May 28, 2025 • 33 mins
What if the 3-wood is the most overrated club in your bag?
In this episode of the Golf Well podcast, I sit down with Marty Jertson, VP of Fitting & Performance at Ping, to talk about the rise of the Thriver—a shorter, higher-lofted second driver that's replacing fairway woods for tour players like Neil Shipley and Preston Summerhays.
We break down:
– Why the 3-wood is becoming obsolete for high-speed players
– How a Thriver setup can drastically improve accuracy off the tee
– Fitting insights using Ping’s in-house strokes gained calculator
– Why your course strategy might need a total re-think
– How to build one yourself (or get it built the right way)
This might be the most under-the-radar gear trend in golf right now—and after hearing this, you might want to build one yourself.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Should you have two drivers in your golf bag?
A three wood? A mini driver.
There's a lot of questions it seems like.
A lot of people. Are doing a lot of different
stuff and today we're going to dive into it.
You are listening to the golf well podcast.
My name is Cory Walker. I am your host and this is a
show all about getting better atgolf.
It's diving into all the strangetactics, habits, performance,
(00:21):
gear, tech, all that stuff that helps us get better at the game.
This is our first Golf Well podcast.
I know that might be weird because you're saying like, I
think I've heard you before. Well, it used to be called Golf
Science Lab. I was looking back as we started
this 10 years ago in 2015. Golf Science Lab.
That's pretty nuts. And this is our first episode of
Golf Well. We rebranded in January 2025
(00:44):
here. And yeah, we're back and I
wanted to have some conversations on the podcast
here. And so we're we're firing it
back up because there's some some good ideas have been having
great conversations. There's like, man, I got to
share some of this with folks. So thank you guys for listening.
Thank you for commenting. I saw some of the comments of
like, hey, where's the podcast? So well, here it is.
(01:04):
You you found it. So what's the plan going
forward? Well, I'm going.
To hop on here. When something like honestly
really interesting happened. So hopefully at least once a
month, twice a month, kind of join y'all here with an
interesting guest to talk through a topic.
And today we were talking with Marty Gertz and he is the VP of
fitting and performance of Ping.And I saw his tweet from Neil
(01:26):
Shipley talking about he how he has two drivers in the bag.
And it was it was pretty interesting.
And so I reached, I was like, man, you got to tell me what?
You guys were doing? Like how are you thinking about
this? And and like should I put 2
drivers in my golf bag? Honestly, that was a question
and he answered all those and more.
Great conversation. Appreciate his time.
Hopping on. Yeah, let's get back into our
(01:47):
our first. Golf Ball podcast, it's pretty
cool. All right, Marty.
So we are having a chat on Twitter about Mini Driver
because Neil Shipley had this really great little insight
about how he has this cut down driver that only carries 280.
His normal driver carries 300. That's kind of an interesting
(02:10):
thing. And and so I wanted to hear
like, what are you guys buildingover over there and like, what
are some of these clubs that tour pros are asking for from
you? Yeah, no, it's, it's been fun.
We've seen cadabbling of this over like, let's call it the
last 10 years, you know, whetherit's Phillip Augusta, but maybe
(02:30):
it's sort of clouded with, well,he needs to draw a club in a
slice club, you know. But then we've seen other
players do it, like Ben Silverman, PJ Tour player.
He's he's played our 12° G 410 is his second driver for a long
time. Nobody knows about it.
You know, it's like not in the news in the media.
Well, then Fast forward today, we got folks like what Fee now
(02:51):
did at the Masters last year, a couple years ago, you got Neil
Shipley doing it. We got Preston Summerhays
playing like a 12° driver. And what these guys are kind of
realizing, Cordy, is that if youhit the ball far, if you're
playing big golf courses, tour golf courses, you just really
don't need your 3 foot off the ground that much.
(03:12):
Or is a percentage of like your contribution to your score like
hitting the high three would into a par 5 and make an eagle?
Like those days are kind of gone.
Like it's just not that important.
It's so rare of a shot that and then as far as these guys are
hitting the ball now, the Neil Shipley's like hitting the
fairway and optimizing that tee shot for accuracy is a premium,
(03:36):
right? And like the moment of inertia
you get in, let's say a 12 degree G440 Max driver is
literally three to five times more than a three would.
And so like there your, your ability to, to improve your like
left, right dispersion, your cone, however you want to
(03:56):
measure it can go up like you, you could reduce your left right
dispersion by 40 to 60%. We've seen in our testing and
that's what these guys are doingon on the tour level.
To walk me through it. So I would have my normal driver
that's maxed out for distance and dispersion and whatever.
I don't know what the guys are playing out, but 45 1/2 or
(04:17):
something like that, right? And then they're going to get
another, another driver, more loft in the head, much shorter
shaft and then less club at speed, more spin kind of deal.
Is that OK? Yeah.
So you really what we're doing from the build and fitting
standpoint is you're using a theloft and we use our 12° you
(04:38):
know, usually are you know is our G430 now G440 Max 12° head
is our go to head. Then we can use our sleeve to
kind of dial in the loft and that head has a true loft at the
middle of like 13 1/2 degrees. So it's it says 12 on the sole,
but it's really in the in the face center it's 13 1/2 degrees.
So that adds spin, adds a lot ofloft as a lot of control
(05:01):
obviously. Then we use the shaft length to
kind of get it to go the distance you need it to.
So we built these as short as like 42 inches and up to like 43
1/2. The sweet spot is really like 43
inches. If you take your 3 wood shaft,
plug it in there, obviously we got to adjust the head weight,
swing weight. It'll be about 43 1/4 inches and
(05:22):
that's about what I play mine like.
I just plugged a three wood shaft in there.
And it doesn't just balloon likeit just doesn't go you you're
fitting it so it goes lower. It launches low, you know, cuz
it's like, OK, most of the guys when you're hitting off the tee,
you quarter, you tee it low obviously.
So you know those folks out there, you know the face has
curvature on it left to right. That's called the bulge.
(05:44):
Then you got the top bottom curvature called the roll.
And when you tee it low or hit off the ground, like where the
loft of where you hit it is muchlower than that 13 five S, most
folks when they hit it off the tee, you're going to tee it
pretty low. I mean Arizona Cordy like
Bermuda in the summer. I just like little miniature
Laura Davies type thing. You know, you can just put a
(06:04):
little tough to grass and just chip it, chip it off the ground
and have tons of control. So where you're hitting it has
less locked. So it's it's it's lower
launching usually based on T height and it's short.
So the shorter you go, the more the handles going to be the
forward at impact, right? Like the like, I don't know, a
wedge, you know what I mean? You got tons of shafling.
So you're getting more shafling to launch it lower and use that
(06:27):
shaft length to control the ballspeed and get your what you're
optimizing for is like a certaindistance, you know, obviously.
And then how can I maximize accuracy at that?
Whatever it is, Shipley, it's 280 for me.
It's like 275, you know, so it'slike a it's a distance like I
needed to go, go this number. And then how can I minimize the
(06:47):
dispersion for a club for for a shot that goes 270 to 280 and
using literally a driver head this 460 CCS and near somewhere
in the ballpark of 10,000 Moi combined is is just astonishing
how straight you can hit it. Interesting.
OK. And and so you're aiming to hit
it on the lower part of of the driver to keep the to keep it
(07:12):
lower then. Generally speaking, I mean, I
think different that's a different players can have
different T height strategies like Cordy.
I'll give an example of myself. I've been using this build for
like 2 years now and it's reallyfun in Arizona golf, like desert
golf. But let's say I have like a
drivable par 4 that's, you know,maybe it's 300 and a little
(07:32):
downwind or may, you know, and you maybe you want to fly it,
you know, missing short of the green or front bunk or
something's good. I'll tee it up and send it,
launch it high, tip back a little bit more like, you know,
do all those things and launch it, you know, whatever, 14 to
16°. But my stock one, the Fairway
Finder, you can tee it low and kind of chip it out there.
