The guys from Ping. They've kind of showed me how much the equipment matters.

The guys from Ping. They've kind of showed me how much the equipment matters.

I just love that I can hit any shot I kind of want.

I just love that I can hit any shot I kind of want.

We're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.

We're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.

Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Pink Proven Grounds Podcast. I'm Shane Bacon, joined us always by Marty Jerts and Marty. We are diving deep with a man that I know you work closely with this week.

Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Pink Proven Grounds Podcast. I'm Shane Bacon, joined us always by Marty Jerts and Marty. We are diving deep with a man that I know you work closely with this week.

Yeah, we got Chris Brody here. Brody, as he goes by amongst our engineering group and our R and D group, has a background in mathematics and is the sun of one very famous statistician in the golf industry. So Brody, welcome to the pod man.

Yeah, we got Chris Brody here. Brody, as he goes by amongst our engineering group and our R and D group, has a background in mathematics and is the sun of one very famous statistician in the golf industry. So Brody, welcome to the pod man.

Thanks for having me, Marian.

Thanks for having me, Marian.

Shane, Chris, what's like dinner talk like with Pops when you guys are just discussing golf? Can you have normal golf conversations or does it always lend down some avenue of analytics and like what's going on?

Shane, Chris, what's like dinner talk like with Pops when you guys are just discussing golf? Can you have normal golf conversations or does it always lend down some avenue of analytics and like what's going on?

Yeah? I feel like it gets pretty deep. There's been a lot of recent work he's done on world golf rankings, college golf rankings. So he's he's trying to figure it out and hopefully not get too much abuse from from PJ Tour pros. So it's it's it's fun to hear what's going on in his in his world of golf rankings.

Yeah? I feel like it gets pretty deep. There's been a lot of recent work he's done on world golf rankings, college golf rankings. So he's he's trying to figure it out and hopefully not get too much abuse from from PJ Tour pros. So it's it's it's fun to hear what's going on in his in his world of golf rankings.

Brody before your dad got into the what he's kind of working on now, which is the world world golf rankings, the college side of things. Obviously, he he, you know, wrote the book Every Shot Counts, a kind of you know, golf's version of Moneyball is is I think the best analogy therefore, tell us about your kind of childhood and in some early days of you know, some of the work and background he was doing in the golf space. How did how did he get interested or involved in golf? And how did you you know, you and your brother, your family members there contribute to that.

Brody before your dad got into the what he's kind of working on now, which is the world world golf rankings, the college side of things. Obviously, he he, you know, wrote the book Every Shot Counts, a kind of you know, golf's version of Moneyball is is I think the best analogy therefore, tell us about your kind of childhood and in some early days of you know, some of the work and background he was doing in the golf space. How did how did he get interested or involved in golf? And how did you you know, you and your brother, your family members there contribute to that.

Yeah, I know, it's been it's been very fun to see the progression of early days of interest to writing a book getting adopted by PJ Tour. I think interestingly, for me, there's always been like golf and math floating around in the background. But for me, it start a lot with baseball. I remember playing Little League as like a seven eight year old and probably classically. My dad would start to record, not just like your typical like walk singles, but you record like where the ball was hit to what each player on the team was doing. So he started asking me, okay, like if you were to manage this team, like what would you do? How would you set the lineup for our little league baseball team? And he's like, one of the first questions like, okay, how many how many different combinations of lineups are there? And it's okay, So the first batter you can put there's nine different people who can choose from second bat is eight different people, and so you'd be okay. So the number of combinations you can think through is nine times eight times seven times six. And I was like this, this is kind of this kind of getting into like what the dinner dinner time my seven year old dinner time conversation.

Yeah, I know, it's been it's been very fun to see the progression of early days of interest to writing a book getting adopted by PJ Tour. I think interestingly, for me, there's always been like golf and math floating around in the background. But for me, it start a lot with baseball. I remember playing Little League as like a seven eight year old and probably classically. My dad would start to record, not just like your typical like walk singles, but you record like where the ball was hit to what each player on the team was doing. So he started asking me, okay, like if you were to manage this team, like what would you do? How would you set the lineup for our little league baseball team? And he's like, one of the first questions like, okay, how many how many different combinations of lineups are there? And it's okay, So the first batter you can put there's nine different people who can choose from second bat is eight different people, and so you'd be okay. So the number of combinations you can think through is nine times eight times seven times six. And I was like this, this is kind of this kind of getting into like what the dinner dinner time my seven year old dinner time conversation.

You're like, I just want to play baseball, man, you're talking about.

You're like, I just want to play baseball, man, you're talking about.

I loved it. It was like, okay, I think you might have set up like a custom simulation for me of like all right, we can put this player here, see a expected runs there are? And he was like, quickly, very quickly, you learn that, like you want to have your best player up first. It's like at the most possible at bats. And that was like very early like Moneyball, like same same conclusion. You want to have your highest on base sentage hitter going off first. Similarly, like we looked at like where the hits were in the field, and like, no little leaguer can keep up with a fastball, so they all hit it to the right side. So you put your best defensive guy at second base. Interesting, so the Nuggets were rolling in pretty quick. Another one we're going we're going probably too deep into baseball. But another one was he asked me, like, what what percent of time do you need to successfully steal second in order to make it worth it? So guy on first, no Out's like, when should you give the guy green light to steal? And I guess my first like initial thought is, okay, well what's the average success rate? Like if you can get over seven percent, then go ahead, And he's like no, no, there's like there's a better way of think through it, and so we end up breaking it down. It's okay, with a man on first, no outs, your expected runs is maybe point eight, but if you get that guy a second, it jumps up to one point zero. Now a single might score him, but then if he gets out, now you have nobody on and one out and you're down to like point two runs. And so say, okay, you just gotta look at the trade off of going point eight to one point zero or point eight down to point two, and to make it worthwhile steal you've got to have an over seventy five percent success rate. And it's like, oh, that's that's that's the pretty unid insight. And you can do that for what happens if this guy in first two outs and they can do the math again, it's like, okay, if it's zero point two with two outs and guy on first, make it cessful and a guy guy in scorem position, you have too point four. But then if you if you're unsuccessful, the aning's over and down to zero. But interesting thing there is, if it's point two verse point four, all you need is a figure sent success rate to make it worthwhile. And so it's like, okay, the incentive then is to send a lot of guys to try to steal second with two outs, think on first. So a lot of things end up like correlating well with golf, Like you don't want to just look at raw stolen base percentage, Like the metric that matters for baseball is run scored.

