Opinion & Analysis

How does the iPING putter app work?

Published

11 years ago

Feb 5, 2015

Golf is becoming more and more technological. Well, strictly speaking, the game is the same but the clubs you use and the innovations available to help analyze your swing and your ball flight are advancing fast. Here in the engineering department at Ping, we use simulation and measurement tools today that Karsten Solheim would have dreamed about. It is a great time to be a sports scientist.

iPING’s Beginnings

I remember the day in 2006 when we decided to create our own fitting software using launch-monitor data from new devices on the market such as Vector and TrackMan. I’d spent much of the previous year testing and validating a predictive ball-flight model that could take speeds, angles and spin rates and paint any golf shot into a 3D environment.

Our aim with our nFlight fitting software was to bring fitting into the 21^st Century by applying real analysis to launch-monitor data and give meaningful fitting recommendations. We pioneered a few things like optimal shot bands, dispersion ellipses and gapping analysis. A couple of years later we started to talk about applying MEMS technology to measuring a club during a fitting. MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) are small, lightweight sensors that measure movement. The devices contain two main types of sensors – three-axis gyroscopes that measure rotational movement (yaw, pitch and roll), and three-axis accelerometers that measure straight-line movement (x, y and z). These sensors are used in many different industries and can track any kind of movement, but they aren’t infallible – they drift over time and there is noise in the data. It’s not realistic to expect the sensors to keep an accurate track of the position of an object for long periods of time, but they are perfect for measuring short-duration movements.

One of our engineers had the idea to take an iPhone 4 and strap it to a putter, using the sensors in the phone itself to measure a putting stroke. I was pretty skeptical about both the sensor quality in the phone and the extra weight affecting the putting stroke, but I was happy to be proven wrong on both counts. The phone is placed close to the grip and doesn’t affect the swing weight of the putter much at all. The extra weight is easily detectible by a golfer but not distracting, even to our tour players. We also verified that the device doesn’t change the putting stroke and gives us accurate enough readings, all for the cost of a plastic cradle.

iPING reliably captures the closing angle (stroke type), impact angle, tempo, shaft lean and lie angle. It is important to note that iPING has no way to know where the hole is, which is typical for any MEMS device. As a result, you will see that many of the attributes we track are internal to the stroke, say from address to impact. We can’t tell you whether the putter face was open or closed to the target because we can’t know where the target is, however, the sensor does know which way is down by measuring gravity and this is how we measure a real shaft lean and lie angle.

Consistency is Key

So, what benefit do we get from tracking a putting stroke? Well, primarily we want to measure consistency. All our research with elite players and tour players shows that even though the motion of their putting strokes varied, the single thing they all have in common is a high degree of consistency when compared to higher-handicap players. Based on our experiments, it doesn’t seem to matter how much arc is in your stroke, if you align at the hole or consistently left or right, or if your tempo is quick or slow, so long as there is consistency in the stroke. The key was that we established a relationship between the consistency (standard deviation, the statistical term for it) of any given attribute when repeated over five putts and a player’s handicap.

Figure 1 (below) shows this relationship for closing angle. We put this together to create a score for a five-putt session in iPING that rates your consistency over five attributes against players of a certain handicap. So if your score for a session is 9.0, you putted like a typical 9-handicap player. Using this score gives players an instant understanding of what is good and bad, and allows someone to quantify whether one session is significantly better than another. For example, you can use this in practice to measure technique changes. Just try using iPING outside in the wind and then inside on a flat green to see what impact that has on your consistency.

iPING Data

When we use iPING in fitting we can take stroke type, impact angle, tempo, shaft lean, and lie angle readings to dial in the best putter for your stroke. Figure 2 shows how we would take each of the five main attributes and recommend a putter that will improve a player’s consistency. This is based on a lot of experiments in the putter lab.

There are a few things that stand out from the nearly 10 million putts registered on iPING.

There is no such thing as Tour tempo. Tour players have an average tempo of close to 2.0 on iPING, but there are some as low as 1.4 and some over 2.5, all with good putting numbers on the tour.
Beginner golfers often have a very flat lie angle and upwards of 10 degrees of arc in the stroke. We really don’t ever see this among elite golfers, which would suggest it is detrimental to producing good results. The average tour player has about 5 degrees of arc in his or her putting stroke (on a putt from 10 feet).
The general public tends to add a little loft with the hands on average; elite and tour players tend to de-loft the putter a little.
Even among the very best players, very few have the putter face totally square to the hole at address. Some good tour players consistently line up 4 or 5 degrees to one side of the hole. Since we have no evidence that it’s important to consistency, it’s not something we try to “fix.” If putts are consistently missed left or right, then a choice of alignment features and/or hang angle can help that.

