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Cutting
Edge - Ping Launches Two
New Lines of Iron for 2000
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John Solheim,
Chairman and Chief Executive of Karsten Corp, displays the
new Ping i3 models.
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As
most golf fans will know, the words 'Ping Blade' don't exactly
go together like a horse and carriage. After all, from it's
earliest origins when founder Karsten Solheim moulded his first
putters on his kitchen stove, in Arizona back in the Sixties,
Ping has been all about "heel 'n' toe", "perimeter weighting",
"investment cast" and other buzzwords far removed from the traditional
forgings they replaced. |
But
the company's latest launch, the i3 series, turns out to be no U-turn
with both the Blade and its sister model, the O-size, emerging as
feature-packed designs each with a novel approach to alignment,
offset, weighting and manufacturing.
On
his recent visit to the UK Ping chief, John Solheim, spoke to Dominic
Pedler about the concept and features of the clubs hotly-awaited
since being spotted in Lee Westwood's bag en route his Dutch Open
victory, in July.
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Ping's
i3 series consists of a Blade and O-Size model, seen here
flanking the ladies O-Size option.
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Golf
Today: You call it the i3 'Blade' though this is a cast
stainless steel club and, at first glance, some of the modern
design features would make the purist question that term. |
John
Solheim: It's a blade as far as the 'optics' are concerned,
the way that it looks and sits at address. We designed the leading
edge and the hosel so that the better player has those pure alignment
features which he associates with traditional forgings. It also
has the feel characteristics of a true blade. But it's a Ping blade
and therefore has our own performance features which we've developed
from our experience in golf club manufacturing down the years.
GT:
Why have you decided to move into this market which, for most
of the last two decades, has been very niche?
JS:
We accept that nowadays many younger golfers are moving to blades,
inspired by players like Tiger Woods. We no longer wanted to be
out of that market. We wanted to build the best blade - but on our
terms.
GT:
Is it an aspirational thing, rather like the word 'balata' which
doesn't always mean literally what it says?
J.S:
We feel the name will help the club become our flagship model
- though we would expect the O-size, the game improvement model,
to be more appropriate to most golfers and sell more over time.
I would use the anaolgy of the Chevrolet Company. Its Corvette model
is a car with hot styling which sets the company image and leads
the sales for the rest of their line. The blade is a our lead product
and will drive the sales of the O-Size being launched simultaneously.
GT:
At first glance the two lines in the i3 series look very similar
to the point where you could almost confuse the two. What are the
main differences?
J.S:
They do look similar: the height of the face in both clubs is
the same and O-Size is only slightly longer than the blade by about
3/16ths-of-an-inch. But that's enough to make it 'Optimum size',
as we call it, for the average golfer. And, from the performance
point of view, there are important differences in weighting and
offset.
GT:
Let's start with the weighting.
JS:
The Blade has a thicker face in the hitting area for the solid
feel associated with a traditional blade. The O-size has a slightly
thinner face as, in this line, we wanted to keep a higher proportion
of the weight distributed around the head for forgiveness. The O-size
in fact has as high a Moment Of Inertia [resistance to twisting]
as the ISI-S model - though it doesn't appear so with that insert
in the rear cavity.
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