I loved it. It was like, okay, I think you might have set up like a custom simulation for me of like all right, we can put this player here, see a expected runs there are? And he was like, quickly, very quickly, you learn that, like you want to have your best player up first. It's like at the most possible at bats. And that was like very early like Moneyball, like same same conclusion. You want to have your highest on base sentage hitter going off first. Similarly, like we looked at like where the hits were in the field, and like, no little leaguer can keep up with a fastball, so they all hit it to the right side. So you put your best defensive guy at second base. Interesting, so the Nuggets were rolling in pretty quick. Another one we're going we're going probably too deep into baseball. But another one was he asked me, like, what what percent of time do you need to successfully steal second in order to make it worth it? So guy on first, no Out's like, when should you give the guy green light to steal? And I guess my first like initial thought is, okay, well what's the average success rate? Like if you can get over seven percent, then go ahead, And he's like no, no, there's like there's a better way of think through it, and so we end up breaking it down. It's okay, with a man on first, no outs, your expected runs is maybe point eight, but if you get that guy a second, it jumps up to one point zero. Now a single might score him, but then if he gets out, now you have nobody on and one out and you're down to like point two runs. And so say, okay, you just gotta look at the trade off of going point eight to one point zero or point eight down to point two, and to make it worthwhile steal you've got to have an over seventy five percent success rate. And it's like, oh, that's that's that's the pretty unid insight. And you can do that for what happens if this guy in first two outs and they can do the math again, it's like, okay, if it's zero point two with two outs and guy on first, make it cessful and a guy guy in scorem position, you have too point four. But then if you if you're unsuccessful, the aning's over and down to zero. But interesting thing there is, if it's point two verse point four, all you need is a figure sent success rate to make it worthwhile. And so it's like, okay, the incentive then is to send a lot of guys to try to steal second with two outs, think on first. So a lot of things end up like correlating well with golf, Like you don't want to just look at raw stolen base percentage, Like the metric that matters for baseball is run scored.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that translated over pretty quickly towards golf, Like you don't really want to care about what your farely hit percentage is, what your green hit percentage is. What really matters at the end of the day is how many shots that take you to get into the hole. And so you can hit a good drive that doesn't hit the fair way, but if it's three hundred and thirty yards down there, you might be in a pretty good spot.

I think that translated over pretty quickly towards golf, Like you don't really want to care about what your farely hit percentage is, what your green hit percentage is. What really matters at the end of the day is how many shots that take you to get into the hole. And so you can hit a good drive that doesn't hit the fair way, but if it's three hundred and thirty yards down there, you might be in a pretty good spot.

Marty. It's interesting, you know, as Chris talks about this, I think about in my life and we're similar raised to Marty, but in my life, like the real switch for analytics and golf to me personally, was the switch from how we play par fives. Yes, and I feel like it was probably fifteen twenty years ago, Matt. Maybe now was twenty five years ago, where the idea was layup to enough you can't get there into lay up to a number you're comfortable with. And you know, for me it was always ninety five to one hundred yards. I've lay up to that number or tried to and that gave you the best chance of making birdie. And then there was a flip I feel like in the early two thousands where numbers and data started to tell us no, no, no, no, no, send it as far up as you can ye with both both golf shots, because it's obviously the easiest place to get up and down make birdie.

Marty. It's interesting, you know, as Chris talks about this, I think about in my life and we're similar raised to Marty, but in my life, like the real switch for analytics and golf to me personally, was the switch from how we play par fives. Yes, and I feel like it was probably fifteen twenty years ago, Matt. Maybe now was twenty five years ago, where the idea was layup to enough you can't get there into lay up to a number you're comfortable with. And you know, for me it was always ninety five to one hundred yards. I've lay up to that number or tried to and that gave you the best chance of making birdie. And then there was a flip I feel like in the early two thousands where numbers and data started to tell us no, no, no, no, no, send it as far up as you can ye with both both golf shots, because it's obviously the easiest place to get up and down make birdie.

Yeah, when when Brody was talking about the baseball in his work his dad was doing on the baseball side, my brain was on, okay, instead of should I steal second? Should I go for the par five and two? Yeah? That was exactly Yeah, that was exactly where my head was at. So yeah, that's it's super cool Brody to hear those those early days of like your dad thinking about the probabilities. I mean, one of the other questions I always thought of Shane when I was in school for the listeners out there is is Brodie's background is in mathematics. His degrees in math, and I'm always like, what does a math major even do? So I think Brodie's a real life example here, Chris, tell us a little bit why you went that direction and some of the work you do, you know, like day to day, like what does a math major do in the working world.

Yeah, when when Brody was talking about the baseball in his work his dad was doing on the baseball side, my brain was on, okay, instead of should I steal second? Should I go for the par five and two? Yeah? That was exactly Yeah, that was exactly where my head was at. So yeah, that's it's super cool Brody to hear those those early days of like your dad thinking about the probabilities. I mean, one of the other questions I always thought of Shane when I was in school for the listeners out there is is Brodie's background is in mathematics. His degrees in math, and I'm always like, what does a math major even do? So I think Brodie's a real life example here, Chris, tell us a little bit why you went that direction and some of the work you do, you know, like day to day, like what does a math major do in the working world.

Yeah, definitely didn't have much of a clue what I was gonna do. When I was in college. I was like, I know, I've always liked math. I've always enjoyed having these how can I apply data to different problems? And it was more it was more just like, Okay, I think if I do a math major, I'm gonna have some open something's gonna work out, like it might be consulting, it might be econ, but I'll keep my options open. And I definitely gravitated towards like applied math problems, probably stunning from when I was seven years old, and so it worked out pretty well with I think at the end of my college career, we're doing a lot of theoreical math. I was like, this is not quite clicking for me. I was very lucky to get to paying and they're like, oh, we got a whole lot of data and a whole lot of problems we want you to look at. And it was really fun, just like dive into a world of golf and math and continue with a lot of my growing up interests.

Yeah, definitely didn't have much of a clue what I was gonna do. When I was in college. I was like, I know, I've always liked math. I've always enjoyed having these how can I apply data to different problems? And it was more it was more just like, Okay, I think if I do a math major, I'm gonna have some open something's gonna work out, like it might be consulting, it might be econ, but I'll keep my options open. And I definitely gravitated towards like applied math problems, probably stunning from when I was seven years old, and so it worked out pretty well with I think at the end of my college career, we're doing a lot of theoreical math. I was like, this is not quite clicking for me. I was very lucky to get to paying and they're like, oh, we got a whole lot of data and a whole lot of problems we want you to look at. And it was really fun, just like dive into a world of golf and math and continue with a lot of my growing up interests.

Chris, can you give us an example of something once you came to Paying because your job at Paying fitting science manager, what like giving us an example of something somebody might come to you with a problem to find a solution, like anything that's popped up throughout your career pain.

Chris, can you give us an example of something once you came to Paying because your job at Paying fitting science manager, what like giving us an example of something somebody might come to you with a problem to find a solution, like anything that's popped up throughout your career pain.

