Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "Ping G430 MAX 10K Driver + Blueprint S Irons Unboxing"

Do you feel like you’re just bombarded with promises of extra distance every time a new club comes out?

Here’s the thing…

Just buying a brand new driver won’t magically add yards (except for this ONE reason I talk about around the 2:30 mark in the video)!

In today’s video, I unbox my new Ping gear. I’ll talk about the tech that ACTUALLY matters for most golfers. Things like:

Why the super pricey driver shaft might NOT be for you
What forgiveness REALLY means (and its impact on your scores)
The "secret sauce" behind finding the perfect irons for your game

Let’s cut through the marketing fluff and get to the real game-changers!

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 13:15

Video Transcription:

Clay: All right, it's Christmas morning here. Ping just sent me a brand new box of clubs. I'm not exactly sure what's in here, but I'm going to talk about some of the technology and why I picked these clubs, why I choose the clubs that I do. So let's go ahead and unwrap these here. And let's start with the big stick.

So they got a new 10K driver, is been a really popular, everybody's excited about the new 10K driver release. And what does that mean? Am I really going to hit it that much straighter with a brand new driver versus a driver that's a few years old? Let me talk about, you know, what goes into that. So G430 max 10k.

I'll give you some good closeups of the club head here. I've hit this a couple times, very similar look of what the last drivers were. So if you like the look of the ping clubs, very similar. I always liked the way they look. They seem really easy to hit a little bit thinner in the face here. And one thing that they did So what 10 K means it's called moment of inertia.

And all that, all that's talking about is if you hit off the toe, what happens in a normal shot, if I hit off the toe, that club is going to twist. And when it twists open like that, it shoots the ball offline. And it also creates more spin. If it's off the toe, it causes it to hook. If it's off the heel, it causes it to slice.

Well, there's a thing called moment of inertia that the USGA limits in the rules of golf, and it says it can only be 5, 900. So basically. They move all the weight out of the head. So this is like a carbon fiber, super, super light crown. They've taken weight out of every area of it and put it more toward the sides of the driver.

That way, if you hit off the side or off center, it doesn't twist as much. It's actually incredibly tough to do. You have to use really, really light materials. They have to be paper thin. Uh, these crowns are only the thickness of a few sheets of paper. Uh, with the metal parts of the crown, there's all kinds of different things that go into it.

Really tough to manufacture drivers that have that MOI. To my knowledge, this is as high or higher than any MOI that's ever been created in a golf club. So it's going to be the most forgiving golf club on paper that's ever been developed. Now they've gone up over the years. So if you're playing a driver that's 10 years old, you'll probably notice a significant difference when you go to a brand new driver.

If you're playing last year's model or the last model of Ping drivers, It's going to be slightly different than that, but it's not going to be, you're not going to get an extra 20 yards. There's a myth out there that if I get a brand new driver, I go from last year's model to this year, I go from tailor made to ping to title list to whatever, I'm going to gain 20 yards.

Just not going to happen unless you're not fit for the club. And that's what ping, you know, they're really big on fitting. So if you're not fit properly and the driver just does not, it's not the right loft. It's not the right shaft doesn't fit you at all. And you go to a brand new one that fits you.

Perfect. You might gain 15 or 20 yards, but it's really rare. You're basically just trying to make it as easy as possible. So 5900 from heel to toe has kind of always been the last several models of pings or going back pretty far. I've had that heel to toe miss it where this one, because they got the crown so light with the carbon fiber and wrapped it around there to drop a lot of weight out of it.

And they thin the, and they made the face a little thinner. The top to bottom miss really went up. So 10 K that's a total MOI. That means heel to toe is 5, 900 and then top to bottom makes up the rest to get it over 10 K. So every year drivers are getting better, not on heel, the toe misses, you know, pings already maxed out on that, but from top to bottom, this is a little thin, a little heavy.

You're not going to see those thin shots that kind of balloon up and lose a lot of distance. You're, you're going to get better results on thin shots. You're going to get better results on ones that are a little bit high on the face, but pretty daggum cool driver. I like the feel of it. Uh, just a great, great one.