(07:53):
Got it. So you actually have a lot of
diversity in the from that perspective.
So why wait? Are you putting us in the bag
with your normal driver? Like do you have both in the bag
100? Percent.
You do OK, Yeah, got it. Do most guys or how do?
How are most people doing it? Yeah, totally.
And, and, and this is the nuanced insight and I think what
(08:13):
we're doing so much cool research here at the proving
grounds and like mining data, a big thing, Cordy, that we're
trying to do is be like, how arepeople playing golf on the golf
course? And how can we make club
fitting? And like, how do you optimize
the 14 clubs in your bag is going to be very different for
everybody. So the big insight with this,
you know, we call it, we like tocall it the thriver 3 wood
(08:35):
driver or macro driver, is that if you hit the ball far, when I
say far, like 280 or more, you're going to you're going to
hit your lowest lofted fairway wood or club, whatever it is in
this case, going to be a driver off the tee a majority of the
time. And we have the sweet chart.
I think you saw it on that infographic, like if you hit the
(08:57):
ball 300 yards, you're going to hit your three would off the
ground 80% of the time on average.
And that's a conglomeration of big data from our Arcos
partnership that looks like likethe percentage of the time you
hit off the ground versus the turf.
Obviously, Courtney, there's going to be exceptions.
If you play certain golf course where like all the par fives
you're ripping 3 would in for your second shot to this ratio
(09:18):
is going to change. But that's kind of a a high
level finding. So that's why this really
primarily is a club for the fastswing speed players because the
three would is off the ground isjust proportionally such a not
an important shot overall on your scoring from a strokes game
scoring standpoint. But on the flip side, Cordy,
(09:39):
let's say you drive the ball 200yards, you're actually it's
going to it's going to teeter totter.
We're now hitting it off the ground.
You're going to hit this lowest off to Fairwood off the ground
80% of the time in, maybe never hit it off the tee, and then the
50 spot is right at 250 yards. You're going to hit off the
ground in the tee with equal priority.
(10:01):
And this is driving how we're designing the fairway woods, how
we test them, how we optimize them, how we fit them.
Like quite often you go in as a better player and they're like,
OK, let's hit 3 woods and you'rejust trying to roast them off
the deck. Well, you might rarely need that
shot. And then the, the high
handicappers like, oh, let me tee this up for you.
You're having a hard time hit off the ground.
Well, actually, no, you need to go to our new 4 wood or A5 wood
(10:24):
or something like that to hit itoff the ground successfully.
So we're using big data to inform our design decisions and
then our club fitting protocols.This is just a perfect example
of that. Crazy.
OK, so the new pitch is I guess that you're telling most players
that you hit over 280 get 2 drivers then?
I like that idea. And you hit it under, you hit it
(10:44):
220. What would be the tip?
Is it the 55th? I mean 225, somebody has to
drive 225, Then yes, let's get afour wood or three wood.
Yeah, I like, I like, hey, if you're in the if you're around,
if you if you drive it 225 or less your your number one
priority with your fairway wood.And this could be either our
three wood four we launched A4 wood this year.
(11:06):
This date is all kind of part ofour decision to bring a forward
into our G440 family Cordy or like 5 wood, just a lot of great
fitting options. Prioritize hitting that ball off
the ground, right? You're going to need that into
long par fours. You're going to need, you know
long for you. You're going to need that into
par fives quite a bit. Like most of the time.
Just assume like pretty much every time you're hitting that
(11:28):
ball off the ground. And if you're 250, if you're 250
player, so let's say like ±25 yards.
If you're 225 to 275, give equalpriority to hitting off the
ground, off the tee. Even where you're going in for a
fitting, you're fortunate enoughto get.
Go to the outdoor fitting environment.
Hit half of your shots off the tee, half of them off the
(11:49):
ground. Consider both of the performance
impacts of both of those with equal weight.
Then if you're a fast swing speed player, obviously consider
your golf course. If you play one course, you're
always now off the ground. Put a little more priority to
hit off the ground, but if not, try this 12° driver build.
Plug a fairywood shaft in there and see if you like it.
(12:11):
We've seen incredible results. Got it.
Is it pretty automatic that if you if you cut it down that
short and go with that loft thatit goes about 20-30 yards
shorter? Is that pretty much standard for
most people? Yeah, Yeah, Let's say you hit
your driver. I should, you know, Shipley's a
good example. I'd be another good example.
My colleague here, Jim Canals, came straight off the tour, put
(12:31):
one in the bag and Monday then to San Diego this year, using
the thriver, hitting the thriveroff the tee a few times.
Yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be about for somebody
who drives it 300 yards, about 25 yards shorter, you know, 2025
yards shorter. And then you just have a lot of
flexibility. You can tee it high and draw it
if you want to. You could tee it low and fade
(12:52):
it. There's some interesting things
that happened with the gear effect that if you hit low on
the face, it'll impart a little bit of cut spin.
There's a there's a big advantage, yeah.
You actually have a little bit more versatility and shot
shaping with this club as well. Got it, got it.
I I think for me it makes the most sense because yeah, I I
never had a A3 wood into. I mean, I resonate with that
(13:13):
just from anecdotally. Like I'll I'll bash a hybrid
more likely than hit a three wood up next to a green just
because I want the control because of the three wood it
feels like has such a bigger dispersion than hitting a
hybrid. Into a.
Into a. Par 5, so that makes sense.
And then when I have like last year, I I got back into
tournament golf a bit and I think one of the first
qualifiers I played of the year,it was a three what off the
(13:34):
second tee box just because you needed to be under 280 or
something like that, right. So, you know, I step up there
and I had AI don't remember whatclub I had at the time, but I
just I topped it right into the lake right in front of me and it
was it was wonderful. It was a great way to start the
day and I mean I didn't hit thatclub the rest of the year.
It was like this is I'm done. I'm never doing that again.
(13:56):
Cordy, I kind of view it as like, let's say you're a pretty
good player like yourself or myself, you can kind of folks
get kind of the heebie jeebies with maybe putting.
They get the heebie jeebies withshipping.
And then for the but the for thebetter player, sometimes you can
get a little fragile on your 3 foot off the tee.
Like for me, I played in like myvery first major championship, I
(14:19):
played in Atlanta Athletic Club.It's like a it's 100%.
So you need a 27280 shot dog legs right to the left.
I cannot draw a drive around there.
I'm so nervous and I'm in my first tee shots with this with
like, you know, our our G4 is G 10 fairway wood or something at
the time is like pretty small and compact.
(14:40):
And I was so nervous and I did the same thing.
I got paired with Victor Hovlin and when I qualified for the
waste management a few years agoin the first tee shots like you
normally just hit like a drivingiron or hybrid down there and
I'm so nervous. I didn't have the thriver yet.
I teed my regular big driver down is not the right shot, but
I'm like so nervous. I just had to do it just to chip
(15:01):
it down there. And nowadays like I'll get just
as nervous on the first tee. I that's always like kind of my
thing and I always like fear that first tee shot if it's not
a driver. And now if you play this club
like it's literally automatic, you can go down there, you can
get steep on it, you can take a divot if you want.
That ball's going down the fairway.
That's so funny. I guess it's a common thing.
I've just never talked about this with anybody.
(15:22):
The fears of yeah, that there's nothing worse than a first tee
shot 3 would or like. Oh.
Yeah, you nailed it. You nailed it.
It's like you got to go like I need to go to therapy over this
and it's dead. I just like I I consider this
club like a anti anxiety club. OK, got it.
What? So why, I mean, as mini driver
(15:43):
ever cross your guys's like development path like, hey, we
should we should build a a mini drivers.
They're just like, no, we like this strategy of just going
normal driver. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it's somewhere always researching.
It's like how much there there'sa trade off to how easy it is to
hit off the ground like these you do, you are trading that off
like you can't get the big high cut floaty 1 overlake into a par
(16:06):
5. But it's very functional off the
ground. Like you see good players
hitting regular driver off the regular DoD's like this thing is
very functional. I've made eagles hitting this
thing from from 280 on a par 5 and things of that nature.