Yeah, I mean there's been a lot of really fun different ones. One of the more fun ones was Travis Milman, one of our design engineers, was working on our G four to thirty Farawood line and he's like, hey, we have ten grams of discretionary mass. It's just kind of the gold currency for designers. And he was like, should we just keep on pushing MI we can probably get like a five to ten percent boost this Ferrywood or I can move around the mass, I can try to drop the CG location. And we kind of had a hunch that maybe, like if we canet a little bit higher launched, lower spin out of our out of our farrewoods, like it could be a pretty nice gain in terms of strokes gain in terms of performance. But it's a hard one from a design side, like he's not really sure how to tell that story, like what exactly do you gain from higher launch and lower spin? And so I was able to use some of my simulation background, use our vocal data where we know help people deliver fairy woods, and basically run a virtual test that Okay, if we use your default G four twenty five head shape with these mass properties versus a four point thirty with maybe your higher MLI pathway versus four thirty with your lower CG pathway, or the trade offs that you can see in terms of performance and kind of all the things that matter not just can your longest shot go further, but what happens on your full range of impacts and mishits. And that's where looking at through a stroke scand lens kind of helps you blend those things together. It's not just seeing the ball as far as possible every time, but it's getting that right blend of distance and accuracy. And so that was a fun one where I could tell him like, hey, this is unconventional, but you can drop the MI by a decent amount. But on that Elsie Farrowood, if you can lower your CG location by point one point two inches, you'll see a pretty big boost and performance.

Yeah, I mean there's been a lot of really fun different ones. One of the more fun ones was Travis Milman, one of our design engineers, was working on our G four to thirty Farawood line and he's like, hey, we have ten grams of discretionary mass. It's just kind of the gold currency for designers. And he was like, should we just keep on pushing MI we can probably get like a five to ten percent boost this Ferrywood or I can move around the mass, I can try to drop the CG location. And we kind of had a hunch that maybe, like if we canet a little bit higher launched, lower spin out of our out of our farrewoods, like it could be a pretty nice gain in terms of strokes gain in terms of performance. But it's a hard one from a design side, like he's not really sure how to tell that story, like what exactly do you gain from higher launch and lower spin? And so I was able to use some of my simulation background, use our vocal data where we know help people deliver fairy woods, and basically run a virtual test that Okay, if we use your default G four twenty five head shape with these mass properties versus a four point thirty with maybe your higher MLI pathway versus four thirty with your lower CG pathway, or the trade offs that you can see in terms of performance and kind of all the things that matter not just can your longest shot go further, but what happens on your full range of impacts and mishits. And that's where looking at through a stroke scand lens kind of helps you blend those things together. It's not just seeing the ball as far as possible every time, but it's getting that right blend of distance and accuracy. And so that was a fun one where I could tell him like, hey, this is unconventional, but you can drop the MI by a decent amount. But on that Elsie Farrowood, if you can lower your CG location by point one point two inches, you'll see a pretty big boost and performance.

Yeah. Shane Brody's been a big part of the ability, as he talked about of connecting the dots on our modeling capabilities. So, like you know, ping, we've gone through this revolution where we used to always do like tons of robot tests, but those have their limitations because while sometimes you want to deliver the club perfectly the same every time, it's not what humans do. So then we have FOCAL. We spend some time in FOCAL. We talked to doctor Eric hendrickson on how that works. Chris is on the end of marrying those things together, running all these what if scenarios, these virtual simulations, so it saves us a lot of time and it helps us answer questions with a lot more clarity more quickly because we can run these things virtually, and then we can kind of validate a hypothesis. Then we make the physical prototypes, test them through our full suite of robot and human testing. So been able to fast track. So a lot of fun Chris working on that. Marty.

Yeah. Shane Brody's been a big part of the ability, as he talked about of connecting the dots on our modeling capabilities. So, like you know, ping, we've gone through this revolution where we used to always do like tons of robot tests, but those have their limitations because while sometimes you want to deliver the club perfectly the same every time, it's not what humans do. So then we have FOCAL. We spend some time in FOCAL. We talked to doctor Eric hendrickson on how that works. Chris is on the end of marrying those things together, running all these what if scenarios, these virtual simulations, so it saves us a lot of time and it helps us answer questions with a lot more clarity more quickly because we can run these things virtually, and then we can kind of validate a hypothesis. Then we make the physical prototypes, test them through our full suite of robot and human testing. So been able to fast track. So a lot of fun Chris working on that. Marty.

I got a question for you, Marty in this, In this because I'm interested in this because Chris's point about bringing an idea to him and having to figure it out. Marty, I know you've been big in terms of you know, conceptualizing golf clubs and building golf clubs over the last couple decades at Ping, how many departments are you running things by when you're coming up with a new driver? I mean, are there ten departments you're going to and you're saying, you help us with this, you help us with this, because I don't think people at home think about building a golf club and they're thinking Ping's trying to make a golf club that goes as long as possible, right, or it goes as straight as possible. But obviously there's fifty one hundred and two hundred two thousand factors that go into a driver. So like, how many departments are you leaning on, Marty as you're coming up with the new age, the new Ping driver.

I got a question for you, Marty in this, In this because I'm interested in this because Chris's point about bringing an idea to him and having to figure it out. Marty, I know you've been big in terms of you know, conceptualizing golf clubs and building golf clubs over the last couple decades at Ping, how many departments are you running things by when you're coming up with a new driver? I mean, are there ten departments you're going to and you're saying, you help us with this, you help us with this, because I don't think people at home think about building a golf club and they're thinking Ping's trying to make a golf club that goes as long as possible, right, or it goes as straight as possible. But obviously there's fifty one hundred and two hundred two thousand factors that go into a driver. So like, how many departments are you leaning on, Marty as you're coming up with the new age, the new Ping driver.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question, Shane. Like to get a driver to the market, it's very super cross functional, all right. So it's it's the designing it three D CAD, the joints, the mechanical design optimization. Then you're working with an innovation group and they're working on maybe materials like our carbon fly wrap and things of that nature and optimizing those kind of those are they're kind of baking them in the R and D world, right and getting them ready to be integrated to the design. Then you're working with kind of supply chain, manufacturing, sourcing, materials, components, project engineering, which is kind of all the detailed nitty gritty to kind of ramp it up and scale the manufacturing quality control to make sure we're bringing it for designing a new manufacturing process, we can make it consistently to meet our brand standards. Our testing group which make sure it's not going to break, it's durable. We validated the performance that we want. You know, we got you know, a USGA liaison in here. We got my team now, which is the fitting and performance group, which make sure we're getting the right launch conditions. You know. Then you got sales and marketing to kind of tell the worry of it on the on the back end. So yeah, cross functionally, I mean it's you know, over ten plus departments, and you know we have eighty plus engineers putting their fingerprints on it.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question, Shane. Like to get a driver to the market, it's very super cross functional, all right. So it's it's the designing it three D CAD, the joints, the mechanical design optimization. Then you're working with an innovation group and they're working on maybe materials like our carbon fly wrap and things of that nature and optimizing those kind of those are they're kind of baking them in the R and D world, right and getting them ready to be integrated to the design. Then you're working with kind of supply chain, manufacturing, sourcing, materials, components, project engineering, which is kind of all the detailed nitty gritty to kind of ramp it up and scale the manufacturing quality control to make sure we're bringing it for designing a new manufacturing process, we can make it consistently to meet our brand standards. Our testing group which make sure it's not going to break, it's durable. We validated the performance that we want. You know, we got you know, a USGA liaison in here. We got my team now, which is the fitting and performance group, which make sure we're getting the right launch conditions. You know. Then you got sales and marketing to kind of tell the worry of it on the on the back end. So yeah, cross functionally, I mean it's you know, over ten plus departments, and you know we have eighty plus engineers putting their fingerprints on it.

