importance of having a
lab where you can start to do a little bit
deeper dive in terms of development of shafts.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, I mean, we're really really excited about having the
shaft lab. It was a five year project getting that
thing up and running and it is finally up and
running what we want to do. Earlier we talked about
Ping being different with regards to the shafts that they
put in their clubs, and Ping has always been a
company that would, as Marty stated, we do take a
(10:53):
holistic approach. It's not a golf head that you just
shove a shaft until you put a grip on. You
design a system so that the system works in harmony
to give the best performance. So Ping has always even
when I was back at all the designing shafts for Ping,
they would specify their product to meet what they wanted
the head to do. We want to take it one
(11:13):
step further instead of just specifying the product, sending those
specifications to a vendor partner and saying, please design this
for me, please test it for me, and then if
everything is good, we'll buy it from you. Now we're
doing all the design. Everything is in house. We do
everything from start to finish. So the ultimate goal for
all ping stock shafts, and we've already started We've done
(11:36):
a bunch of them already in the only six months
that it's been running. The ultimate goal is that the
only thing the vendors do for us is mass production.
We essentially we send them a recipe. We don't send
them specs and say, hey, design me some We send
them a recipe. This is what you're going to build
for us. This is what it's going to come out like.
(11:57):
So it gives us just total control of the process
us and it also allows us to deeper dive into
some innovation looking at how shafts are made. What can
we do different from a material standpoint, What can we
do different from the way shafts are made. Graphight shafts
were first made in the late nineteen sixties. A name
(12:18):
some people might be familiar with Frank Thomas, who used
to be technical director of the USGA. Years ago, he
worked for a fishing ride company called Shakespeare. Shakespeare made
the first graphite shafts in the late sixties. Honestly, the
basics of the materials, the basics of the process, they're
the same now in twenty twenty five. So we want
(12:39):
to take a deeper dive and look into that. And
we think we're better able to do that type of
thing because we don't have to rely on the mass production.
And because we don't have to rely on that mass
production paying the bills, we have other things that pay
the bills. So we can go and we can look
at innovation and shafts, whether it's the materials and whether
it's the machinery. So not only does it give us
(13:01):
total control of our stock shafts now, it also allows
us to go look and look under some rocks that
maybe haven't been looked at before.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
How much of your day to day is experimental? How
much is your day to day within the lab where
you can experiment on some ideas that might work in
the future.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
You know, it's up and down. It depends on the season.
Ping launches different products at different times, and we have schedules.
Our G product is typically on a two year schedule,
so there's times where we're extremely busy just trying to
get that G product ready, and then there'll be times
where there's a little bit of a lull, so you
(13:37):
work on what you have to work on, and then
when the lulls come, you work on what you want
to work on. I would say in total, and again
this is pretty new because the lab has only been
really up and running since around the March April timeframe.
We're probably spending right now about twenty percent of our
time doing innovation work.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
It's amazing.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Marty John walked me through the lab a couple of
days ago, and we're going to have ADEO either out
on YouTube now or it will be out on YouTube
soon on the PING channel. I know about shafts, I
know about the ideas about shafts. I never knew what
went in to developing a shaft. And once you walk,
once someone walks you through that process, I mean the
mind's open to the idea of maybe what is to
(14:18):
come in the coming years in terms of where shafts
could go.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
I think one of the things I'm very excited about
the lab is that John's very familiar and helped team
up and do a lot of the research that we
did on shaft performance using our motion capture system focal
to bucket players into different types of groups, like you know,
so we did a lot of different shaft testing. Keep
(14:44):
everything the same, but change the torque or the tip stiffness,
or the weight or the balance point, and we could
kind of come up with groupings and fit shafts based
on those groupings. Well, now that we can, John in
the Lab and his team can roll a shaft for
an individual, right, you can, you can truly optimize from
a focal session and then design and manufacture a shaft.
(15:07):
John tell us a little bit about some of the
experimentation work you're doing there with let's say John Ky
for example, or Christian Pina.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
We just say, one of the goals of the lab,
and not just taking total control of the stock shafts,
is to be able to already mention make the spoke product,
you know, do do a single shaft for a single
player that totally fits that player. And we decided that
John k would. He'd be a good guinea pig.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
He's a good person to start.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
It's a good person to start with. You know, he
owns part of the company, and he is a nut golfer.
He just he loves equipment and he loves the game.