The ability to acquire and analyze large sets of information from tools like iPING has certainly helped us answer some big questions about putter design and fitting, and hopefully help a few people make some more putts.

Related Topics:Ping putting

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Paul Wood

Paul is the Vice President of Engineering at Ping, coordinating a department responsible for club design, development, innovation and testing. He moved there in 2005 after completing a PhD studying Solar Flares in the Mathematics Department at St Andrews University, Scotland. He has spent most of his time with Ping in the research department working on the physics of ball flight, the club-ball impact and many other aspects of golf science. Some of his projects at Ping include the nFlight fitting software, iPing, Turbulators and TR face technology. The idea behind these articles is to explain a bit about popular scientific topics in golf in a way that is accessible to most. Hopefully that will be easier than it sounds. www.ping.com

21 Comments

Anna Simon

Nov 4, 2015 at 5:10 pm

Hi Paul,

I am currently working with a company that is building a new product that helps golfers improve and analyze their golf swing, taking a multi-sensor approach to the swing analyzers products on the market. The product’s Kickstarter will be launching later this month. Would you like us to get in touch with you to test the product? If so, please send me your email to anna@duotrac.com.

Many Thanks,

Anna Simon

Reply Report comment
Ian Jones

Feb 10, 2015 at 8:23 pm

Yes – bought it for the galaxy S3 (even got the S3 because Ping did this alleged great app)….. AND….of course it didnt work. very disappointed. Surprisingly Ping customer service didnt seem to want to know when I called. Was there a recall since it didnt work ? Now have a $30 piece of plastic sat in a box, keeping company with old yardage books.

Reply Report comment
killerbgolfer

Feb 8, 2015 at 10:27 pm

Love what you do PING. Consistently the most progressive company with outstanding products and service.

Reply Report comment
Mike

Feb 7, 2015 at 3:05 pm

Do Ping have plans to release an iPhone 6 cradle? I’m lost without one.

Reply Report comment
Rene Realme

Feb 6, 2015 at 4:27 pm

Galaxy S4 cradle please!

Reply Report comment
Mark

Feb 6, 2015 at 3:27 pm

So any thoughts on providing this app for Android users who are 50% of the smartphone market??????

Reply Report comment
- Paul Wood
  
  Feb 6, 2015 at 6:50 pm
  
  Unfortunately, the android platform makes this really tough. There’s so much variation in phones and sensors. We looked at it seriously and even briefly released a version for the Galaxy S3 but even just that 1 model had something like 10 different hardware versions, so it made it almost impossible to ensure functionality and accuracy. Maybe we’ll have to look at something where we use a MEMS device instead of the phone to link up to iPing as a solution for Android users. We’ll keep looking!
  
  Reply Report comment
Mike Olsen

Feb 6, 2015 at 12:53 pm

Paul,

Just curious as to how the iPing data stands up to the SAM Puttlab output…both in terms of accuracy and consistency of the data? Thanks

Reply Report comment
- Paul Wood
  
  Feb 6, 2015 at 6:54 pm
  
  We have a SAM Puttlab in our lab and we used both the SAM and high speed video data to check the accuracy and consistency of our data. I myself was surprised how good the phone’s sensors did in our testing. Clearly there are quite a few aspects of the putt that the SAM measures that we don’t but the SAM is quite a big investment for someone.
  
  Reply Report comment
John Grossi

Feb 6, 2015 at 5:42 am

Paul, Thanks for this explanation on Ping’s putter app. However, I am interested in Ping’s NFlight(sp) device. Would you consider an article on it? These MEMS devices are very interesting on how they relate to the golf swing.

Reply Report comment
- Paul Wood
  
  Feb 6, 2015 at 11:00 am
  
  I’d certainly be very happy to do an article on nFlight. I might try to cover a couple of other topics relating to club technology or golf physics first but I’ll try to come back to fitting tools again. I’m really interested in MEMS technology personally – it would be a pleasure to write more on the subject.
  
  Reply Report comment
mike

Feb 5, 2015 at 5:16 pm

Great product. It is very consistent and helped me to slow down my putts.