And Chris is a part of your team, so I mean he's involved in so much of that kind of from start to finish process of how that golf club's going to look and perform and how it's going to perform the best, and how it's going to function the best. As he was mentioning kind of with that three wood example.

And Chris is a part of your team, so I mean he's involved in so much of that kind of from start to finish process of how that golf club's going to look and perform and how it's going to perform the best, and how it's going to function the best. As he was mentioning kind of with that three wood example.

Yeah, he's left his fingerprint on especially the modeling side of things here when we're looking at you know, being able to do virtual player test, tying it not only to our focal data, but also are like baldnamic. You know, Chris and I have worked together and teamed up on being able to simulate what's going to happen. How does wind affect it in things of that nature as well as Shane. Wh's really fun and Chris I want to get into is learning from en course data. So I think one of the things we have access to now is, you know, hundreds of millions of shots from from from Arcos and our partnership there where we got on course really precise GPS tracking data. Chris, tell us a little story of your first experience with that kind of again stepping back into your childhoodhood here of helping collect some data from en course play patterns, working with your dad when he was first getting into that.

Yeah, he's left his fingerprint on especially the modeling side of things here when we're looking at you know, being able to do virtual player test, tying it not only to our focal data, but also are like baldnamic. You know, Chris and I have worked together and teamed up on being able to simulate what's going to happen. How does wind affect it in things of that nature as well as Shane. Wh's really fun and Chris I want to get into is learning from en course data. So I think one of the things we have access to now is, you know, hundreds of millions of shots from from from Arcos and our partnership there where we got on course really precise GPS tracking data. Chris, tell us a little story of your first experience with that kind of again stepping back into your childhoodhood here of helping collect some data from en course play patterns, working with your dad when he was first getting into that.

Yeah, we definitely have jumped around a good amount, but yeah, definitely started. I think maybe now when I was ten, my dad's focus shifted into the golf arena and how can we do a better job understanding golf performance. There are a bunch of different avenues. I think shot link was starting to come into the fold, so he knew there's some really good PGA Tour data, but there was nothing on amateur data outside of some kind of fairly hit green hit.

Yeah, we definitely have jumped around a good amount, but yeah, definitely started. I think maybe now when I was ten, my dad's focus shifted into the golf arena and how can we do a better job understanding golf performance. There are a bunch of different avenues. I think shot link was starting to come into the fold, so he knew there's some really good PGA Tour data, but there was nothing on amateur data outside of some kind of fairly hit green hit.

You were talking about you and your dad kind of transitioning from baseball to golf. What was the why did he want to get into the golf analytics side? Did he get into golf at that point in his life? Did he just see opportunity there?

You were talking about you and your dad kind of transitioning from baseball to golf. What was the why did he want to get into the golf analytics side? Did he get into golf at that point in his life? Did he just see opportunity there?

Yeah? I think I think he saw opportunity. I think there's probably some frustration of trying to record golf stats and seeing like just some really obvious potential flaws in the stats. It was like there was, as I said, like faraoe hit percentage, green hit percentage, Like I think one of them was like putts per round, and it's like, Okay, the leader of that stat is not necessarily the best putter. It's the person who like misses the most screens and chips it.

Yeah? I think I think he saw opportunity. I think there's probably some frustration of trying to record golf stats and seeing like just some really obvious potential flaws in the stats. It was like there was, as I said, like faraoe hit percentage, green hit percentage, Like I think one of them was like putts per round, and it's like, Okay, the leader of that stat is not necessarily the best putter. It's the person who like misses the most screens and chips it.

Up that's three feet totally totally.

Up that's three feet totally totally.

So he's just like that doesn't seem right. And then like every single stat you could just like poke some holes in it's like, I don't know, Tiger's hitting it miss He's missing like five percent more faraways than average, So it's like always he's a bad driver of the ball. I think that was a pretty like I've heard that narrative still like two thousand and six, he's spraying everywhere. Steven Aames probably bought into that too and lost nine to eight. But it's like you see on the surface, like, Okay, yeah, he's one eightieth and faaraow hit percentage, he has to be a bad golf driver of the golf ball, but just doesn't quite add up because you know, he's really doing very well in terments and.

So he's just like that doesn't seem right. And then like every single stat you could just like poke some holes in it's like, I don't know, Tiger's hitting it miss He's missing like five percent more faraways than average, So it's like always he's a bad driver of the ball. I think that was a pretty like I've heard that narrative still like two thousand and six, he's spraying everywhere. Steven Aames probably bought into that too and lost nine to eight. But it's like you see on the surface, like, Okay, yeah, he's one eightieth and faaraow hit percentage, he has to be a bad golf driver of the golf ball, but just doesn't quite add up because you know, he's really doing very well in terments and.

It was a weapon of him.

It was a weapon of him.

Yeah he hit it.

Yeah he hit it.

He might maybe sprayed a bit, but he had this distance that people couldn't keep up with at a time when that was transitioning into the game.

He might maybe sprayed a bit, but he had this distance that people couldn't keep up with at a time when that was transitioning into the game.

Right.

Right.

So I think the focus we in the quote unquote olden days in terms of statistics in golf, we were looking at these things is absolutes. Right, you hit fairways, that's great, You hit greens, that's great, But not every green regulation is the same, and not every fairway hit is the same, right, And I think that's something you guys have done an unbelievable job at breaking down.