So a question that I get all the time is, you know, what type of shaft should I use? I go get fit at a big fancy place and they try to give me a 2, 000 driver's shaft and I'm walking out of there spending boatloads of money, right? Is that really going to make me play any better? Well, in reality, the driver's shaft or any shaft is really just maintaining loft is the main role of the shaft.

addition to that, it's just feel. So what I mean by that is when you swing, as my hands come into impact, my hands are slowing down so I can release the club. And this is not just with me. This is every player that's ever played. And that shaft goes into something called lead deflection. So if you imagine bending the shaft, I'm gonna keep it like this.

If I bend the shaft this way, so you can see there's a bow in the shaft. That's happening with every driver shaft, the lighter, the flex I go. So if I go from an extra stiff to a stiff, yeah. to a regular, to a senior, to a ladies. As I go less and less or more and more flexible, less and less stiff, there's going to get more bend or more lead deflection.

And all that does is as you go into lighter and lighter flexes, it adds loft because when this shaft flexes, it adds loft to the club head and the ball is going to go a little bit higher. Same thing when I set the hosel on there, this is the big mover. So if I have a nine degree driver and I set it to go up a degree and a half, I turn it into a 10 and a half degree driver.

Or I turned it down to an eight or whatever I do, that's going to really adjust the height that that ball comes out of there much more than the shaft. The shaft is kind of like fine tuning the loft to get you in the ballpark where you need to be. The shaft is going to fine tune it. If you buy a thousand dollar golf shaft, if it flexes the same as a 30 golf shaft, that ball is going the same height, really what you're paying for in that thousand dollar shaft, unless you're a player that wants a really light, really stiff shaft.

There's not a need for a crazy expensive shaft The really expensive materials that go into a shaft on those really high end ones that are super super light They take weight out of the shaft so you can swim a little bit faster There is an advantage in that but it's also if you want a stiff shaft an extra stiff that's super light Well, you have to use these really high modulus materials that can be pretty expensive But to be honest, most people don't need an extra stiff or a double extra stiff 60 gram shaft.

It's really going to perform pretty daggone good. I mean, the ping shafts in themselves perform as good as any thousand dollar shaft. When you're hitting them off a robot, the stock shaft is going to be pretty daggone solid. I use the hazardous, uh, smoke shaft. It's a 65 gram. I like light shaft. I like them to be really low torque.

So this is a 2. 8 torque. And all the torque means is that the club head, let's put this in a, in a vice. Thanks. As I swing, the toe is going to open up and then it's going to release. So it's basically twisting this way. The shaft also twists that way. I like a low torque shaft because it feels good to me.

It feels like I have a little more control over it. If again, if I put it on a road robot and I have a high torque shaft versus low torque shaft, they're both going straight as a string. So it's really comes down to feel and what you prefer the feel of. So me in particularly, I like a really stiff shaft.

This is the stiffest shaft that they had. This is the stiffest shaft that's produced. It's a, it's an extra stiff. It's got low torque, which I like. And then I also tip it, which basically means I'll cut a couple inches off the end of the shaft, usually an inch and a half to make this, the tip portion of it stiffer too.

And all of that for me is trying to bring down the spin and bring down the launch lower. Cause I tend to hit it way too high for most players though, if you're looking for more height. The off the, off the rack shaft is going to be perfectly good for you. Just get the right flex, get the right head settings, go get fit.

So you make sure you know what you're doing there and it's going to be great. As far as the heads, nothing's going to be more forgiving than the ping, the ping 10 K pretty down, good club. So excited to put that in the bag. Also have some new irons here. I've been pretty excited about these two. I had old, the older model of blueprint irons.

They're pretty, pretty small, like butter knives. Those things are really, really small. I am excited for the new ping blueprint S, which is kind of a middle ground between a blade blueprint, original blueprint iron, which is super thin soul, super small head, and. And a cavity back, which right now I play the I two thirties, which is much more, uh, cavity back, bigger, more forgiving.

This is like smack dab in the middle of those. And when you look at these, to me, the head shape on this is perfect. It's not a big oversize head. If you're a better player and you're looking for a club, which may be the size and shape that you played with growing up 20, 30 years ago, whatever it is, it kind of gives that same look.

The top line here is nice and thin. Which is what you're going to see with those blade irons. And you know, just what you're traditionally used to. And if you look at the soul on these, those are nice and thin. So you're going to get really good turf interaction again, geared more toward better players. If you're a player that wants the maximum forgiveness, this is not going to be your choice.