So it's always something we're researching, but I think we've
seen these players like if you're going to go in on mini
(16:27):
driver, thriver, 2 wood, whatever second driver club in
your bag, why not just go macro like the the moment of inertia
when we've measured some of likethe mini drivers fairy woods out
there again, they're they're like, you know, half what they
would be is if you just went allthe way to the big 1.
So it's like we've seen really good success with it, but some
(16:48):
somewhere, you know, continue tostudy and test.
But I think this category is kind of like here to stay for
the for the faster swings speed player.
You'll see players convert into this and never go back to a
three wood right? Have you had players just like
ditch the long driver and just. Hit this one too.
And just stick with this. You know what, there's an
interesting like Thristan Lawrence is one of those,
(17:09):
Tristan Lawrence, He's one of those that plays his driver at
like 43 1/2. Okay, he's an oddball.
He is an oddball today where he plays his regular driver like at
that length and obviously he didgood, almost won the Open
Championship last year playing it in the wind and just a
totally crafty player, super shot maker.
He's like the only one that plays like this short of a
(17:32):
driver as his gamer driver. Like we actually see the
opposite trend from the rest of our tour players at 45 and a
half a lot at 46. Then things things of that
nature. I think if you play these two
you can you can re optimize yourregular driver to be a little
bit longer asked for longer distance.
(17:54):
I mean, I find it hard. Went down and hung out John
Sinclair and and did an awesome fitting with him and came home
with a 45 1/2 and a 46 and he was really trying to convince me
that I needed the 45 1/2 becauseI hit it more solidly.
But you just can't take those extra two or three mile an hour
out of my bag when I put the 40.You're not going to convince me
(18:16):
that I need the shorter one thatgoes slower.
Like I don't know how, I don't know how to get over that hump.
But it's like it's, it's a real difference, like a meaningful
difference going to 46 and just trying to get as fast as you can
with with that club. Yeah, totally Cordy.
We, we actually built a tool we have, we have this great fitting
tool called Pink Copilot and we built this for all of our
fitters out there. I mean, we have 4000 fitting
(18:38):
accounts using this copilot tool.
And one of the little widgets inthere is that you can do a
strokes game comparison. Let's say you're, you could
collect data on your own launch monitor at home and you feed in
like the the distance gain between those 245 1/2 and 46.
And then you punch in your like offline standard deviation from
(19:00):
track man. Or if you got a quad, it's like
the side number in there and theplus or minus standard deviation
and it's just you're just putting in the cute for left,
right dispersion. And then you plug in your
handicap because the importance of distance to accuracy is
contextual to your skill level, your handicap, because then
strokes can compounds on the wayinto the green and then also
(19:22):
your course difficulty, right. So if you plan a tight course,
very penalizing out of bounds water or whatever, we actually
you could yeah, we have a littleslider in there.
You can pick your golf course difficulty and you run a a
computation rooted in strokes gained.
Like all of Mark Brodie's calculations are right in there
to say, OK, maybe you hit it Cordy like 10 yards for further
(19:46):
with the 46, but your dispersionis like 2 yards wider.
Would that be a positive strokesgain or not?
And the answer is yes. For a better player, the ratio
is 2 to 1. So if you gain 10 yards, as long
as you don't increase your dispersion by more than five,
that is a positive strokes gain.And this is the calculus that
(20:08):
the tour players I think are naturally they've, they've
naturally iterated their way to we have this compute, they can
run it. Probably guys like Bryce have
literally run this, you know, iffolks like Chris Como.
So we, we can, we can run the numbers, but we can also do this
in a fitting protocol to help inform that that that decision
should you go longer or shorter in your, in your fitting.
(20:29):
So it's it's really cool to be fitting using strokes gain
analytics. Got it.
So if my so the two to one rule,if my normal driver is 70 yard
wide dispersion, yes, I can gain.
If I can gain 10 more yards but and go to 75 yards, then that's
a that's an acceptable trade off.
Yes, yes, absolutely. And the ratio of distance to
(20:50):
accuracy, if you're a less skilled golfer that hits it
shorter, it's even more of a premium to distance and
accuracy. That ratio is 3 to 1.
So let's say you're A10 handicapper above that drives it
shorter than 250 yards. That calculus is then three to
1, you know, so it's a good kindof heuristic 2 to one for like
(21:13):
the fast swing speed, better players, 3 to one for 250 and
below, higher handicappers. Or, you know, you use our pink
Copilot tool that does all the nuance computation down to the
nearest, you know, one 100th of a strokes game point, you know.
I'm going to have to do that. That's great.
I love that. So the thriver really has to be
more accurate then if you're taking 20 or 25 yards off your
(21:37):
normal driver, you got to get 10yards tighter in your
dispersion. Yes.
That sounds hard. That sounds challenging.
Yes, the well, what should the the way to think about the the
the the thriver is to compare itto a three wood, right.
You want to compare it to a three wood.
So compared to a three wood, ourtesting is you'll hit it at
(21:58):
least 40% tighter dispersion. I mean that is like gigantic.
So if we plug those numbers, I think I did this.
Let me see if I can pull up our our copilot thing.
Yes, you plug those numbers intoour strokes game calculator,
like let's say both of them coreto go exactly 270 and you
(22:19):
tighten your dispersion by 40%, you're going to gain 1.8 strokes
gained driving. Just do that tighter dispersion,
right. Does that make does that make
sense? Yeah, yeah.
I'll send you a little graphic on that from our from our
strokes gain calculator. OK.
And that's what you're saying when people hit the hit the
(22:39):
thriver versus the three win then?
Yeah, like, yeah, off the tee, both on course analytics
captured from on course play as well as testing here with player
testing at the Pink Proving Grounds.
We do a nice job of kind of our protocol that we do the testing.
You know, we have folks aimed between a couple poles out there
that are 20 yards wide. We game a fire, we score it.
(23:01):
We have a, you know, we put a little heat on them and pressure
on them. We have a little leaderboard.
Players really focus in, they cycle between clubs, make sure
they kind of cleanse their palate, not getting the groove
from block prop, etcetera. Got it, got it.
I guess the last thing then would be building like one of
these things we talked about earlier, but like, yeah, we're
cutting down to like a I've got your graph pulled up here.
(23:22):
But like a 5 wood shaft then is what you're what you're doing
pretty? Much, Yeah, either 3 wood or
five wood shaft. I mean, again, it kind of just
depends on like what distance you're trying to optimize for.
I think as a default, if you plug a three wood shaft in
there, that's a good way to go. Then you have to get the head
weight up. So if somebody orders it from us
ping directly, we build it to the perfect head weight through,
(23:43):
you know, a combination of addedweight to the head and our CG
shifter. We can hit AD 3D four swing
weight just fine. You know, you can use the I
think we get questions around doI need to tip the shaft more and
things of that nature. I think just generally just as a
fairway wood shaft, a three woodshaft, maybe 10 grams heavier
than your in your driver shaft is you can just think of the
(24:04):
shaft fitting the same as you would a three.
Would some folks go a little flatter and they use our
trajectory tuning sleeve like I play it in the our flat dot
position with just three degreesflatter.
That just keeps a little more cut bias for me.
And then I be I put the seat bigold honkin CG shifter in the
back, which helps tune the left right bias.
It's nice to have that option because some players want to
(24:27):
have this club be a little more draw bias.
I'm kind of uses more a little more cut bias And then if I want
to draw an IT high. So we have a lot of good fitting
options on that front. But three wood shaft D3D4 swing
weight if you're kind of traditional swing weight player.
And yeah, it's, it's, it's a fun, it's a super fun build.
How far off? So if someone wants to go play
(24:48):
around at this like how far off is the swing weight going to be
if I just go literally take my 3wood shaft?