So why not.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Start good player as well? Right, very good boy.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah, although I got to put this in there, I
had sixty two years old. I outdrove him one time.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
One one time, one time. We say what year that
is or not?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
That was only like two years And I let him
know it too well as I walked past him in
the faraway. But what we want to be able to
do is take all this data that we're gathering. We've
got tremendous tools that we can use to gather data.
And when fitting first started, fitting was just all about
swing speed. And you know, now we can measure a
(16:20):
lot more than swing speed. We can see what the
golfer is doing through the whole swing. We can see
what the shaft is doing through the whole swing. We
can analyze things, we can change things to determine what
attributes to the shaft affect what parts of the bullflight
for what types of swings. So you know, we got
John Ka on the focal system. We looked, we did
a fitting, We looked at what he's doing. We compared
(16:43):
what he's doing to the shaft profiles that were available
and said, okay, he fits. He should fit in right
about here, which wasn't right on top of one of
the profiles. It was kind of in between. So we
went back to the lab and we created a shaft
based on where he fit, and honestly, as far as
I know, it's still in his bag right now. It worked.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
I mean it almost feels like shirt sizing, you know.
I mean forever there's been small, medium, large, extra large,
and you just have to wear what's out there, and
the idea of maybe getting the shirt fit for you
versus you picking the shirt size. I mean, are we
moving in a place, Marty where in a couple of years,
five years, whatever. Every time you get a new club
(17:26):
in theory, if you want to get totally fit, it's
grip shaft clubhead. All that stuff fits specifically for you.
I mean to the tee, I mean basically bespoke shaft
for you.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
I think if you take a step back and look
at the progression of tools in our technology, it's certainly
going that direct, okay, Right, Like if you go back
ten years, we didn't have adjustaball hozzles that you could
tweak the loft down to the nearest half a degree
to optimize your launch conditions, and then tour players could
move the cg of the head with hot melt or something.
(17:59):
But the every day golfer, well now they can, and
now we have a bigger suite of shaft offerings. Right,
you can still tip trim a shaft to kind of
dial it in, which is a really good method, or
step them in irons. So those are great options. But
if you kind of dot connect yourself to the future,
we are getting more and more precise with our tools
and be able to pass them to the every day offer.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
I mean, it's just again I think, I mean, fitting
has been a part of ping since its inception, but
you just think about where fitting potentially could be going.
And I mean, I love the idea of shafts being
such an important part of this and the fact that
you've been in the business for so long, and something
you told me the other day and you've said today
as well, is whilst the shaft world has progressed, there
(18:41):
are bigger steps left to be made, and there's probably leaps.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I know.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
You even said to me the other Eagle, I don't
know if I'm going to be around for it, but
hopefully I will be, because obviously you've dedicated so much
time to it.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yeah, I would like to see before I go. One
of the things I tell people that if you look
back in the history of shafts you know or sorry,
Hickory started fourteen hundreds whenever they started putting clubs together,
and it lasted until nineteen thirties when steel really started
becoming prominent, and then steel was around until, like I said,
(19:12):
the late nineteen sixties when graphite finally came around. Well,
here we are, sixty years later. We haven't had something
new yet. There's something out there. There's something in a
material or process to be able to do something differently,
do something better for the golfer, do something fairly amazing.
I'd like to be part of that. You know, hopefully
(19:32):
it happens while I'm still here.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
John Rimmerhouse that you like to you like to fish,
a little bit, play a little bit of hockey in
your day ski. Okay, what are some of these other
industries that you maybe get some inspiration and brought into
the golf chaft design world.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
If you look at the industries that are very very
into composites in and using composites that flex in a
certain way. So hockey, of course, is there's definitely parallels
in hockey. They're made the same way. It's certainly a
different shape. It's the swings. You look at a slap
(20:10):
shot versus a driver swing. There's similarities, but there's also differences,
so you can look at, you know, some of that.
In fact, we're doing a collaboration with a hockey company
right now. They just put in a lab. We just
put in the lab. We want to talk and see
who's doing what and how they're doing it, and see
if we can teach them and they can teach us.
