As we saw just a few weeks with the tour launch of the Titleist TSi, whenever a big OEM teases their new gear out on Tour, it’s a huge deal—especially for the gear heads. Is it better? Longer? More stable? Who is putting it in play, and on and on…

This week in Vegas (Shadow Creek CC) at the CJ Cup, it’s Ping’s turn to throw their hat in the ring with the new G425 woods. It’s just that time of year: All the heavyweights come out swinging with new ideas, and tech which hopefully results in better scores for the rest of us.

From where I sit, the Ping G410 was/is hands down the most stable brick wall of a driver on the market. If you look at the players that lean towards this profile (LST or MAX), they tend to be high-speed players (Finau, Champ, Watson, Woodland). At that speed, extra distance isn’t necessarily a priority—stability is up always front. Not to say those drivers don’t pack a punch, they are plenty long, but as a golf club built for accuracy, it sits as king of the mountain.

The big question is, “What direction did Ping go in with the G425?” My hunch is they found a way to keep the stability and crank up the distance volume even more.

As its too early to get into the tech story, I did want to get a feel for what early testing was looking like, so once again I tapped my old buddy Kenton “K.O” Oates from the Ping tour team to get the inside look.

JW: First reactions across the board…what are players saying?

KO: First, the amount of work and effort that went into this launch from everyone at Ping worldwide was simply incredible. It is hard enough to launch a full line of clubs across multiple tours across the globe under normal circumstances, and I think we can all agree 2020 has been far but normal.

In Phoenix, I think we knew from early testing results with a few of our staff players that this was going to be overall a very well-received launch this week in Vegas and across the pond in Scotland. If we needed any further fuel for the fire for this launch, look no further thann Tyrell Hatton winning at Wentworth with three new G425 metal woods the first week in play.

JW: Max vs. LST. What are guys leaning towards at first testing?

KO: Players right away loved the clean rich look of the G425 Max and LST drivers. The biggest takeaway is how forgiving these drivers are with zero sacrifices to playability or speed. Ping drivers have long been known for their stability, and the G425 takes that baton and keeps running. The coolest thing we noticed was how easy it was to control and optimize the launch and spin of the bigger super stable G425 Max and how straight the smaller, sleeker low spinning G425 flew. We will see more G425 LST in play due to its extreme forgiveness in a lower spinning package—felt like you could give a player G410 Plus forgiveness with G410 LST launch conditions.

JW: How are the reactions to the new Fairway woods?

KO: From a looks standpoint, players were generally shocked to see fairway woods and hybrids without turbulators for the first time since G25/I25 fairway woods and G30 hybrids. Along with a fresh new look, players saw nice performance gains in terms of ball speeds, launch conditions, and distance with both our G425 Max and LST fairways with the same forgiveness, playability, and stability of their G410 fairways. Both players who put G425 hybrids in play this week needed the same adjustment…more loft as it was flying too far in the standard-setting.

JW: Any fun testing stories?

KO: In previous months, both Viktor Hovland and Cameron Champ tested longer driver length options. Both players gamers are short, 44 3/4 for Hovland, to very short 44 1/4 for Champ. In the previous testing, Hovland could not control spin or right miss enough to feel comfortable gaming longer option and Cameron could not find enough stability out of his preferred LST head option at his speeds.

Right away with Hovland, 425 reduced his right miss and lowered his spin at his gamer length, it wasn’t long into the fitting he looked at us and goes, “We need to build the longer one with this head.”  So, we left Viktor both options, and over the last 10 days, it was fun to get screenshots of Trackman from Viktor as he approached and then surpassed 180 mph ball speed.

In Cameron’s case, he has wanted to play a longer shaft but to do so, he felt he needed to switch into our 410 Plus head to give him the extra forgiveness and stability. We started Cameron’s G425 testing with slightly longer options and were able to optimize his launch conditions with a 9-degree LST in the small plus setting. Tuesday, we tested his gamer, shorter length on Trackman, and course. The longer length gave him additional 10 yards of carry, 4 mph of ball speed, and was still more stable than his old gamer.

All said and done Hovland will play a driver an inch longer at 45 3/4 and Cameron will go with a 45-inch shaft.

Ping G425 woods in play this week at CJ Cup

Staff

Champ                LST Driver           Max 3w               19* Hybrid

Conners                                             LST 3w                19* Hybrid

Hatton                LST Driver           LST 3w                Max 7w

Hovland             LST Driver

Hughes               Max Driver          Max 3w               Max 5w

Munoz                Max Driver

Niemann                                           Max 3w

Oosthuizen                                       Max 3w               Max 7w

Thompson         LST Driver           Max 3w                Max 7w

Watson               LST Driver                                        Max 5w