It's going to be a lot if you're, if you want to tinker
with it at home or get it, you got an extra 12° head around,
you have to just load it up withsome lead tape.
You know, you know, I'm probably1215 grams of lead tape
somewhere in that ballpark. Got it.
(25:09):
So if someone wants to, wants tomess around with it, just just
have your lead tape on hand and yeah.
Exactly, exactly. But you know, if you want build
an optimize or order an optimizeone from us, we'll build it
perfectly. Is this an option?
Like you guys have this on the site where you can.
Yeah, it's like a little secret menu option.
You know, it's like it's like going to in and out and getting
(25:29):
an animal style. We could definitely do it.
We got a great build spec littlegraphic you have is actually
kind of our guide to fitters forhow to order it, what to use,
what to consider why, why to do it.
So we're we're definitely seeinga little uptick in this.
Yeah. You know, it is a little nichy
because it in my opinion, because it is kind of faster,
(25:50):
better players only. But again, I I think it's a
category. It's going to be here to stay.
Sorry, one more nerd nerdy question here.
If we're, if we're trying to fitfit for this, are we looking for
a higher spin rate than normal and like a higher launch than
normal or what? What are we looking for?
Yeah, again, I think it's very, very dependent according on T
height and and and play, you gota lot of options.
You can go really high on the T height like your regular driver
(26:12):
if you T it medium or high or you can go super low.
So my preference and I think what we've seen most of the tour
guys do is T it kind of low to medium low and get their attack
angle more down. And as your attack goes down,
your spin goes up. So so like that's a big thing,
like the players, you're going to get more down on it and when
you get more down, your spins going to go up.
(26:33):
So I think when you think about spin rate, you want to keep this
thing like over 3000 depend on your attack angle.
So if you tee it low and you hitmore down, it's it's actually a
good thing to have your spin like, you know, between 3 three
thousand 3500 for like a stock one.
And then obviously if you tee ithigher, hit a little higher in
(26:55):
the face, maybe level out your tacking a little bit, you can
take spin off. Got it, got it.
Why the 12° head? Is that just cuz then you can
have a more down attack angle onit?
Is that why? Yeah, Just to get it to go short
enough. OK, We have all kinds of really
cool tools to help find the perfect launch and spin for a
(27:17):
driver fitting. And a bunch of our fitters and
customers, Cordy were like, well, I need a optimizer for
irons. And the question was like, well,
what are you trying to do on your irons?
And if it's maximized distance, you end up just working your way
to our driver chart, which is like gives you for angle of
attack and ball speed. Like it gives you the perfect
launch and spin to find. Then you could kind of tune
(27:38):
based on golf ball on top of that.
And and we like doing that here a ping as well.
But yeah, it's, it's, it's because you're trying to hit a
certain number in that 12° loft.Again, the actual loft down,
it's 13 five is a very nice sweet spot to kind of hit your
distance number. Got it, got it.
I think we've I think we've got all the details on on a thriver
(27:59):
now. I I think that everyone is fully
equipped at this point to eitherdecide, yes, I absolutely need
one to go order one right now or, or decide.
I don't know what the other option is to, you know, maybe
potentially top a three it off the tee the next time they go
play. Yeah, I was.
I think it's just like it's one of those things that I think
better players like we talked about Cordy, like your
(28:19):
experience or mine, it's like it's kind of in your either your
conscience or maybe in your subconscious, you know, it's
like one of those things that like hindsight's 2020 like, Oh
yeah, I don't ever hit this off the ground.
Oh yeah, I do get really nervy always with my with my three
wood, you know what I mean? And it can make a really big
difference to your scoring in Arizona golf court.
(28:41):
All the section tournaments I play, I hit this club a ton
because it's just like Targety, you know, like the farewell run
out at 290. It's like, OK, I got to just
chip one down there and have MY150 shot in.
So it's going to be how important this club is.
It's going to be contextual to the player where they're playing
golf. But there there's a lot of good
players out there that that needthis club and might be a little
(29:03):
fragile with their with their three wood.
All right. Well, this is good.
What else is on the secret club ordering menu is.
There any other clan? That I need to know about.
We we got we got we got a lot oftricks up our sleeve here.
But no, I think the Thrivers kind of probably the the most
the, you know, the most fun and valuable secret menu option that
(29:24):
we got. Cool.
I love it dude, thanks for the time.
And wait, actually, where on thesite do I go to order one of
these? Hold on, let's give people the
full full info in case they need.
To go, yeah, no, no, no. Go find a fitter, man.
Ping, we have a great network ofhighly trained fitters.
So what you'll want to do is go out and you go to ping.com and
(29:47):
go to our find a fitter tool. You can even filter by folks who
have different launch monitors who are using our copilot, who
are doing ball fitting, who are pink proving ground certified.
So we got a great find a fitter tool.
I would go on there, type in your zip code, get a rank
ordered list on our find a fitter tool and and go ask about
it. Perfect.
And then if I want to do that copilot thing that you
(30:09):
mentioned, we're plugging that in.
Can anyone do that or is that just for fitters that?
Are right now it's a tool reserved for our fitters Cordy,
but over the next few years we're going to make some more of
these tools available directly to consumers, which would be
really fun. I will direct folks to a couple
really cool tools that we have. One is called Web Fit Wedge for
(30:29):
wedge fitting. This is help you find your grind
and gapping on your wedges. It's really cool.
So if you Google that or go to our site Web Fit Wedge, we have
an awesome fitting tool for consumers called Web Fit Junior
that fits our Prodigy product. So if you got a kiddo getting
into the game and it helps you build their bag, it does gapping
for your kid. Like if you put in your kids age
(30:51):
or if you have their ball speed or driver distance, we'll gap
their entire set, which kids have no idea how far they hit
the ball. So it's really good.
So that's a really good one. And then we just launched our
new Scottsdale putter line and we built a web fit putter tool,
which is not meant to replace anin person fitting, but it's kind
of to help you narrow down like which models might be really
(31:12):
good for you. So there's a couple really cool
tools consumers, consumers can play around with.
And I would think about if your consumer think about those tools
as like your practice round for your fitting.
So do that before you go in for your fitting.
You have a major jump start and you'll be kind of a little bit
more targeted and and surgical for things to to look for and to
be more educated. Tweet I'm actually excited about
(31:36):
that junior one. I got to get my I got to get my
7 year old some some new clubs that keep.
Perfect timing man, I got a 8 year olds.
Yeah I would love your feedback on it.
Go to web fit junior. Just takes like a couple minutes
to enter their height, wrist to floor, how far they hit the
ball, a few other things. And then you can play around
with Cordy. How many clubs you you want in
(31:58):
their bags? So like a full bag of junior
clubs I think is 11. But like your 7 year old, you
might only want to go like odds or evens, you know, start with a
little starter set and it will kind of do that for you and
it'll give you the gaps like, oh, what if I had one more club?
The gaps will get a little shorter.
What if I had a little more and it you can print out APDF that
has a yardage card that you can print out put in your yardage
(32:21):
book. So when you're caddying for him
at his little club tournament, you'll you'll have a little idea
how far you can hit a good shot basically.
Sweet sick. I love that.
Is that the future? You're trying to build as many
tools like that as you can and like try to empower.
People, absolutely, yes. So my team is working on we want
to have the best tools for our fitters and then we want to have
(32:42):
have our golfers like our customers be super educated, be
empowered, go into your fitter, ask them really good questions,
have like a really good jump start on what things you should
be should be considering. Yeah, those, those are some good
things that, you know, you probably know Shane Bacon and I
have a have a podcast, Pink Proving Grounds podcast.
We talk about all kinds of the stuff.
He's another one that's playing the Thriver and won't go back.
(33:03):
All right, we got the the Thriver army.
Is there Thriver merch yet and like not yet?
OK, now yeah, I need to get to. Get we got to get some T-shirts,
some hats. I don't know the whole this is
the new mission. But thanks Marty for sharing.
