PING delivers in every category with new G410 irons

By Drew Mahowald -- 2nd Swing Staff Writer

Over the past several decades, PING has seen itself grow from a small shop in founder Karsten Solheim’s garage to a golf equipment powerhouse recognized all over the world as a leader in golf innovation. In 2019, PING will celebrate its 60th anniversary and numerous key advancements in golf club technology, from the perimeter weighting in the 1969 K1 irons to the eye-shaped cavity in the Eye irons to the custom weighting and center of gravity settings featured in the latest PING iron launches. 

PING’s most recent iron set to hit the market is the G410, which exceeds the seemingly impossible expectations the company has set for itself with previous iron sets. Everything has been improved over previous models, whether it be the appearance, the forgiveness, the groove construction, or anything else in between. 

Marty Jertson, PING’s Vice President of Fitting and Performance, noted that PING wanted to find some balance between a combination of recent iron launches to meet the needs of as many golfers as possible. He says the G410 fits nicely between the i210, which is a thinner iron boasting more precision, and the G700, which is a little thicker set that specializes in forgiveness.

“I think this is now going to align with the sweet spot in the marketplace,” Jertson said. “One thing we really wanted to do is look at our whole iron portfolio and give good spacing between the i210 and the G700. The G400 was sized pretty similar to the G700. Now with the G410, we’ve slid that over so from a size standpoint we have really good spacing between our i210 and the G700.”

All golfers, regardless of swing type or skill level, need to be inspired when they set the club down at address. In some ways, the appearance at address is the most important part of a golf club. If a golfer doesn’t like the look of the club he or she is using, it certainly does not promote positive thoughts. The G410’s address profile provides that confidence boost for all golfers to pull off any type of shot.

“It’s the first thing people do when they go look this club,” Jertson said. “They go into the golf shop and put it down, and say, “Wow,” and kind of fall in love with it.”

Specifically, PING made changes to its G400 design so that the G410 would appear more compact and less clunky at address. Once a final prototype was decided on, PING noticed that the offset had been reduced by 10 percent and the length of the blade had been reduced by three percent. Both of these changes were instituted to appeal to a better player who may have been repulsed in the past by address profile that was too thick.

Updates to the appearance are just the beginning of the long list of innovations included in the G410 irons. In an effort to increase MOI and forgiveness, PING revolutionized its weighting system to produce a level of forgiveness usually found in an iron with a much larger address profile. 

“With the G410 iron, we’ve reengineered how we do our custom weighting,” Jertson said. “We can still do custom swing weights and a combination of different shafts, lengths, grips, and swing weight fitting, but we’ve moved from our traditional CTP weight to a more barbell style of weighting. We have a custom weight in the toe and we counterbalance with custom weighting underneath the hosel. That has driven the moment of inertia up by eight percent, which is as high as the G Max iron, which is a very wide-sole, long blade-length iron.”

PING also made sure to fulfill the most common trait golfers demand from their equipment -- more distance. This stems from generating a hotter club face and a faster ball speed at impact. PING achieved this through improvements to the club face-flexing process and advancements to the trademark Cor-EYE technology. 

The result, according to Jertson, is not only more distance, but also higher launch that provides more control on the greens.

“The G410 iron has advancements to its Cor-EYE technology,” Jertson said. “Now, we have a full 360-degree undercut so that this thing, from a cross-section standpoint, is really built like a metal wood. And the way the face flexes at impact, the top rail relaxes like a diving board or a catapult and makes the club act like it has two or three more degrees of loft. That’s the fun part about our irons in general is we can have distance irons that launch the ball in the air and give you plenty of lift for stopping power.”

Speaking of stopping power, the G410 irons boast arguably the best distance control of any game improvement iron on the market thanks to an innovative groove design, specifically in the wedge options, that will produce exceptionally soft feel and performance. The new groove design, combined with the new face-flexing to lift the ball higher, generates more control out of each club, especially the wedge options in the set. With a G410 set, golfers can hit pitch shots with iron-like forgiveness and wedge-like control.

“For the first time, we’re leveraging machining the face and grooves on the wedges (PW, UW, SW, LW) in the G410 series,” Jertson said. “We’re basically adopting our groove technology from the Glide 2.0 wedges, so it’s the same groove spec, a little tighter spacing and very tight tolerancing. We paired that with the hydro pearl finish, which is water-repelling and delivers better friction, basically better grip between the cover of the golf ball and club face, on all the wedges. Customers are going to be very delighted, when they order a set and go out and hit pitch shots, you’re going to get a lot more grab and with that a lot more consistency.”

That’s quite the resume already for the G410 irons. It boasts an impressive address profile, structural improvements to increase ball speed, and changes to the club face to produce excellent distance control, each of which was already among the best available on the market with the G400 set.

Believe it or not, however, that’s not all of the advancements in the G410 irons. Feel is arguably just as important to the golfer as address appearance. Few golfers will accept a club that performs well and looks great at address if it feels too clunky at impact. PING improved the already-superb feel from the G400 irons in the G410 irons by adding a co-molded cavity badge made from aluminum and thermoplastic elastomer. These materials, according to Jertson, add a feel and sound that is desired by all golfers.

“These irons have a feel that give you the sensation of a lot of ball speed but it comes with a muted experience,” Jertson said.

The G410 irons truly deliver in every category that can possibly be evaluated in a game improvement iron. The updated Cor-EYE technology and face-flexing traits have amplified both ball speed and launch. Offset and blade length have each been reduced for a more compact address profile and more confidence-inspiring look. Additionally, the groove construction has been altered to produce more wedge-like control and the co-molded cavity badge dampens vibrations for exceptional sound and feel.

What more could a golfer want?

This impressive combination of innovations all in one set of irons is a pretty accurate description of PING’s mission, dating back to the company’s early beginnings in the middle of the 20th century.

“The fun part here, and this is what our founder Karsten Solheim brought to the industry and we’re still doing today, is bringing a very high level of efficiency without sacrificing key pieces. We’ve done that with the G410 irons,” Jertson said.