Fishing poles are a little different. They're made exactly the
(20:33):
same way that shafts are made, but the performance requirements
are a little different. But again, anytime you're looking at
a composite structure, specifically a tubular type composite where you're
trying to tune bending properties and torsional properties, there's a
lot of things out there. Lacrosse is another one. Even baseball,
(20:53):
the Major League still use wood bats, but you go
to the college ranks and the high school ranks and
even predominantly in league now it's all composite bats. So
you've got the same type thing. You've got a a
flexing tubular structure that's using being used to impact something
and you're trying to optimize that impact, and you're trying
(21:14):
to optimize the flight of this projectile or ball after
that impact. So there's a lot of parallels there with baseball,
at least the new composite bats in baseball as well.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
What about pole vaulting, Have there been another one there
that made similar.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Or John D.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Pol No, I never tried it.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
I mean tomorrow, let's get it.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Hey, let's go. I know somebody that makes polevallt polls.
One of our vendors makes pole vault polls. They are
made the same way, but as you can imagine, it's
a much bigger set of tools, much bigger ovens to
cure these things and pole volt polls. They use a
lot of glass because you've seen pole vaulters. The way
(21:57):
those things bend, the amount of that goes into You
need a structure that's got a lot of give to it.
Glass has a lot of give to it. Certain types
of graphite don't have so much give. If you took
one of our graphite shafts and tried to bend it
as much as some of those pullvall poles bend, you're
not going to like what happens.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
And by glass, you mean fiberglass. Fiberglass, right, yeah, very flexible.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
Not glass behind you. Well, John, we appreciate the time.
Like I said, I mean when you walk me through
the lab. But I guess we were joking the other day.
You start in the freezer, and you go to an oven,
and then you go to the paint room. I mean,
I don't think people quite understand the process that it
takes to make a high end shaft, and so you
revealing that to me has been incredible. Hopefully you're given
(22:41):
a little bit of insight into the world and where
it's going. Will help a lot of the golfers out
there understand what they're playing with.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah, I appreciate the time to try and inform people. Mean,
a lot of golfers they don't really care where their
equipment comes from or how it's made. But there is
a growing contingency out there that is very very curious
about how is this done, why is this better for me?
What can I do to improve my game? And you know,
knowledge is never a bad.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Time, that's right.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
We like the curious golfer on this podcast. This is
the Pink proven Grounds podcast.
The guys from Ping. They've kind of showed me how
much the equipment matters.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I just love that I can hit any shot 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):
What is up, everybody, It's the Ping Proven Ground Podcast
Shane Baker alongside Marty Jerts and we got John Oldenberg
with us today. We're gonna talk a little bit of shafts,
specifically Ping chefs and building chefs here at Ping. Marty,
I know it's a big, big thing that Ping has
been into, been into for a long time, but specifically
over the last few years.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I think it's fun at Ping because we view our
product development very holistically. You know that the grip, the
shaft in the head all go together as a system
to drive the performance. Very fortunate to be sitting with
John Oldenberg, our director of shaft development, who comes from
a very strong background shaft R and d Olie. I
(00:50):
would love to just have you tell a little bit
about your background and your time at Aldola and some
of the fun products you've worked on in the past
leading up to your career now at Ping.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Sure. I started in the golf shaft business back in
nineteen ninety three, a long long time ago. Before that,
I was in I worked for General Dynamics in the
Space Systems division, So it came out of aerospace. Got
lucky to get a job in golf shafts. Don't really
have experience along those lines, but been loving it for
(01:24):
thirty two years. Worked with al Dula, worked my way
up to vice president of engineering for quite a while there,
and it was a good time. I learned a lot there.
I think we did a lot of good things when
we're at Aldala, at Al Daala. When I started in
ninety three, in fact, Ping was my very first customer.
I was just I started as a design engineer at
(01:46):
Aldola and my first customer was to design Pink shafts.
And you mentioned about, you know, Ping, the history of
the shafts and the way they do things, and you know,
Ping does do things differently in golf shafts. They don't
pick stuff off the shelf, they don't go for a
brand just because the brand is popular. We think the
Ping brand is popular, so we put the Ping brand
(02:07):
on our golf shafts and we do a lot of
work that the other competitors, the other only ms out
there don't work. So through the years, you know, some
of the fun stuff I've done was you know, way
back when doing the Envy the Green shaft, that everybody
talked a lot. A lot of people that are going
to be listening or watching this thing are probably too
young to remember the end, but it was. It was
(02:30):
a very popular product that I did a long time ago.