Hey, Joe, Mayo's got this. Yeah.
It's like, what's our? It's the two woods, so maybe we
could play off that. I mean, I don't know why did
(33:23):
that later. OK, yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll
get something together. We'll get ChatGPT to come up
with some logo. How about that?
Exactly. Exactly.
All right, Marty, thanks for thetime.
Appreciate. It all right, Cory, That was
fun.
Should you have two drivers in your golf bag?
A three wood? A mini driver.
There's a lot of questions it seems like.
A lot of people. Are doing a lot of different
stuff and today we're going to dive into it.
You are listening to the golf well podcast.
My name is Cory Walker. I am your host and this is a
show all about getting better atgolf.
It's diving into all the strangetactics, habits, performance,
(00:21):
gear, tech, all that stuff that helps us get better at the game.
This is our first Golf Well podcast.
I know that might be weird because you're saying like, I
think I've heard you before. Well, it used to be called Golf
Science Lab. I was looking back as we started
this 10 years ago in 2015. Golf Science Lab.
That's pretty nuts. And this is our first episode of
Golf Well. We rebranded in January 2025
(00:44):
here. And yeah, we're back and I
wanted to have some conversations on the podcast
here. And so we're we're firing it
back up because there's some some good ideas have been having
great conversations. There's like, man, I got to
share some of this with folks. So thank you guys for listening.
Thank you for commenting. I saw some of the comments of
like, hey, where's the podcast? So well, here it is.
(01:04):
You you found it. So what's the plan going
forward? Well, I'm going.
To hop on here. When something like honestly
really interesting happened. So hopefully at least once a
month, twice a month, kind of join y'all here with an
interesting guest to talk through a topic.
And today we were talking with Marty Gertz and he is the VP of
fitting and performance of Ping.And I saw his tweet from Neil
(01:26):
Shipley talking about he how he has two drivers in the bag.
And it was it was pretty interesting.
And so I reached, I was like, man, you got to tell me what?
You guys were doing? Like how are you thinking about
this? And and like should I put 2
drivers in my golf bag? Honestly, that was a question
and he answered all those and more.
Great conversation. Appreciate his time.
Hopping on. Yeah, let's get back into our
(01:47):
our first. Golf Ball podcast, it's pretty
cool. All right, Marty.
So we are having a chat on Twitter about Mini Driver
because Neil Shipley had this really great little insight
about how he has this cut down driver that only carries 280.
His normal driver carries 300. That's kind of an interesting
(02:10):
thing. And and so I wanted to hear
like, what are you guys buildingover over there and like, what
are some of these clubs that tour pros are asking for from
you? Yeah, no, it's, it's been fun.
We've seen cadabbling of this over like, let's call it the
last 10 years, you know, whetherit's Phillip Augusta, but maybe
(02:30):
it's sort of clouded with, well,he needs to draw a club in a
slice club, you know. But then we've seen other
players do it, like Ben Silverman, PJ Tour player.
He's he's played our 12° G 410 is his second driver for a long
time. Nobody knows about it.
You know, it's like not in the news in the media.
Well, then Fast forward today, we got folks like what Fee now
(02:51):
did at the Masters last year, a couple years ago, you got Neil
Shipley doing it. We got Preston Summerhays
playing like a 12° driver. And what these guys are kind of
realizing, Cordy, is that if youhit the ball far, if you're
playing big golf courses, tour golf courses, you just really
don't need your 3 foot off the ground that much.
(03:12):
Or is a percentage of like your contribution to your score like
hitting the high three would into a par 5 and make an eagle?
Like those days are kind of gone.
Like it's just not that important.
It's so rare of a shot that and then as far as these guys are
hitting the ball now, the Neil Shipley's like hitting the
fairway and optimizing that tee shot for accuracy is a premium,
(03:36):
right? And like the moment of inertia
you get in, let's say a 12 degree G440 Max driver is
literally three to five times more than a three would.
And so like there your, your ability to, to improve your like
left, right dispersion, your cone, however you want to
(03:56):
measure it can go up like you, you could reduce your left right
dispersion by 40 to 60%. We've seen in our testing and
that's what these guys are doingon on the tour level.
To walk me through it. So I would have my normal driver
that's maxed out for distance and dispersion and whatever.
I don't know what the guys are playing out, but 45 1/2 or
(04:17):
something like that, right? And then they're going to get
another, another driver, more loft in the head, much shorter
shaft and then less club at speed, more spin kind of deal.
Is that OK? Yeah.
So you really what we're doing from the build and fitting
standpoint is you're using a theloft and we use our 12° you
(04:38):
know, usually are you know is our G430 now G440 Max 12° head
is our go to head. Then we can use our sleeve to
kind of dial in the loft and that head has a true loft at the
middle of like 13 1/2 degrees. So it's it says 12 on the sole,
but it's really in the in the face center it's 13 1/2 degrees.
So that adds spin, adds a lot ofloft as a lot of control
(05:01):
obviously. Then we use the shaft length to
kind of get it to go the distance you need it to.
So we built these as short as like 42 inches and up to like 43
1/2. The sweet spot is really like 43
inches. If you take your 3 wood shaft,
plug it in there, obviously we got to adjust the head weight,
swing weight. It'll be about 43 1/4 inches and
(05:22):
that's about what I play mine like.
I just plugged a three wood shaft in there.
And it doesn't just balloon likeit just doesn't go you you're
fitting it so it goes lower. It launches low, you know, cuz
it's like, OK, most of the guys when you're hitting off the tee,
you quarter, you tee it low obviously.
So you know those folks out there, you know the face has
curvature on it left to right. That's called the bulge.
(05:44):
Then you got the top bottom curvature called the roll.
And when you tee it low or hit off the ground, like where the
loft of where you hit it is muchlower than that 13 five S, most
folks when they hit it off the tee, you're going to tee it
pretty low. I mean Arizona Cordy like
Bermuda in the summer. I just like little miniature
Laura Davies type thing. You know, you can just put a
(06:04):
little tough to grass and just chip it, chip it off the ground
and have tons of control. So where you're hitting it has
less locked. So it's it's it's lower
launching usually based on T height and it's short.
So the shorter you go, the more the handles going to be the
forward at impact, right? Like the like, I don't know, a
wedge, you know what I mean? You got tons of shafling.
So you're getting more shafling to launch it lower and use that
(06:27):
shaft length to control the ballspeed and get your what you're
optimizing for is like a certaindistance, you know, obviously.
And then how can I maximize accuracy at that?
Whatever it is, Shipley, it's 280 for me.
It's like 275, you know, so it'slike a it's a distance like I
needed to go, go this number. And then how can I minimize the
(06:47):
dispersion for a club for for a shot that goes 270 to 280 and
using literally a driver head this 460 CCS and near somewhere
in the ballpark of 10,000 Moi combined is is just astonishing
how straight you can hit it. Interesting.
OK. And and so you're aiming to hit
it on the lower part of of the driver to keep the to keep it
(07:12):
lower then. Generally speaking, I mean, I
think different that's a different players can have
different T height strategies like Cordy.
I'll give an example of myself. I've been using this build for
like 2 years now and it's reallyfun in Arizona golf, like desert
golf. But let's say I have like a
drivable par 4 that's, you know,maybe it's 300 and a little
(07:32):
downwind or may, you know, and you maybe you want to fly it,
you know, missing short of the green or front bunk or
something's good. I'll tee it up and send it,
launch it high, tip back a little bit more like, you know,
do all those things and launch it, you know, whatever, 14 to
16°. But my stock one, the Fairway
Finder, you can tee it low and kind of chip it out there.
(07:53):
Got it. So you actually have a lot of
diversity in the from that perspective.
So why wait? Are you putting us in the bag
with your normal driver? Like do you have both in the bag
100? Percent.
You do OK, Yeah, got it. Do most guys or how do?
How are most people doing it? Yeah, totally.
