Fernando H. Green Blog: Is This The Next PING Driver?

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Is This The Next PING Driver?

PING is now the only major golf equipment manufacturer without a movable weight adjustable driver.

When generally conservative Titleist released the C16 (or the upcoming 917 for those of you shopping in the non-premium market), PING became the last of golf’s current big 5 (a group that also includes Callaway, TaylorMade, and Cobra) without a single piece of hardware in its driver heads for you to flip, twist, or rotate.

Oh, the humanity.

Depending on your perspective, that may or may not be just fine, but regardless, a newly published patent application suggests it could be about to change.

The Abstract

“A golf club head includes a body having a heel portion, a toe portion, a sole portion, and an outer surface, a strikeface having a geometric center, a head center of gravity, and a weight member including a weight pad. The weight member is configured to be repositionable by the user to a first position or a second position. The club head having the weight member in the first position shifts the head center of gravity toward the strikeface, and the club head having the weight member in the second position shifts the head center of gravity away from the strikeface.”

Translation: The clubhead has a movable weight. When you put the weight forward, the center of gravity moves closer to the face (less spin/lower MOI). When you move the weight to the rear, the center of gravity moves away from the face (more spin/higher MOI).

You know how this works.

Two Methods for Moving Weight

The Patent Application suggests two methods by which PING might move weight around the head.

Method 1

The first embodiment, which bares resemblance to Cobra’s FLY-Z/F6, is a flip-type weighting system, where one would rotate the weight apparatus between either the front or the back position.

The patent leaves open the possibility for the weight/pad combination to be either one or two pieces.

Either way, we’re talking about a front to back, CG adjustable, design.

While the actual CG placements resulting from flipping the weight are unknowable without plenty of the kind of specific information that’s intentionally avoided in patent filings, the images suggest a design specification that would shift the CG from the back to the middle, not from the back to the front.

PING is a back CG company and with the exception of the Anser driver it hasn’t strayed from that philosophy. By all appearances, that won’t change with this design.

One final note on the first embodiment; the applications mentions that the weight would sit flush with the soleplate as to not interfere with the aerodynamics of the clubhead.

Method 2

The second embodiment offers two things we haven’t seen in the mainstream.

The weight system is entirely internal. No visible weights to swap, flip, or slide. The adjustability is contained entirely within the clubhead itself.
As opposed to sliding or flipping, PING’s second method involves a rotating, post-mounted, L-shaped weight. Where the protruding, long end of the “L” is positioned, so too is the extra

It’s a certainty that at least one of you will point out that others have used similar internal post weighting systems in the past, but the primary difference here is the location. Previous similar-appearing designs featured center-mounted weight. Generally speaking, the most effective weighting systems are those that keep weight out of the center of the clubhead. In that respect, this would be an advancement.

Functionally, the system utilizes a retention ring of sorts, which needs to be loosened before the actual weight apparatus can be rotated.

The images suggest that this model would offer minimal CG movement, however, the rotating nature of the design would presumably allow for weight to be directed to the toe or heel (fade or draw bias).

As we mentioned at the beginning, PING generally moves at its own pace, and seldom if ever adds a feature just to say it did, so it will be interesting to see what sort of twist PING brings to the table.

We can’t say with any degree of certainty that the images shown here represent PING’s next driver. It’s actually possible this won’t amount to anything at all. That said, PING has been fairly consistent with its intellectual property. What we find in a patent almost always makes its way to production.

We’re betting that’s the case here.