And then the Voodoo shaft was fun and a little different,
and we did the Rip shaft, and then the Rip
led into the Tour Green shaft, and then the Rogue shaft.
The Rogue shaft became very very popular. So me and
my team at all, we did some good work over
the years and learned a lot of good things, and
(02:51):
hopefully I brought a lot of those learnings over here
to ping with me.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
John, you mentioned interest in the in the in the
shaft development world for most of your time doing it.
What interested you in that world?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
You know, it wasn't shafts that really interest me when
I got into aerospace originally. You know, when a lot
of engineers when you're going up, but we're engineers are
a little different. You probably figured that out already. But
engineers teams tend to figure out very young what they
think they want to do. And what I thought I
wanted to do was work on rocket ships, and that's
(03:23):
what I did out of college. I worked on rocket ships.
Then found out that I don't want to work on
rocket ships because the environment just wasn't the type of
environment just too big, too political, that type of thing.
It was then in my late twenties that I got
into golf, and like a lot of guys, like a
lot of former high school college athlete guys, I got hooked.
(03:44):
I absolutely got hooked.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Was there a reason to get into golf? Like, did
something points you to the golf space?
Speaker 1 (03:49):
What I pointed me to the golf space was they
had a nine hole after work league at General Dynamics.
Again people can yeah, people kept asking me, hey, do
you want a sub into this league? And I didn't
have clubs. I borrowed clubs from people. They gave me
like a forty eight point seven three four handicap, and
I just I just went out and I had a
(04:11):
good time. Was and there was a tolerance on that
like plus minus one on seven, But I just I
got hooked on golf, and then I got my first
set of equipment. And as I started getting more and
more or figuring out more and more that aerospace wasn't
what I wanted to do with my life. An opportunity
(04:32):
arose from an old friend that i'd worked with before.
He said, Hey, I'm at this chef company. We're looking
for a design engineer who wants to apply. I applied.
I got lucky getting the job because, honestly, in the
interview I interviewed with a guy who was also from Chicago.
I'm in chicagoan and all. We talked about the whole time, Bears, Blackhawks,
(04:53):
and pizza. Forty five minute interview, didn't talk any engineer.
So I got the job.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
You're like, this is perfect.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I got the based on Bears, Blackhawks, John.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
I got a really important question then, I live in
the Northeast, A big battle in terms of the better pizza.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Are you always going to defend deep dish? Is that
your world? Marty?
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Do you have an opinion on this as somebody that
grew up in Arizona.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Arizona, We're whatever. No, I know. That's why I'm asking.
That's you're the person that can kind of make the
definitive answer. I'm more more good pizza fine, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yeah, But that being said, pizzas pizza.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Pizza is awesome, hard to mess up, great when it's good.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, but if if you have to have a hierarchy
of pizza, deep dish is the way up here in
New York styles. New York styles what you go for
when you can't find anything else.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
So I got there, you go, So, John, you brought
in the background in composites. So for the for the
listener out there, just tell the listener described like, what
is a composite material?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Right? And I guess the.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Easy way to describe it if you start with a metal,
and a metal is a single material, and one characteristic
of all metals is no matter which way you pull, push,
or twist them, they have the same stiffness in every direction.
Composites are different composites. The word composite means multiple pieces,
So composite materials are multiple materials mixed into one. And
(06:23):
what we use in the shaft world is carbon fiber
in epoxy resin, carbon fiber being a very very strong filament,
the epoxy resin being a glue that holds the filament together. Now,
one of the biggest advantages of composits, especially carbon fiber.
Composites are very very lightweight, very very stiff, very very strong.
(06:46):
The one drawback is in composites, your strength and your
stiffness go along the direction of the fiber, so it's
very very strong in two directions, in the direction of
the fiber, it's not so strong in other directions. You
have to do some unique things to put a structure
like a golf shaft together and have it function the
way you want it to function. But you still are
(07:07):
able to do that with composites and make a really
really good driver shaft that's sixty grams, or with metal
because of the density of metal and the nature of metal,
it's going to be over one hundred grams for a
driver shaft. So they're different, totally different animals, and actually
you design them totally different and you produce them totally different.