And, and, and this is the nuanced insight and I think what
(08:13):
we're doing so much cool research here at the proving
grounds and like mining data, a big thing, Cordy, that we're
trying to do is be like, how arepeople playing golf on the golf
course? And how can we make club
fitting? And like, how do you optimize
the 14 clubs in your bag is going to be very different for
everybody. So the big insight with this,
you know, we call it, we like tocall it the thriver 3 wood
(08:35):
driver or macro driver, is that if you hit the ball far, when I
say far, like 280 or more, you're going to you're going to
hit your lowest lofted fairway wood or club, whatever it is in
this case, going to be a driver off the tee a majority of the
time. And we have the sweet chart.
I think you saw it on that infographic, like if you hit the
(08:57):
ball 300 yards, you're going to hit your three would off the
ground 80% of the time on average.
And that's a conglomeration of big data from our Arcos
partnership that looks like likethe percentage of the time you
hit off the ground versus the turf.
Obviously, Courtney, there's going to be exceptions.
If you play certain golf course where like all the par fives
you're ripping 3 would in for your second shot to this ratio
(09:18):
is going to change. But that's kind of a a high
level finding. So that's why this really
primarily is a club for the fastswing speed players because the
three would is off the ground isjust proportionally such a not
an important shot overall on your scoring from a strokes game
scoring standpoint. But on the flip side, Cordy,
(09:39):
let's say you drive the ball 200yards, you're actually it's
going to it's going to teeter totter.
We're now hitting it off the ground.
You're going to hit this lowest off to Fairwood off the ground
80% of the time in, maybe never hit it off the tee, and then the
50 spot is right at 250 yards. You're going to hit off the
ground in the tee with equal priority.
(10:01):
And this is driving how we're designing the fairway woods, how
we test them, how we optimize them, how we fit them.
Like quite often you go in as a better player and they're like,
OK, let's hit 3 woods and you'rejust trying to roast them off
the deck. Well, you might rarely need that
shot. And then the, the high
handicappers like, oh, let me tee this up for you.
You're having a hard time hit off the ground.
Well, actually, no, you need to go to our new 4 wood or A5 wood
(10:24):
or something like that to hit itoff the ground successfully.
So we're using big data to inform our design decisions and
then our club fitting protocols.This is just a perfect example
of that. Crazy.
OK, so the new pitch is I guess that you're telling most players
that you hit over 280 get 2 drivers then?
I like that idea. And you hit it under, you hit it
(10:44):
220. What would be the tip?
Is it the 55th? I mean 225, somebody has to
drive 225, Then yes, let's get afour wood or three wood.
Yeah, I like, I like, hey, if you're in the if you're around,
if you if you drive it 225 or less your your number one
priority with your fairway wood.And this could be either our
three wood four we launched A4 wood this year.
(11:06):
This date is all kind of part ofour decision to bring a forward
into our G440 family Cordy or like 5 wood, just a lot of great
fitting options. Prioritize hitting that ball off
the ground, right? You're going to need that into
long par fours. You're going to need, you know
long for you. You're going to need that into
par fives quite a bit. Like most of the time.
Just assume like pretty much every time you're hitting that
(11:28):
ball off the ground. And if you're 250, if you're 250
player, so let's say like ±25 yards.
If you're 225 to 275, give equalpriority to hitting off the
ground, off the tee. Even where you're going in for a
fitting, you're fortunate enoughto get.
Go to the outdoor fitting environment.
Hit half of your shots off the tee, half of them off the
(11:49):
ground. Consider both of the performance
impacts of both of those with equal weight.
Then if you're a fast swing speed player, obviously consider
your golf course. If you play one course, you're
always now off the ground. Put a little more priority to
hit off the ground, but if not, try this 12° driver build.
Plug a fairywood shaft in there and see if you like it.
(12:11):
We've seen incredible results. Got it.
Is it pretty automatic that if you if you cut it down that
short and go with that loft thatit goes about 20-30 yards
shorter? Is that pretty much standard for
most people? Yeah, Yeah, Let's say you hit
your driver. I should, you know, Shipley's a
good example. I'd be another good example.
My colleague here, Jim Canals, came straight off the tour, put
(12:31):
one in the bag and Monday then to San Diego this year, using
the thriver, hitting the thriveroff the tee a few times.
Yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be about for somebody
who drives it 300 yards, about 25 yards shorter, you know, 2025
yards shorter. And then you just have a lot of
flexibility. You can tee it high and draw it
if you want to. You could tee it low and fade
(12:52):
it. There's some interesting things
that happened with the gear effect that if you hit low on
the face, it'll impart a little bit of cut spin.
There's a there's a big advantage, yeah.
You actually have a little bit more versatility and shot
shaping with this club as well. Got it, got it.
I I think for me it makes the most sense because yeah, I I
never had a A3 wood into. I mean, I resonate with that
(13:13):
just from anecdotally. Like I'll I'll bash a hybrid
more likely than hit a three wood up next to a green just
because I want the control because of the three wood it
feels like has such a bigger dispersion than hitting a
hybrid. Into a.
Into a. Par 5, so that makes sense.
And then when I have like last year, I I got back into
tournament golf a bit and I think one of the first
qualifiers I played of the year,it was a three what off the
(13:34):
second tee box just because you needed to be under 280 or
something like that, right. So, you know, I step up there
and I had AI don't remember whatclub I had at the time, but I
just I topped it right into the lake right in front of me and it
was it was wonderful. It was a great way to start the
day and I mean I didn't hit thatclub the rest of the year.
It was like this is I'm done. I'm never doing that again.
(13:56):
Cordy, I kind of view it as like, let's say you're a pretty
good player like yourself or myself, you can kind of folks
get kind of the heebie jeebies with maybe putting.
They get the heebie jeebies withshipping.
And then for the but the for thebetter player, sometimes you can
get a little fragile on your 3 foot off the tee.
Like for me, I played in like myvery first major championship, I
(14:19):
played in Atlanta Athletic Club.It's like a it's 100%.
So you need a 27280 shot dog legs right to the left.
I cannot draw a drive around there.
I'm so nervous and I'm in my first tee shots with this with
like, you know, our our G4 is G 10 fairway wood or something at
the time is like pretty small and compact.
(14:40):
And I was so nervous and I did the same thing.
I got paired with Victor Hovlin and when I qualified for the
waste management a few years agoin the first tee shots like you
normally just hit like a drivingiron or hybrid down there and
I'm so nervous. I didn't have the thriver yet.
I teed my regular big driver down is not the right shot, but
I'm like so nervous. I just had to do it just to chip
(15:01):
it down there. And nowadays like I'll get just
as nervous on the first tee. I that's always like kind of my
thing and I always like fear that first tee shot if it's not
a driver. And now if you play this club
like it's literally automatic, you can go down there, you can
get steep on it, you can take a divot if you want.
That ball's going down the fairway.
That's so funny. I guess it's a common thing.
I've just never talked about this with anybody.
(15:22):
The fears of yeah, that there's nothing worse than a first tee
shot 3 would or like. Oh.
Yeah, you nailed it. You nailed it.
It's like you got to go like I need to go to therapy over this
and it's dead. I just like I I consider this
club like a anti anxiety club. OK, got it.
What? So why, I mean, as mini driver
(15:43):
ever cross your guys's like development path like, hey, we
should we should build a a mini drivers.
They're just like, no, we like this strategy of just going
normal driver. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it's somewhere always researching.
It's like how much there there'sa trade off to how easy it is to
hit off the ground like these you do, you are trading that off
like you can't get the big high cut floaty 1 overlake into a par
(16:06):
5. But it's very functional off the
ground. Like you see good players
hitting regular driver off the regular DoD's like this thing is
very functional. I've made eagles hitting this
thing from from 280 on a par 5 and things of that nature.
So it's always something we're researching, but I think we've
seen these players like if you're going to go in on mini
(16:27):
driver, thriver, 2 wood, whatever second driver club in
your bag, why not just go macro like the the moment of inertia
when we've measured some of likethe mini drivers fairy woods out
there again, they're they're like, you know, half what they
would be is if you just went allthe way to the big 1.