You're going to want to get a thicker, wider soul. That way, if you hit a little bit behind it helps it to glide through the turf a little bit better, the bigger head they can pull out, have a higher MOI. So again, we talked about how important the MOI is with the driver. With an iron, as you get a bigger and bigger head, you can pull that weight out to the sides and you get higher MOI, more forgiving.

So if you hit these a little off the toe or off the heel, there's going to be more forgiving than a blade, but not nearly as forgiving as the more oversized irons. They feel pretty daggone good. These are made out of 8620, really nice soft irons. And in these I've switched a little bit more away from what I did before.

I used to use a really stiff, really heavy shaft. To bring the ball flight down. So I'd use like a dynamic gold X 100, or I'd use the, the C taper of using those. I've started to go more toward KBS was my last shaft. So that's a fairly low launching. It's an extra stiff shaft. So it's, it's not going to get quite as high.

And I've done a lot of work to bring my ball flight down. And now I've gone to a little bit of a lighter shaft. So this is a tour 105, actually a much lighter shaft. I like lighter shafts. So my driver. Most players with my swing speed are going to use a 70 something gram shaft, maybe an 80 gram shaft. I like a 65 gram because the lighter you make the shaft, the more I can feel the head in my opinion.

So this is a 105 gram shaft, very light shaft for me. It's going to go higher than what I'm traditionally playing. Uh, but I like it because I can really feel where the head is. So I can, I could tell if I'm going to hit a little bit too much of a fade, too much of a draw. I can just sense if it's barely open, barely closed.

That's my perception. I know not everybody has that same feeling, but that's what I really like. So I've dropped it down to 105 grams shaft. Again, the same thing there, the lighter the shaft, the less stiff shaft I get, the higher the ball is going to go. If I go heavier and stiffer, the lower the ball is going to go.

So I'm kind of playing a stiffer shaft, which in general goes fairly low, but I've started to lighten it up, which is fine tuning again and getting it to go a little bit higher. So I'm kind of, it's kind of a blend there. This is a really soft shaft too. So these feel amazing. These heads are soft with this combination.

It just feels amazing. So this is my favorite grip of all time. This is what Ping makes. I don't know what they do with it. They have some, some kind of special rubber in here, but you can play these grips for a year and they feel like they're brand new. Whereas a lot of them, uh, the multi pump compound grips, they feel great when you first use them.

Then they get kind of hard and slick. I don't like that. These seem to stay fantastic forever. This is called an ID8. And I always use a rib grip. So basically at the bottom of the grip, there's a little extra piece of rubber there. kind of makes it stick down like this, like a little notch in the bottom that sticks out.

And I'll put those in the bottom. And I like that because when I'm putting my hands on the club, I can feel where that ridge is. And that just helps me to get the face nice and square. I like to use a standard size grip. If you go larger and larger grips, I kind of like that. Um, you know, if you go to like a midsize or an oversized grip, it feels nice in my hands.

But again, I like to feel the weight of the head. And if you go to a larger oversized grip, The grip weighs more. So as you get a heavier and heavier grip, to me, it makes it more difficult to feel where the head is. So imagine you have like a 10 pound metal weight on the end of the club that you're holding on to like a dumbbell or something like that.

Well, it's so heavy. The head feels really light and I don't like that as much. So I usually standard size grip. Uh, some companies make like a jumbo max, which is a larger grip. That's lighter weight to try to still get you to feel the head. But to me, I just cannot feel it as well. Uh, in the past I've used two wraps of tape.

Again, this is like not that much difference, but it makes it a little bit of a firmer grip and a little bit larger, but I've just kind of gone back to what I've always played. I've always loved the ID eight. It's probably the best grip on the market. And I just use one rapid tape on there. And I feel like that's the best way it gives me the best feel of the club head.

I would go even smaller grip, like even a, a thinner size, like maybe a lady's grip or something like that. But then it gets, It just almost gets so small for your hands. It's a little harder to hold on to. So that's what I like. That's what I've always used. And that's probably what I'll keep on using. If they ever sell out of these and stop making them, I'm probably gonna buy like a few hundred of them, just stock them up.