(07:29):
The way a graphite shaft is made is very very
different than the way a steel shaft is made.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
How many different layers of the compositor used in an
average graphite shaft or a Mendo Max type of run.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Mind to max, it's probably ten layers of graphite, and
what Marty's referring to is graphic comes in a pre
preg sheet. It's like a sheet of paper, but instead
of being paper, it's sticky epoxy resin and fibers, and
it comes in a sheet and it's rolled on a tool,
so it's rolled in layers. So typically the menu would
(08:06):
probably use is probably about eight to ten layers. I
think I counted once one of the shafts I did,
a very heavyweight iron shaft that I did years and
years ago, we had thirty six layers of graph fights.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Was that the one hundred and thirty It was.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
One hundred and thirty gram graph flight shaft.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Correct. I remember where'd it go, Marty? It went very straight,
did it? It felt?
Speaker 3 (08:31):
It feels very different than steel, and that's one of
the very unique things actually, John, maybe you could tell
just a little bit of the reasons why you get
such a different feel even if you try to match,
you know, the stiffness profile and the uh the weight
and balance point characteristic.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah, again, they're different materials. And you mentioned, you know
that it did feel different. One of the things that
I've run into in my career because one of the
that carrot that was dangling out in front of us
the graphite guys all these years is iron shafts. Iron
shafts are still predominantly steel, especially with better players. Trying
to develop an iron shaft for better players, because you know,
(09:09):
you get the better players, everybody else follows. I want
to play with that guy's I want to play with
Tiger's playing, I want to play with Rory's playing. So
trying to develop a shaft, so it ended up being
that I could make a shaft that performed every bit
as well as the best steel shaft. But you can't
make a graph flight shaft that feels like a steel shaft,
(09:29):
just because the materials are so different. And one of
the primary reasons for that different is the damping properties
and the way the vibration, the impact of the golf
ball and the club head causes vibration. That vibration then
travels up the shaft eventually through the grip into the hands.
That's what the golfer senses as their impact. Feel and
(09:52):
graph fight because of the construction, mainly because it's multiple
materials that in some way work together, in some ways
fight each other. Fighting each other causes vibration to damp out,
so you don't get the same feel coming up the
shaft with a graphite shaft that you do with the
steel shaft. So again, you can match everything else. You
(10:12):
can match the weight, you can match the stiffness, and
you can match the torque, and you can match the balance.
You just you can't match the field.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
How about the shaft lab. What about the introduction of
that here at Ping and the importance of having a
lab where you can start to do a little bit
deeper dive in terms of development of shafts.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, I mean, we're really really excited about having the
shaft lab. It was a five year project getting that
thing up and running and it is finally up and
running what we want to do. Earlier we talked about
Ping being different with regards to the shafts that they
put in their clubs, and Ping has always been a
company that would, as Marty stated, we do take a
(10:53):
holistic approach. It's not a golf head that you just
shove a shaft until you put a grip on. You
design a system so that the system works in harmony
to give the best performance. So Ping has always even
when I was back at all the designing shafts for Ping,
they would specify their product to meet what they wanted
the head to do. We want to take it one
(11:13):
step further instead of just specifying the product, sending those
specifications to a vendor partner and saying, please design this
for me, please test it for me, and then if
everything is good, we'll buy it from you. Now we're
doing all the design. Everything is in house. We do
everything from start to finish. So the ultimate goal for
all ping stock shafts, and we've already started We've done
(11:36):
a bunch of them already in the only six months
that it's been running. The ultimate goal is that the
only thing the vendors do for us is mass production.
We essentially we send them a recipe. We don't send
them specs and say, hey, design me some We send
them a recipe. This is what you're going to build
for us. This is what it's going to come out like.
(11:57):
So it gives us just total control of the process
us and it also allows us to deeper dive into
some innovation looking at how shafts are made. What can
we do different from a material standpoint, What can we
do different from the way shafts are made. Graphight shafts
were first made in the late nineteen sixties. A name
(12:18):
some people might be familiar with Frank Thomas, who used
to be technical director of the USGA. Years ago, he
worked for a fishing ride company called Shakespeare. Shakespeare made
the first graphite shafts in the late sixties. Honestly, the
basics of the materials, the basics of the process, they're
the same now in twenty twenty five. So we want
(12:39):
to take a deeper dive and look into that. And
we think we're better able to do that type of
thing because we don't have to rely on the mass production.