Reply Report comment
Golfraven

Feb 5, 2015 at 2:40 pm

The cradle still fits the iphone 5 but I am not sure I tested it never iphone 6 model. reminds me to take it out of my golf bag locker and use it again. Saddly the app is lacking better stats analysis and is not showing dates when you did the putting therefor difficult to compare unless you write dates in your notepad. i agree that putting with the phone does not affect the stroke itself but I feel the weight of it and also the impact sound is slighly different. however it is great tool which provides important data on stroke type, tempo, shaft lean, lie angle etc.. I would say biggest feedback is weather your stroke is consistent, independent of how you roll the ball. I am close to +PHcp and it helps me to focus when practicing. All pros are around +4 and comparing against those is good indication what your putting is lacking. So as with anything in golf, consistency is key

Reply Report comment
- MS
  
  Feb 5, 2015 at 4:38 pm
  
  Golfraven – On the “Measure” screen, you can change the name of each session. Look at the picture above where it says “Session 17” – if you tape on the name (not the drop down arrow), it will bring up the keyboard and you can change the session to a date or whatever you would to call it.
  
  The best way to utilize this is on a day when you are putting well. Take a quick session and save it by date, “good putting day”, etc so you know where to find it. Then you will have it stored what your stats are when you are rolling it well. Helps you go back and compare when you have an off day and can help figure out why.
  
  Reply Report comment
  - Golfraven
    
    Feb 5, 2015 at 5:48 pm
    
    Thanks for the hint, much appreciated. been using this now for last 2-3 years and never figured it out.
    
    Reply Report comment
bph

Feb 5, 2015 at 1:41 pm

How does it work? The answer is it doesn’t. Be careful before buying this. The app has been broken for at least a year (on iPhone at least), leaving me with a useless $30 piece of plastic.

Reply Report comment
- MS
  
  Feb 5, 2015 at 4:39 pm
  
  Have you tried deleting the app and reinstalling?
  
  Reply Report comment
- Paul Wood
  
  Feb 5, 2015 at 6:29 pm
  
  I’m really sorry to hear your app is not working correctly. Our application support would be happy to help you get that figured out. Their number is 855-687-5700 or appsupport@ping.com We do our best to make sure it works for as many people as possible, but I’m not going to lie, making apps is hard when hardware and software are progressing at such a fast pace.
  
  Reply Report comment
Ed

Feb 5, 2015 at 1:08 pm

I have one for my iphone4, which i don’t have anymore..
Will ping discount if i get one for iphone 5 or 6?

Reply Report comment
Double Mocha Man

Feb 5, 2015 at 1:05 pm

The app works great. But finding a cradle that fits my phone is problematic. So I’ve used duct tape in the past. One more use for duct tape…

Reply Report comment
Tom Stickney

Feb 5, 2015 at 10:29 am

It’s a great tool for sure.

Reply Report comment

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Opinion & Analysis

5 Things We Learned: Thursday at the PGA Championship

Published

2 weeks ago

May 15, 2026

Ronald Montesano

Aronimink is not a storied club, but when Donald Ross himself proclaimed it to be as good as he can design and build, one had to take notice. Jay Sigel was the pre-eminent male amateur golfer from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. He might have called any number of Philadelphia clubs home, but he chose Aronimink. It served him well. Gary Player won a PGA Championship here in 1962, and was followed by the 1993 winner … nobody. Aronimink gave that event away to Inverness, for reasons of which it is certainly not proud. So be it. We had to wait sixty-four years for the PGA to return to Newtown Square, but here we are. Aronimink has been neo-restored by Gil Hanse and team, to return Ross features with an eye toward defense against the dark arts, errrr, high-tech equipment.

Day one saw Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau dig big holes, to the tune of plus-four and plus-six, respectively. Since the first-round lead will be minus-three at worst, many shots will need to be made up for the power couple to reach contention. By nightfall, seven golfers held the day-one lead at three-under par 67. Shots and sticks caught our attention, and we are proud to present Five Things We Learned on Tech Thursday at the 2026 PGA Championship. Thanks to InsideTourGolfer, Today’s Golfer, and GolfWRX for initial equipment research.

First, meet Min Woo Lee

Min Woo Lee, aka Dr. Chipinski, has once again thrust himself into the conversation of Can he, will he, when will he? Lee has so much talent, wins not nearly as often as we believe that he should, and has no major near-misses (much less titles) on his wiki. The young Aussie is getting older and wiser, but is he able to avoid the scarring that holds the older and wiser back from breaking through? Philadelphia offers another opportunity. Min Woo signed for five birdies and two bogeys on day one, and grabbed a share of the opening-day lead at Aronimink. Winners transcend history and the moment, and Lee will need that sort of ascent to lift the Wannamaker on Sunday.