So it's like we've seen really good success with it, but some
(16:48):
somewhere, you know, continue tostudy and test.
But I think this category is kind of like here to stay for
the for the faster swings speed player.
You'll see players convert into this and never go back to a
three wood right? Have you had players just like
ditch the long driver and just. Hit this one too.
And just stick with this. You know what, there's an
interesting like Thristan Lawrence is one of those,
(17:09):
Tristan Lawrence, He's one of those that plays his driver at
like 43 1/2. Okay, he's an oddball.
He is an oddball today where he plays his regular driver like at
that length and obviously he didgood, almost won the Open
Championship last year playing it in the wind and just a
totally crafty player, super shot maker.
He's like the only one that plays like this short of a
(17:32):
driver as his gamer driver. Like we actually see the
opposite trend from the rest of our tour players at 45 and a
half a lot at 46. Then things things of that
nature. I think if you play these two
you can you can re optimize yourregular driver to be a little
bit longer asked for longer distance.
(17:54):
I mean, I find it hard. Went down and hung out John
Sinclair and and did an awesome fitting with him and came home
with a 45 1/2 and a 46 and he was really trying to convince me
that I needed the 45 1/2 becauseI hit it more solidly.
But you just can't take those extra two or three mile an hour
out of my bag when I put the 40.You're not going to convince me
(18:16):
that I need the shorter one thatgoes slower.
Like I don't know how, I don't know how to get over that hump.
But it's like it's, it's a real difference, like a meaningful
difference going to 46 and just trying to get as fast as you can
with with that club. Yeah, totally Cordy.
We, we actually built a tool we have, we have this great fitting
tool called Pink Copilot and we built this for all of our
fitters out there. I mean, we have 4000 fitting
(18:38):
accounts using this copilot tool.
And one of the little widgets inthere is that you can do a
strokes game comparison. Let's say you're, you could
collect data on your own launch monitor at home and you feed in
like the the distance gain between those 245 1/2 and 46.
And then you punch in your like offline standard deviation from
(19:00):
track man. Or if you got a quad, it's like
the side number in there and theplus or minus standard deviation
and it's just you're just putting in the cute for left,
right dispersion. And then you plug in your
handicap because the importance of distance to accuracy is
contextual to your skill level, your handicap, because then
strokes can compounds on the wayinto the green and then also
(19:22):
your course difficulty, right. So if you plan a tight course,
very penalizing out of bounds water or whatever, we actually
you could yeah, we have a littleslider in there.
You can pick your golf course difficulty and you run a a
computation rooted in strokes gained.
Like all of Mark Brodie's calculations are right in there
to say, OK, maybe you hit it Cordy like 10 yards for further
(19:46):
with the 46, but your dispersionis like 2 yards wider.
Would that be a positive strokesgain or not?
And the answer is yes. For a better player, the ratio
is 2 to 1. So if you gain 10 yards, as long
as you don't increase your dispersion by more than five,
that is a positive strokes gain.And this is the calculus that
(20:08):
the tour players I think are naturally they've, they've
naturally iterated their way to we have this compute, they can
run it. Probably guys like Bryce have
literally run this, you know, iffolks like Chris Como.
So we, we can, we can run the numbers, but we can also do this
in a fitting protocol to help inform that that that decision
should you go longer or shorter in your, in your fitting.
(20:29):
So it's it's really cool to be fitting using strokes gain
analytics. Got it.
So if my so the two to one rule,if my normal driver is 70 yard
wide dispersion, yes, I can gain.
If I can gain 10 more yards but and go to 75 yards, then that's
a that's an acceptable trade off.
Yes, yes, absolutely. And the ratio of distance to
(20:50):
accuracy, if you're a less skilled golfer that hits it
shorter, it's even more of a premium to distance and
accuracy. That ratio is 3 to 1.
So let's say you're A10 handicapper above that drives it
shorter than 250 yards. That calculus is then three to
1, you know, so it's a good kindof heuristic 2 to one for like
(21:13):
the fast swing speed, better players, 3 to one for 250 and
below, higher handicappers. Or, you know, you use our pink
Copilot tool that does all the nuance computation down to the
nearest, you know, one 100th of a strokes game point, you know.
I'm going to have to do that. That's great.
I love that. So the thriver really has to be
more accurate then if you're taking 20 or 25 yards off your
(21:37):
normal driver, you got to get 10yards tighter in your
dispersion. Yes.
That sounds hard. That sounds challenging.
Yes, the well, what should the the way to think about the the
the the thriver is to compare itto a three wood, right.
You want to compare it to a three wood.
So compared to a three wood, ourtesting is you'll hit it at
(21:58):
least 40% tighter dispersion. I mean that is like gigantic.
So if we plug those numbers, I think I did this.
Let me see if I can pull up our our copilot thing.
Yes, you plug those numbers intoour strokes game calculator,
like let's say both of them coreto go exactly 270 and you
(22:19):
tighten your dispersion by 40%, you're going to gain 1.8 strokes
gained driving. Just do that tighter dispersion,
right. Does that make does that make
sense? Yeah, yeah.
I'll send you a little graphic on that from our from our
strokes gain calculator. OK.
And that's what you're saying when people hit the hit the
(22:39):
thriver versus the three win then?
Yeah, like, yeah, off the tee, both on course analytics
captured from on course play as well as testing here with player
testing at the Pink Proving Grounds.
We do a nice job of kind of our protocol that we do the testing.
You know, we have folks aimed between a couple poles out there
that are 20 yards wide. We game a fire, we score it.
(23:01):
We have a, you know, we put a little heat on them and pressure
on them. We have a little leaderboard.
Players really focus in, they cycle between clubs, make sure
they kind of cleanse their palate, not getting the groove
from block prop, etcetera. Got it, got it.
I guess the last thing then would be building like one of
these things we talked about earlier, but like, yeah, we're
cutting down to like a I've got your graph pulled up here.
(23:22):
But like a 5 wood shaft then is what you're what you're doing
pretty? Much, Yeah, either 3 wood or
five wood shaft. I mean, again, it kind of just
depends on like what distance you're trying to optimize for.
I think as a default, if you plug a three wood shaft in
there, that's a good way to go. Then you have to get the head
weight up. So if somebody orders it from us
ping directly, we build it to the perfect head weight through,
(23:43):
you know, a combination of addedweight to the head and our CG
shifter. We can hit AD 3D four swing
weight just fine. You know, you can use the I
think we get questions around doI need to tip the shaft more and
things of that nature. I think just generally just as a
fairway wood shaft, a three woodshaft, maybe 10 grams heavier
than your in your driver shaft is you can just think of the
(24:04):
shaft fitting the same as you would a three.
Would some folks go a little flatter and they use our
trajectory tuning sleeve like I play it in the our flat dot
position with just three degreesflatter.
That just keeps a little more cut bias for me.
And then I be I put the seat bigold honkin CG shifter in the
back, which helps tune the left right bias.
It's nice to have that option because some players want to
(24:27):
have this club be a little more draw bias.
I'm kind of uses more a little more cut bias And then if I want
to draw an IT high. So we have a lot of good fitting
options on that front. But three wood shaft D3D4 swing
weight if you're kind of traditional swing weight player.
And yeah, it's, it's, it's a fun, it's a super fun build.
How far off? So if someone wants to go play
(24:48):
around at this like how far off is the swing weight going to be
if I just go literally take my 3wood shaft?
It's going to be a lot if you're, if you want to tinker
with it at home or get it, you got an extra 12° head around,
you have to just load it up withsome lead tape.
You know, you know, I'm probably1215 grams of lead tape
somewhere in that ballpark. Got it.
(25:09):
So if someone wants to, wants tomess around with it, just just
have your lead tape on hand and yeah.