So I think the focus we in the quote unquote olden days in terms of statistics in golf, we were looking at these things is absolutes. Right, you hit fairways, that's great, You hit greens, that's great, But not every green regulation is the same, and not every fairway hit is the same, right, And I think that's something you guys have done an unbelievable job at breaking down.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it was just like, how do we get this into a context that makes sense? I think even the laying up on par fives, it's like there's some psychological safety of Oh, I can really easily hit a seven iron two hundred yards and I'm gonna hit the green, so it's gonna look good from a status respective like hitting more greens regulation that it feels safe. And it's like if you do take out a threewood and plasted around the green, somewhere you might be underneath the tree and that it might be hard to get on the green and you might be throwing off just like you're clean round. But it was nicer. He could kind of start to say, Okay, well, how do we get beyond just these counting stats? And I think, I don't know. My dad did a phenomenal job of like getting into that simplest metric, which I think makes sense. Like a lot of other stats have moved in that direction as well. Expected goals now is in hockey and soccer, the runs is in baseball. So it's like it was a trend that was happening. I would say someone probably would have come up with it if my dad did not, but helped answer some of those questions where it's like, Okay, what is the most meaningful metric for golf? It's shots and if you start looking in that perspective, then everything makes sense. Tires a really good driver with the golf ball. He follows the same blueprint as Rory and Bryson and guys who a long way but just miss a couple more fairways, missing one fairway per round, and here you get twenty five yards past the field. Is actually a really really good formula for playing good high level golf. So yeah, definitely cool to see, and it was also really cool growing up to like see coaches and players start to adopt it. So I think Luke, Donald Duarte, Mollinari, Chris Como, Sean Foley, where a lot of a lot of guys to start to reach out and like see the insights of of what what looking at things from a strokes gain perspective could do. So yeah, really really fun to be involved with the Tangentially as a sixteen year old didn't know anything.

I think it was just like, how do we get this into a context that makes sense? I think even the laying up on par fives, it's like there's some psychological safety of Oh, I can really easily hit a seven iron two hundred yards and I'm gonna hit the green, so it's gonna look good from a status respective like hitting more greens regulation that it feels safe. And it's like if you do take out a threewood and plasted around the green, somewhere you might be underneath the tree and that it might be hard to get on the green and you might be throwing off just like you're clean round. But it was nicer. He could kind of start to say, Okay, well, how do we get beyond just these counting stats? And I think, I don't know. My dad did a phenomenal job of like getting into that simplest metric, which I think makes sense. Like a lot of other stats have moved in that direction as well. Expected goals now is in hockey and soccer, the runs is in baseball. So it's like it was a trend that was happening. I would say someone probably would have come up with it if my dad did not, but helped answer some of those questions where it's like, Okay, what is the most meaningful metric for golf? It's shots and if you start looking in that perspective, then everything makes sense. Tires a really good driver with the golf ball. He follows the same blueprint as Rory and Bryson and guys who a long way but just miss a couple more fairways, missing one fairway per round, and here you get twenty five yards past the field. Is actually a really really good formula for playing good high level golf. So yeah, definitely cool to see, and it was also really cool growing up to like see coaches and players start to adopt it. So I think Luke, Donald Duarte, Mollinari, Chris Como, Sean Foley, where a lot of a lot of guys to start to reach out and like see the insights of of what what looking at things from a strokes gain perspective could do. So yeah, really really fun to be involved with the Tangentially as a sixteen year old didn't know anything.

Brody, Let's let's fast forward to now and how have you in our team here? Where we've answered some of these questions, like brought that to the club fitting world. Right, So you're going in for a club fitting and you might have these kind of legacy ideas maybe in your head, you know, like like I got to hit it straighter, I gotta I gotta find the middle of the face more. You know, I need to play a shorter driver because that's what the tour players are doing. So, uh, you know, just let's double click on that a little bit of how somebody can take some of these concepts and principles, maybe not that they're playing tournament golf in their lives on the line, but they're going have to get fit for a new driver. What are what are some ideas in in in quick math folks can bring to the table there.

Brody, Let's let's fast forward to now and how have you in our team here? Where we've answered some of these questions, like brought that to the club fitting world. Right, So you're going in for a club fitting and you might have these kind of legacy ideas maybe in your head, you know, like like I got to hit it straighter, I gotta I gotta find the middle of the face more. You know, I need to play a shorter driver because that's what the tour players are doing. So, uh, you know, just let's double click on that a little bit of how somebody can take some of these concepts and principles, maybe not that they're playing tournament golf in their lives on the line, but they're going have to get fit for a new driver. What are what are some ideas in in in quick math folks can bring to the table there.

Yeah, I mean that's a's a fundamental question of maybe a driver fitting is like what's better is it hitting as far as possible or hitting as straight as possible? And you can easily swing to the extremes you can. If you want hit as far as possible, you probably grab the longest blank driver you have, crank the loft down and hopefully hit the one really high launched, low spin nuke and if you want to hit as straight as possible, it's like, okay, let's grab a shorter shaft, let's dial back the swing speed, and I'll try his night fairies as possible. But as of the most things, the answer kind of lies in between there, and so again it's like, how do you how do you break down that trade off? How do you break down that distance versus acuity trade off? And as expected, the the way to look at is from strokes gained and try to see, yeah, what exactly is that distance versus acuracy trade off? And it was leaning on work than my dad did. Of Okay, if you could look at what's the benefit of gaining twenty yards, quantify that in terms of strokes versus what's the how much did it hurt you if you hit it, I don't know, ten feet more offline? And so which we wanted to make it as easy for fitters as possible to use this kind of strokes gained framework to analyze a driver fitting. And so the simple nuggets it's if you hit twenty yards further, it's a PGA Tour pro you are started to play one shot better per round, and so that's huge. That's exactly what kind of Bryson did and may Fitzpatrick did when they went through gaining length. And then the interesting thing is, though it's even more beneficial for amateur golfers. And so, like my rough math would be a PGA Tour pro from two hundred yards might average like three point three shots and you bring them down to one hundred twenty yards and it's three point zero. So that eighty yard shift gained him point three shots. But for a ninety golfer, he might be moving from four point six at two hundred yards down to four point h at one twenty, so it's a point six shift, and so distance is even more valuable, Like what there's more to gain moving an amateur player just twenty yards close as a whole every time. And so that's what the math showed for a ninety golfer, gain twenty yards is worth two shots instead of that one point oh for a PJA Tour golfer. And so you kind of use these trayoffs to develop a pretty simple rule for our fitting department that if you can gain two yards of distance, that will be offset by one yard decrease in offline standard deviation. So you're if you're actually in if your offline dispersion goes up by a yard, that's offset by two yards for maybe a scratch golfer, oh I got that backwards three yards for a scratch golfer, of distance offsets one yard of accuracy loss. And then for a ninety golfer where distance is even more at a premium, it's you only need two yards offset one yard of accuracy loss. But the nice thing there is that we have a really clean rule of thumb that like someone can doesn't have to go to the extremes. They don't have to just maximize distance or maximize the accuracy. They can say, hey, you gain twenty yards, you only lost two yards of offline performance. So that's going to be a clear win for you. And we can have tools and copilot that we've mentioned a bunch of this podcast that says, Okay, you're expect to gain on course is one point four shots with that new driver. That'll be a really good tool for you at the end of fitting.