Second, meet Aldrich Potgeiter

The young South African golfer can rip driver with the best of them. Aronimink tips out at nearly 7400 yards, but beyond the fairway bunkers that ensnare only the mortals, Potgeiter can take his chances with wedge from the rough. On Thursday, he spent plenty of time in the spinach. Like Popeye, he used his muscles to gouge and thrash and dig his way out. Six birdies against three bogeys on the card brought AP in a three deep.

Third, meet Martin Kaymer

Not a major event takes place without a where’s he been throwback moment. We know that Martin Kaymer left the PGA and DP World tours for LIV golf, but the two-time (US Open and PGA) major winner has a lifetime exemption into at least one major event, and he seizes the opportunity each May. Kaymer joined the six-seven brigade with four birdies and a solitary bogey on day one. Kaymer was never a long hitter, and the years are kind to no golfer. The German champion will need to uncork every bottle of guile and strategy in his cabinet to remain in contention. For today, though, he occupies a rung on the ladder of Tour Tech.

Fourth, meet Scottie Scheffler

Let’s see, he’s the defending champion at the PGA, and he found his way back to the top tier with five birdies against two bogeys. To be a favorite and then play up to that stature and expectation is quite difficult. Just ask Rory, Bryson, and some of the other pre-tournament heartthrobs. Scheffler’s game is complete, and to knock him off the OWGR #1 pedestal, one needs to defeat him at the majors. Aronimink is the sort of course that fits Scheffler’s game. Better yet, it unfits the game of many of his challengers. Don’t expect Scheffler to go away anytime soon. Come Sunday, he’ll be around.

Fifth, meet Stephan Jaeger

Clocking in for the unheralded players shift are Ryo Hisatsune and Stephan Jaeger. Hisatsune logged seven birdies on day one, but gave most of them back with four bogeys. Still, he’s tied at the top for a time. Jaeger pitched five birdies against two bogeys, including a run of three consecutive, from holes four through six. Odds are that one of the two will hang around through 36 holes. Odds also suggest that both will be gone by Saturday evening. Still, the PGA Championship has historically been the major most likely to be won by an under-known. Both Hisatsune and Jaeger feature on that list, so good luck, lads!

Club Junkie

Club Junkie’s Titleist GTS driver fitting results!

Published

2 weeks ago

May 14, 2026

Brian Knudson

On this episode of the Club Junkie Podcast, I head to the Titleist Performance Institute for a full driver fitting with the new Titleist GTS lineup. We dive into the fitting process, talk about what made the biggest difference in performance, and break down how the different GTS heads and shaft combinations compare on the launch monitor. If you are thinking about a new driver setup for this season, there is a lot to take away from this one.

I also get into Brooks Koepka and the gear setup he brought to the PGA Championship, including the putters that caught my eye during the week. There are some interesting equipment trends showing up at the highest level right now and we break down what stands out.

To wrap things up, I talk about reshafting a few wedges, what I learned during the process, and swapping an adaptor onto a new shaft for another build project in the shop. A gear packed episode from start to finish for anyone who loves golf equipment and club building.

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Club Junkie

Club Junkie WITB, week 16: New Titleist GTS woods!

Published

2 weeks ago

May 14, 2026

Brian Knudson

Excited for this week’s WITB as we get to add the new Titleist GTS woods to the bag! I was fit at Titleist’s TPI facility in Oceanside California a few weeks ago and my new clubs just showed up. I am also adding a cool set of irons that I built last year some wild custom wedges into a new golf bag. Speaking of the bag I have a new Ghost Anyday Black Ops stand bag that I will be using on my Motocaddy Remote M7 electric cart.

Driver: Titleist GTS3 (11 degrees @ 10.25)
Shaft: Fujikura Ventus Red 6s

3-wood: Titleist GT1 3Tour (14.5 degrees)
Shaft: Graphite Design Tour AD CQ-7s

5-wood: Titleist GTS (18 degrees)
Shaft: Fujikura Ventus Red 7s

9-wood: Titleist GT1 (24 degress)
Shaft: Fujikura Ventus Red 7s

Irons: Bettinardi CB24 (5-PW)
Shafts: KBS C-Taper Lite 110 stiff

Wedge: TaylorMade MG5 (50-09 SB)
Shaft: Mitsubishi MMT 125 Stiff

Wedge: TaylorMade MG5 (56-12 SB)
Shaft: Mitsubishi MMT 125 Stiff

Wedge: TaylorMade MG5 (60-08 LB)
Shaft: Mitsubishi MMT 125 Stiff

Putter: Dan Carraher ZT Proto

Ball: Callaway Chrome Tour

Bag: Ghost Anyday Black Ops Stand Bag