Exactly, exactly. But you know, if you want build
an optimize or order an optimizeone from us, we'll build it
perfectly. Is this an option?
Like you guys have this on the site where you can.
Yeah, it's like a little secret menu option.
You know, it's like it's like going to in and out and getting
(25:29):
an animal style. We could definitely do it.
We got a great build spec littlegraphic you have is actually
kind of our guide to fitters forhow to order it, what to use,
what to consider why, why to do it.
So we're we're definitely seeinga little uptick in this.
Yeah. You know, it is a little nichy
because it in my opinion, because it is kind of faster,
(25:50):
better players only. But again, I I think it's a
category. It's going to be here to stay.
Sorry, one more nerd nerdy question here.
If we're, if we're trying to fitfit for this, are we looking for
a higher spin rate than normal and like a higher launch than
normal or what? What are we looking for?
Yeah, again, I think it's very, very dependent according on T
height and and and play, you gota lot of options.
You can go really high on the T height like your regular driver
(26:12):
if you T it medium or high or you can go super low.
So my preference and I think what we've seen most of the tour
guys do is T it kind of low to medium low and get their attack
angle more down. And as your attack goes down,
your spin goes up. So so like that's a big thing,
like the players, you're going to get more down on it and when
you get more down, your spins going to go up.
(26:33):
So I think when you think about spin rate, you want to keep this
thing like over 3000 depend on your attack angle.
So if you tee it low and you hitmore down, it's it's actually a
good thing to have your spin like, you know, between 3 three
thousand 3500 for like a stock one.
And then obviously if you tee ithigher, hit a little higher in
(26:55):
the face, maybe level out your tacking a little bit, you can
take spin off. Got it, got it.
Why the 12° head? Is that just cuz then you can
have a more down attack angle onit?
Is that why? Yeah, Just to get it to go short
enough. OK, We have all kinds of really
cool tools to help find the perfect launch and spin for a
(27:17):
driver fitting. And a bunch of our fitters and
customers, Cordy were like, well, I need a optimizer for
irons. And the question was like, well,
what are you trying to do on your irons?
And if it's maximized distance, you end up just working your way
to our driver chart, which is like gives you for angle of
attack and ball speed. Like it gives you the perfect
launch and spin to find. Then you could kind of tune
(27:38):
based on golf ball on top of that.
And and we like doing that here a ping as well.
But yeah, it's, it's, it's because you're trying to hit a
certain number in that 12° loft.Again, the actual loft down,
it's 13 five is a very nice sweet spot to kind of hit your
distance number. Got it, got it.
I think we've I think we've got all the details on on a thriver
(27:59):
now. I I think that everyone is fully
equipped at this point to eitherdecide, yes, I absolutely need
one to go order one right now or, or decide.
I don't know what the other option is to, you know, maybe
potentially top a three it off the tee the next time they go
play. Yeah, I was.
I think it's just like it's one of those things that I think
better players like we talked about Cordy, like your
(28:19):
experience or mine, it's like it's kind of in your either your
conscience or maybe in your subconscious, you know, it's
like one of those things that like hindsight's 2020 like, Oh
yeah, I don't ever hit this off the ground.
Oh yeah, I do get really nervy always with my with my three
wood, you know what I mean? And it can make a really big
difference to your scoring in Arizona golf court.
(28:41):
All the section tournaments I play, I hit this club a ton
because it's just like Targety, you know, like the farewell run
out at 290. It's like, OK, I got to just
chip one down there and have MY150 shot in.
So it's going to be how important this club is.
It's going to be contextual to the player where they're playing
golf. But there there's a lot of good
players out there that that needthis club and might be a little
(29:03):
fragile with their with their three wood.
All right. Well, this is good.
What else is on the secret club ordering menu is.
There any other clan? That I need to know about.
We we got we got we got a lot oftricks up our sleeve here.
But no, I think the Thrivers kind of probably the the most
the, you know, the most fun and valuable secret menu option that
(29:24):
we got. Cool.
I love it dude, thanks for the time.
And wait, actually, where on thesite do I go to order one of
these? Hold on, let's give people the
full full info in case they need.
To go, yeah, no, no, no. Go find a fitter, man.
Ping, we have a great network ofhighly trained fitters.
So what you'll want to do is go out and you go to ping.com and
(29:47):
go to our find a fitter tool. You can even filter by folks who
have different launch monitors who are using our copilot, who
are doing ball fitting, who are pink proving ground certified.
So we got a great find a fitter tool.
I would go on there, type in your zip code, get a rank
ordered list on our find a fitter tool and and go ask about
it. Perfect.
And then if I want to do that copilot thing that you
(30:09):
mentioned, we're plugging that in.
Can anyone do that or is that just for fitters that?
Are right now it's a tool reserved for our fitters Cordy,
but over the next few years we're going to make some more of
these tools available directly to consumers, which would be
really fun. I will direct folks to a couple
really cool tools that we have. One is called Web Fit Wedge for
(30:29):
wedge fitting. This is help you find your grind
and gapping on your wedges. It's really cool.
So if you Google that or go to our site Web Fit Wedge, we have
an awesome fitting tool for consumers called Web Fit Junior
that fits our Prodigy product. So if you got a kiddo getting
into the game and it helps you build their bag, it does gapping
for your kid. Like if you put in your kids age
(30:51):
or if you have their ball speed or driver distance, we'll gap
their entire set, which kids have no idea how far they hit
the ball. So it's really good.
So that's a really good one. And then we just launched our
new Scottsdale putter line and we built a web fit putter tool,
which is not meant to replace anin person fitting, but it's kind
of to help you narrow down like which models might be really
(31:12):
good for you. So there's a couple really cool
tools consumers, consumers can play around with.
And I would think about if your consumer think about those tools
as like your practice round for your fitting.
So do that before you go in for your fitting.
You have a major jump start and you'll be kind of a little bit
more targeted and and surgical for things to to look for and to
be more educated. Tweet I'm actually excited about
(31:36):
that junior one. I got to get my I got to get my
7 year old some some new clubs that keep.
Perfect timing man, I got a 8 year olds.
Yeah I would love your feedback on it.
Go to web fit junior. Just takes like a couple minutes
to enter their height, wrist to floor, how far they hit the
ball, a few other things. And then you can play around
with Cordy. How many clubs you you want in
(31:58):
their bags? So like a full bag of junior
clubs I think is 11. But like your 7 year old, you
might only want to go like odds or evens, you know, start with a
little starter set and it will kind of do that for you and
it'll give you the gaps like, oh, what if I had one more club?
The gaps will get a little shorter.
What if I had a little more and it you can print out APDF that
has a yardage card that you can print out put in your yardage
(32:21):
book. So when you're caddying for him
at his little club tournament, you'll you'll have a little idea
how far you can hit a good shot basically.
Sweet sick. I love that.
Is that the future? You're trying to build as many
tools like that as you can and like try to empower.
People, absolutely, yes. So my team is working on we want
to have the best tools for our fitters and then we want to have
(32:42):
have our golfers like our customers be super educated, be
empowered, go into your fitter, ask them really good questions,
have like a really good jump start on what things you should
be should be considering. Yeah, those, those are some good
things that, you know, you probably know Shane Bacon and I
have a have a podcast, Pink Proving Grounds podcast.
We talk about all kinds of the stuff.
He's another one that's playing the Thriver and won't go back.
(33:03):
All right, we got the the Thriver army.
Is there Thriver merch yet and like not yet?
OK, now yeah, I need to get to. Get we got to get some T-shirts,
some hats. I don't know the whole this is
the new mission. But thanks Marty for sharing.
Hey, Joe, Mayo's got this. Yeah.
It's like, what's our? It's the two woods, so maybe we
could play off that. I mean, I don't know why did
(33:23):
that later. OK, yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll
get something together. We'll get ChatGPT to come up
with some logo. How about that?
Exactly. Exactly.
All right, Marty, thanks for thetime.
Appreciate. It all right, Cory, That was
fun.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.