How to get fitted for your driver

The Process

We obviously want to get you hitting it the furthest that you can. I’ve never had anyone who wants to hit it shorter but a big part of hitting it further is to hit it straighter. Ping’s whole design philosophy is to custom fit and, with the driver, to make it forgiving.

The G425 was very forgiving and was so easy to fit and the G430 is even better and it also sounds and feels better. Every fitting starts with an interview so we'll be asking the golfer relevant questions about their game; with the driver what they want to achieve is the first thing. If they just want distance or they put more importance on hitting the driver straighter will determine the direction of the fitting.

I’ve never had anyone who wants to hit it shorter but a big part of hitting it further is to hit it straighter.

We'll ask what shape they hit it and we'll try and determine as much info as possible to begin with.

We'll get them to warm up and the key things to look for during the fitting are the ball speed that they’re producing, their attack angle, their launch angle and their spin rate.

The ball speed and attack angle are the two main contributors to get the correct launch angle and spin rate.

We have an optimal launch angle and spin rate chart on our website for all our fitters for them to compare to.

We'll determine the loft first. We wouldn’t have them hit more than five shots before changing the loft. At the same time, we'll be establishing the head type. If there is a lot of slice we'll put them straight into the SFT, if a player is spinning it loads with a 9˚ driver then we might try the LST in those first few shots.

We'll be questioning the golfer how they like the flight to be but also looking at the numbers to determine the head type. Once we've got that you would look at optimising the shaft and we wouldn’t probably hit more than five shots with each shaft.

The other benefits of a fitting are that the Ping drivers have moveable 25g CG shifters on the head as well. For example, if a player is fading the ball with the G430 MAX then we may shift it to the heel position just to try to straighten up that flight. Or we might go to the toe setting if they’re turning it over a bit.

There is also an 8-position hosel which enables adjustments for loft (±1.5°) and lie (3° flatter than std.) to further dial in your ball flight so there are lots of ways that we can fine-tune things.