Yeah, I mean that's a's a fundamental question of maybe a driver fitting is like what's better is it hitting as far as possible or hitting as straight as possible? And you can easily swing to the extremes you can. If you want hit as far as possible, you probably grab the longest blank driver you have, crank the loft down and hopefully hit the one really high launched, low spin nuke and if you want to hit as straight as possible, it's like, okay, let's grab a shorter shaft, let's dial back the swing speed, and I'll try his night fairies as possible. But as of the most things, the answer kind of lies in between there, and so again it's like, how do you how do you break down that trade off? How do you break down that distance versus acuity trade off? And as expected, the the way to look at is from strokes gained and try to see, yeah, what exactly is that distance versus acuracy trade off? And it was leaning on work than my dad did. Of Okay, if you could look at what's the benefit of gaining twenty yards, quantify that in terms of strokes versus what's the how much did it hurt you if you hit it, I don't know, ten feet more offline? And so which we wanted to make it as easy for fitters as possible to use this kind of strokes gained framework to analyze a driver fitting. And so the simple nuggets it's if you hit twenty yards further, it's a PGA Tour pro you are started to play one shot better per round, and so that's huge. That's exactly what kind of Bryson did and may Fitzpatrick did when they went through gaining length. And then the interesting thing is, though it's even more beneficial for amateur golfers. And so, like my rough math would be a PGA Tour pro from two hundred yards might average like three point three shots and you bring them down to one hundred twenty yards and it's three point zero. So that eighty yard shift gained him point three shots. But for a ninety golfer, he might be moving from four point six at two hundred yards down to four point h at one twenty, so it's a point six shift, and so distance is even more valuable, Like what there's more to gain moving an amateur player just twenty yards close as a whole every time. And so that's what the math showed for a ninety golfer, gain twenty yards is worth two shots instead of that one point oh for a PJA Tour golfer. And so you kind of use these trayoffs to develop a pretty simple rule for our fitting department that if you can gain two yards of distance, that will be offset by one yard decrease in offline standard deviation. So you're if you're actually in if your offline dispersion goes up by a yard, that's offset by two yards for maybe a scratch golfer, oh I got that backwards three yards for a scratch golfer, of distance offsets one yard of accuracy loss. And then for a ninety golfer where distance is even more at a premium, it's you only need two yards offset one yard of accuracy loss. But the nice thing there is that we have a really clean rule of thumb that like someone can doesn't have to go to the extremes. They don't have to just maximize distance or maximize the accuracy. They can say, hey, you gain twenty yards, you only lost two yards of offline performance. So that's going to be a clear win for you. And we can have tools and copilot that we've mentioned a bunch of this podcast that says, Okay, you're expect to gain on course is one point four shots with that new driver. That'll be a really good tool for you at the end of fitting.

And Chris, do you have those conversations with the fitters, I mean, is this something you guys are discussing, you know, kind of throughout the company to help people relay this information to consumers because I do think you know, like this year, Marty, Marty not played golf in January and he has the two driver system in his bag, and we've talked a lot about on the pod. But I mean, it's been one of the biggest changes in my game I've made in the last probably ten years, is the is adding a twelve degree driver. Every time I play golf with somebody to ask about it, they're always very interested in the link to the shaft and why we do it. And Marty obviously broke down the numbers, and you know, he has the math on it. We've talked about it on the pod. I mean, if you hit three wood, you know, if you hit three hundred yards, you hit three wood ninety ninety five percent of the time off the tee. Why not take a bigger head and lean on that. That's a simple thing for me to understand. How do you guys relay this information to the fitters where they can simplify it as much as possible to somebody that's looking at a driver, going, I do want to gain ten fifteen yards, But what that's going what's that going to do in terms of my accuracy?

And Chris, do you have those conversations with the fitters, I mean, is this something you guys are discussing, you know, kind of throughout the company to help people relay this information to consumers because I do think you know, like this year, Marty, Marty not played golf in January and he has the two driver system in his bag, and we've talked a lot about on the pod. But I mean, it's been one of the biggest changes in my game I've made in the last probably ten years, is the is adding a twelve degree driver. Every time I play golf with somebody to ask about it, they're always very interested in the link to the shaft and why we do it. And Marty obviously broke down the numbers, and you know, he has the math on it. We've talked about it on the pod. I mean, if you hit three wood, you know, if you hit three hundred yards, you hit three wood ninety ninety five percent of the time off the tee. Why not take a bigger head and lean on that. That's a simple thing for me to understand. How do you guys relay this information to the fitters where they can simplify it as much as possible to somebody that's looking at a driver, going, I do want to gain ten fifteen yards, But what that's going what's that going to do in terms of my accuracy?

Yeah, I think I think that's the magic of I guess communicating with math is you have to be able to understand kind of the deep nuanced science to be able to come up with new metrics and tools for fitters. But then the power is then turning into a very simple story that everyone can understand. And I think even that example of the of kind of that that driver the driver baby is like how many different pieces are are in play on the pink side of Like we are leveraging our Arcos database of one hundred plus million shots to understand when people use drivers through wood. We're leveraging our really cool I mean, that's even like manufacturing side of things, where we can build a a driver head the right weight to hit a through wood build and then we can also do testing. So now the testing or we ran that test of what happens if you hit a thriver off the tee versus three off the ta, and like that's the ultimate proof is like how much better is it? And that's one of the more like jaw dropping like clean winds I've ever seen in a player test, Like the thriver is just dominating and so and then you can plug it into and then we had one of the guys in our group, Max went in. He's like, I want to test out how does this build compare? And he went into Copilot and it was like, okay, let let's let's look at what's my distance gain, what's my accuracy gain. It's like, okay, it's the or just win the world for a driver. So kind of all those tools are like married together, and hopefully Copilot's kind of our avenue for fitters to get the simplest possible way to communicate to the to the everyday golfer.