And because we don't have to rely on that mass
production paying the bills, we have other things that pay
the bills. So we can go and we can look
at innovation and shafts, whether it's the materials and whether
it's the machinery. So not only does it give us
(13:01):
total control of our stock shafts now, it also allows
us to go look and look under some rocks that
maybe haven't been looked at before.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
How much of your day to day is experimental? How
much is your day to day within the lab where
you can experiment on some ideas that might work in
the future.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
You know, it's up and down. It depends on the season.
Ping launches different products at different times, and we have schedules.
Our G product is typically on a two year schedule,
so there's times where we're extremely busy just trying to
get that G product ready, and then there'll be times
where there's a little bit of a lull, so you
(13:37):
work on what you have to work on, and then
when the lulls come, you work on what you want
to work on. I would say in total, and again
this is pretty new because the lab has only been
really up and running since around the March April timeframe.
We're probably spending right now about twenty percent of our
time doing innovation work.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
It's amazing.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Marty John walked me through the lab a couple of
days ago, and we're going to have ADEO either out
on YouTube now or it will be out on YouTube
soon on the PING channel. I know about shafts, I
know about the ideas about shafts. I never knew what
went in to developing a shaft. And once you walk,
once someone walks you through that process, I mean the
mind's open to the idea of maybe what is to
(14:18):
come in the coming years in terms of where shafts
could go.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
I think one of the things I'm very excited about
the lab is that John's very familiar and helped team
up and do a lot of the research that we
did on shaft performance using our motion capture system focal
to bucket players into different types of groups, like you know,
so we did a lot of different shaft testing. Keep
(14:44):
everything the same, but change the torque or the tip stiffness,
or the weight or the balance point, and we could
kind of come up with groupings and fit shafts based
on those groupings. Well, now that we can, John in
the Lab and his team can roll a shaft for
an individual, right, you can, you can truly optimize from
a focal session and then design and manufacture a shaft.
(15:07):
John tell us a little bit about some of the
experimentation work you're doing there with let's say John Ky
for example, or Christian Pina.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
We just say, one of the goals of the lab,
and not just taking total control of the stock shafts,
is to be able to already mention make the spoke product,
you know, do do a single shaft for a single
player that totally fits that player. And we decided that
John k would. He'd be a good guinea pig.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
He's a good person to start.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
It's a good person to start with. You know, he
owns part of the company, and he is a nut golfer.
He just he loves equipment and he loves the game.
So why not.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Start good player as well? Right, very good boy.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah, although I got to put this in there, I
had sixty two years old. I outdrove him one time.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
One one time, one time. We say what year that
is or not?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
That was only like two years And I let him
know it too well as I walked past him in
the faraway. But what we want to be able to
do is take all this data that we're gathering. We've
got tremendous tools that we can use to gather data.
And when fitting first started, fitting was just all about
swing speed. And you know, now we can measure a
(16:20):
lot more than swing speed. We can see what the
golfer is doing through the whole swing. We can see
what the shaft is doing through the whole swing. We
can analyze things, we can change things to determine what
attributes to the shaft affect what parts of the bullflight
for what types of swings. So you know, we got
John Ka on the focal system. We looked, we did
a fitting, We looked at what he's doing. We compared
(16:43):
what he's doing to the shaft profiles that were available
and said, okay, he fits. He should fit in right
about here, which wasn't right on top of one of
the profiles. It was kind of in between. So we
went back to the lab and we created a shaft
based on where he fit, and honestly, as far as
I know, it's still in his bag right now. It worked.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
I mean it almost feels like shirt sizing, you know.
I mean forever there's been small, medium, large, extra large,
and you just have to wear what's out there, and
the idea of maybe getting the shirt fit for you
versus you picking the shirt size. I mean, are we
moving in a place, Marty where in a couple of years,
five years, whatever. Every time you get a new club
(17:26):
in theory, if you want to get totally fit, it's
grip shaft clubhead. All that stuff fits specifically for you.
I mean to the tee, I mean basically bespoke shaft
for you.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
I think if you take a step back and look
at the progression of tools in our technology, it's certainly
going that direct, okay, Right, Like if you go back
ten years, we didn't have adjustaball hozzles that you could
tweak the loft down to the nearest half a degree
to optimize your launch conditions, and then tour players could
move the cg of the head with hot melt or something.