Yeah, I think I think that's the magic of I guess communicating with math is you have to be able to understand kind of the deep nuanced science to be able to come up with new metrics and tools for fitters. But then the power is then turning into a very simple story that everyone can understand. And I think even that example of the of kind of that that driver the driver baby is like how many different pieces are are in play on the pink side of Like we are leveraging our Arcos database of one hundred plus million shots to understand when people use drivers through wood. We're leveraging our really cool I mean, that's even like manufacturing side of things, where we can build a a driver head the right weight to hit a through wood build and then we can also do testing. So now the testing or we ran that test of what happens if you hit a thriver off the tee versus three off the ta, and like that's the ultimate proof is like how much better is it? And that's one of the more like jaw dropping like clean winds I've ever seen in a player test, Like the thriver is just dominating and so and then you can plug it into and then we had one of the guys in our group, Max went in. He's like, I want to test out how does this build compare? And he went into Copilot and it was like, okay, let let's let's look at what's my distance gain, what's my accuracy gain. It's like, okay, it's the or just win the world for a driver. So kind of all those tools are like married together, and hopefully Copilot's kind of our avenue for fitters to get the simplest possible way to communicate to the to the everyday golfer.

Yeah, change so Brody, I'll give him some props here. He's built all pretty much all the algorithms and logic behind pink Co Pilot right, all the fun cool math that happens there, and one of the most powerful fun tools allows you to explore club fitting with the nuance from a strokes gain lens if you want to write, if the fitter wants too, if the players kind of into it. Still a little kind of hard concept, I think for the everyday golfer to understand I'm going to gain two tenths of a shot, what does that mean to me? If? But you know, we're kind of on this spectrum of change in an evolution with every every day golfer. They're seeing these stats on TV. They're starting to understand it more. Now you can go in and with Pink co pilot and optimize your driver or your other clubs for which one's going to be the best from a strokes gain standpoint. So, and we teach our fitters. Okay, we're gonna look at distance differences. We're gonna look at your offline standard deviation. That's kind of how big your left right dispersion is. Right, what does your shot pattern look like? And there's a way to quantify that on a launch monitor. Feed it in and you can help and say, hey, compared to your gamer driver, this one's gonna be so much better from a strokes gain standpoint. Let's try a longer driver versus a shorter length shaft and do that little ab comparison. So really fun to be able to pass this level of nuance which is kind of built into the strokes gain concept to the everyday golfer through copilot, which has been which has been tons of fun.

Yeah, change so Brody, I'll give him some props here. He's built all pretty much all the algorithms and logic behind pink Co Pilot right, all the fun cool math that happens there, and one of the most powerful fun tools allows you to explore club fitting with the nuance from a strokes gain lens if you want to write, if the fitter wants too, if the players kind of into it. Still a little kind of hard concept, I think for the everyday golfer to understand I'm going to gain two tenths of a shot, what does that mean to me? If? But you know, we're kind of on this spectrum of change in an evolution with every every day golfer. They're seeing these stats on TV. They're starting to understand it more. Now you can go in and with Pink co pilot and optimize your driver or your other clubs for which one's going to be the best from a strokes gain standpoint. So, and we teach our fitters. Okay, we're gonna look at distance differences. We're gonna look at your offline standard deviation. That's kind of how big your left right dispersion is. Right, what does your shot pattern look like? And there's a way to quantify that on a launch monitor. Feed it in and you can help and say, hey, compared to your gamer driver, this one's gonna be so much better from a strokes gain standpoint. Let's try a longer driver versus a shorter length shaft and do that little ab comparison. So really fun to be able to pass this level of nuance which is kind of built into the strokes gain concept to the everyday golfer through copilot, which has been which has been tons of fun.

Yeah, and Brody, I mean you know I think about this. You mentioned baseball earlier. I mean you think about the eye rolls that came through the moneyball era right with baseball, and it's like, oh, we don't need to worry about that. That didn't make any sense, Like what's their er, what's their batting average?

Yeah, and Brody, I mean you know I think about this. You mentioned baseball earlier. I mean you think about the eye rolls that came through the moneyball era right with baseball, and it's like, oh, we don't need to worry about that. That didn't make any sense, Like what's their er, what's their batting average?

Right? I mean, these are stats that.

Right? I mean, these are stats that.

Mean something in baseball, and then slowly people started to understand what it means. I think one thing that golf is doing better over the last couple of years is trying to explain this stuff. I think at broadcast at times I try to dive a little deeper into the strokes gain stuff just to simply explain what I'm talking about, because sometimes you hear terms in a sport or in work, in society and life whatever, but you never really get explained what it is, and you just kind of take it for fact. And I think we're getting to a point now in golf where strokes gained is starting to make more sense to people at a macro level, which is huge because for somebody like you, you're leaning so heavily on it, you want people to understand it because you know it'll help them in terms of the way they play, in the way they think about golf.

Mean something in baseball, and then slowly people started to understand what it means. I think one thing that golf is doing better over the last couple of years is trying to explain this stuff. I think at broadcast at times I try to dive a little deeper into the strokes gain stuff just to simply explain what I'm talking about, because sometimes you hear terms in a sport or in work, in society and life whatever, but you never really get explained what it is, and you just kind of take it for fact. And I think we're getting to a point now in golf where strokes gained is starting to make more sense to people at a macro level, which is huge because for somebody like you, you're leaning so heavily on it, you want people to understand it because you know it'll help them in terms of the way they play, in the way they think about golf.

It's interesting, like the first thing I did when I got to ping is we had a competitive data set of driver tests that we looked at like different competitors, how they reformed. And my boss at the time, Eric Henderson, is like, how would you analyze this data? And I think he was like kind of winking as head of like I think he might look at this from a strokes gain perspective, But the way the data had been analyzed was all right, how far did those balls go? Like how many fairways did you hit? And he's like, how would you go about this? And I was like, Okay, I think there might be a way to apply apply some of the knowledge I have of strokes gain. And so yeah, it's been it's been cool too to be able to I mean even even in our vocabulary I think is as designers engineers, we've we've moved from uh, maybe stat areas and how far the ball went to kind of talking this language of overall performance in it from a strokes gained lens. So it definitely takes time. One other thing, what you were talking about baseball, It's like baseball maybe it was ahead in some respects with moneyball, but golf has actually been way ahead in terms of some of their advanced metrics, like we knew about angle attack and club betspeed tracking. I had more of an influence kind of on the on the coaching community. They understood some of these tools way before, like the kind of baseball analytics they like they're just starting to get get their head around like angle attack. I feel like there's some there's some funny things of like TV broadcasters being like, oh a launch angle swings like a big concept in baseball, Like they didn't quite have the terminology down for angle attack. But it's like that's been around the golf world for h I don't know, ten fifteen years now.