(17:59):
But the every day golfer, well now they can, and
now we have a bigger suite of shaft offerings. Right,
you can still tip trim a shaft to kind of
dial it in, which is a really good method, or
step them in irons. So those are great options. But
if you kind of dot connect yourself to the future,
we are getting more and more precise with our tools
and be able to pass them to the every day offer.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
I mean, it's just again I think, I mean, fitting
has been a part of ping since its inception, but
you just think about where fitting potentially could be going.
And I mean, I love the idea of shafts being
such an important part of this and the fact that
you've been in the business for so long, and something
you told me the other day and you've said today
as well, is whilst the shaft world has progressed, there
(18:41):
are bigger steps left to be made, and there's probably leaps.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I know.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
You even said to me the other Eagle, I don't
know if I'm going to be around for it, but
hopefully I will be, because obviously you've dedicated so much
time to it.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yeah, I would like to see before I go. One
of the things I tell people that if you look
back in the history of shafts you know or sorry,
Hickory started fourteen hundreds whenever they started putting clubs together,
and it lasted until nineteen thirties when steel really started
becoming prominent, and then steel was around until, like I said,
(19:12):
the late nineteen sixties when graphite finally came around. Well,
here we are, sixty years later. We haven't had something
new yet. There's something out there. There's something in a
material or process to be able to do something differently,
do something better for the golfer, do something fairly amazing.
I'd like to be part of that. You know, hopefully
(19:32):
it happens while I'm still here.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
John Rimmerhouse that you like to you like to fish,
a little bit, play a little bit of hockey in
your day ski. Okay, what are some of these other
industries that you maybe get some inspiration and brought into
the golf chaft design world.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
If you look at the industries that are very very
into composites in and using composites that flex in a
certain way. So hockey, of course, is there's definitely parallels
in hockey. They're made the same way. It's certainly a
different shape. It's the swings. You look at a slap
(20:10):
shot versus a driver swing. There's similarities, but there's also differences,
so you can look at, you know, some of that.
In fact, we're doing a collaboration with a hockey company
right now. They just put in a lab. We just
put in the lab. We want to talk and see
who's doing what and how they're doing it, and see
if we can teach them and they can teach us.
Fishing poles are a little different. They're made exactly the
(20:33):
same way that shafts are made, but the performance requirements
are a little different. But again, anytime you're looking at
a composite structure, specifically a tubular type composite where you're
trying to tune bending properties and torsional properties, there's a
lot of things out there. Lacrosse is another one. Even baseball,
(20:53):
the Major League still use wood bats, but you go
to the college ranks and the high school ranks and
even predominantly in league now it's all composite bats. So
you've got the same type thing. You've got a a
flexing tubular structure that's using being used to impact something
and you're trying to optimize that impact, and you're trying
(21:14):
to optimize the flight of this projectile or ball after
that impact. So there's a lot of parallels there with baseball,
at least the new composite bats in baseball as well.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
What about pole vaulting, Have there been another one there
that made similar.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Or John D.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Pol No, I never tried it.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
I mean tomorrow, let's get it.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Hey, let's go. I know somebody that makes polevallt polls.
One of our vendors makes pole vault polls. They are
made the same way, but as you can imagine, it's
a much bigger set of tools, much bigger ovens to
cure these things and pole volt polls. They use a
lot of glass because you've seen pole vaulters. The way
(21:57):
those things bend, the amount of that goes into You
need a structure that's got a lot of give to it.
Glass has a lot of give to it. Certain types
of graphite don't have so much give. If you took
one of our graphite shafts and tried to bend it
as much as some of those pullvall poles bend, you're
not going to like what happens.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
And by glass, you mean fiberglass. Fiberglass, right, yeah, very flexible.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
Not glass behind you. Well, John, we appreciate the time.
Like I said, I mean when you walk me through
the lab. But I guess we were joking the other day.
You start in the freezer, and you go to an oven,
and then you go to the paint room. I mean,
I don't think people quite understand the process that it
takes to make a high end shaft, and so you
revealing that to me has been incredible. Hopefully you're given
(22:41):
a little bit of insight into the world and where
it's going. Will help a lot of the golfers out
there understand what they're playing with.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah, I appreciate the time to try and inform people. Mean,
a lot of golfers they don't really care where their
equipment comes from or how it's made. But there is
a growing contingency out there that is very very curious
about how is this done, why is this better for me?
What can I do to improve my game? And you know,
knowledge is never a bad.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Time, that's right.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
We like the curious golfer on this podcast. This is
the Pink proven Grounds podcast.
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