It's interesting, like the first thing I did when I got to ping is we had a competitive data set of driver tests that we looked at like different competitors, how they reformed. And my boss at the time, Eric Henderson, is like, how would you analyze this data? And I think he was like kind of winking as head of like I think he might look at this from a strokes gain perspective, But the way the data had been analyzed was all right, how far did those balls go? Like how many fairways did you hit? And he's like, how would you go about this? And I was like, Okay, I think there might be a way to apply apply some of the knowledge I have of strokes gain. And so yeah, it's been it's been cool too to be able to I mean even even in our vocabulary I think is as designers engineers, we've we've moved from uh, maybe stat areas and how far the ball went to kind of talking this language of overall performance in it from a strokes gained lens. So it definitely takes time. One other thing, what you were talking about baseball, It's like baseball maybe it was ahead in some respects with moneyball, but golf has actually been way ahead in terms of some of their advanced metrics, like we knew about angle attack and club betspeed tracking. I had more of an influence kind of on the on the coaching community. They understood some of these tools way before, like the kind of baseball analytics they like they're just starting to get get their head around like angle attack. I feel like there's some there's some funny things of like TV broadcasters being like, oh a launch angle swings like a big concept in baseball, Like they didn't quite have the terminology down for angle attack. But it's like that's been around the golf world for h I don't know, ten fifteen years now.

That's a really good point Brody's speaking of angle of attack. I mean think one of the problems we've solved in our group, and you were instrumental in is helping understand like why golfers. And for me it was always Lee Westwood. He hit down on his driver and I was working on low spin drivers like the answer I fifteen, I twenty, and they never worked for him. They fell out of the air, He'd have to change his swing tip back. Nothing works, So he kept playing the G ten driver, which was you know, kind of moderate spinning, moderate slash high spinning driver at the time when he was number one player in the world, and we could never really answer that question of why that was. And you know, since then, I think you were a big part of doing a bunch of that modeling work to help us answer the question. Generate this really useful chart for all for some fitters out there that says, hey, if you do hit more down you not only can you spin it more, but you should to be optimal. So give us a little background on how all that research and analysis and modeling all came to be.

That's a really good point Brody's speaking of angle of attack. I mean think one of the problems we've solved in our group, and you were instrumental in is helping understand like why golfers. And for me it was always Lee Westwood. He hit down on his driver and I was working on low spin drivers like the answer I fifteen, I twenty, and they never worked for him. They fell out of the air, He'd have to change his swing tip back. Nothing works, So he kept playing the G ten driver, which was you know, kind of moderate spinning, moderate slash high spinning driver at the time when he was number one player in the world, and we could never really answer that question of why that was. And you know, since then, I think you were a big part of doing a bunch of that modeling work to help us answer the question. Generate this really useful chart for all for some fitters out there that says, hey, if you do hit more down you not only can you spin it more, but you should to be optimal. So give us a little background on how all that research and analysis and modeling all came to be.

Yeah, so I think it definitely kind of goes back to my kind of first color projects at PAYING. So after kind of looking at some of that competitor data where it's kind of looking at applying strokes gain to some of our driver data, the next project I actually worked on was looking at ball flight laws. And so that's not just the kind of undepending there is. When you have a club path angle attack and a face angle, a big question is where's that ball going to launch? So that's really important for coaches if they're trying to tell a golfer how to hit a functional drawer fade. I think a very common piece of teaching was you want to have the face point where the ball ends up and the path goes where you want the ball to start. And that doesn't actually quite match what we see on the side of things, but it kind of gets your brain kind of thinking about what where should that path and face be. And so similarly on the kind of vertical side of things, it's if you have an angle attack and then a loft in the club, a big question is where's the ball going to launch? And so we have with our focal data a lot of really good information on how the club is delivered, what that path is, and where the face is pointed. And so one of my big projects goes, okay, what is that ratio? So if you have a path that is ten degrees right and the face is pointed right at the target, where will the ball launched? And it's roughly eighty percent, So the ball would launch two degrees to the right if your face is aimed right at the target and your path is ten degrees to the right, and we end up going through the whole whole club set. So a driver that numbers actually around eighty five percent, and then down to wedge that number is down to sev percent. So that's I mean, one one piece that kind of ties things together is like Joe Mayo's big on on ten down on a wedge, and so it's like, if you're ten down and you want to launch the ball at thirty degrees, you have to have a you have a four degree difference between your launch angle and your angle attack. So what spin loft do you need? You actually need a sixty degree spin loft. That forty kind of launch minus single attack number goes into that sixty loft minus single attack number to get your thirty degree launch angle. So it's kind of really important fundamental kind of physics things that that drive how your driver through wedge is perform. And we were like, okay, we probably apply us to to understanding that angle attack and driver launch didition in side of things as well. So kind of a similar kind of thought process I'll go through is what angle attack drives your launchicition on drivers. So, like a common target that I've heard thrown out is you want to hit like seventeen launch and seventeen hundred spin and from a ball flight model perspective, that ball goes very very far. That's that's basically that's that's where we would see like the peak of carry distance and total distance. But we know from PGA tour data that people are living a lot more in like that ten to eleven launch and twenty five hundred spin zones. It's like something's missing a little bit if we're going to say that seventeen and seventeen hundred goes as far as possible, but we don't really see that on tour. And so the kind of key kind of similar to that Lee West's story is that the key underpaining thing is that golfers PGA tour golfer's average angle attack is around zero. So if they want to launch a ball at seventeen degrees, they if they use this eighty five percent number, they need to have a loft delivered an impact at twenty degrees, So that twenty degree loft difference turns into a seventeen degree launch difference. And the issue with having a twenty degree kind of spin loft number on a driver is it's going to spin a tremendous amount, So you're crazy, Yeah, you experience is gonna be five thousand. Yeah, So like yeah, it's definitely not the way you don't want a driver that's launching at seventeen to five thousand spin, and then on the other side of things like, hey, well what if we try to get down to seventeen hundred soon you know it's the knuckleball. It goes pretty far, and it's okay, probably divide those that loft number by three. Let's take that twenty degrees of loft down to seven, and now you're launching it at six degrees, so again that that ball flight loss knowledge really matters, and it's like, Okay, we're in a pickle here. You don't really want to launch it six degrees and seventeen hundred spin. You don't want launch it seventeen degrees and five thousand spin. There's some happy medium in between, and it's like, Okay, this is probably something that that some modeling can can help us out with here, and through the power of having a ball flight model, having an impact model developed by Eric Henrickson, you can kind of nicely toggle through all the different loft options and just plug in, Okay, which combination of loft and angle attack and club at speed produces the most carry distance, most total distance. And that's kind of the kind of thing what starts down this path of trying to develop an oft to launch a spin chart, and so I might be able to pull it up, but there's angle attack on the bottom ball speed going up like the y axis, and we can for each those combinations go into an impact model and figure out the loft that maximizes someone's distance, and there's some cool trends that show up. I think Marty was kind of hinting at it. But if you go look at the angle of attack, that is a really clear indicator of what your spin rate should be. So if you're four down, your optimal your optimal spin rate is three thousand. That's the spineraryates. Then they hit the ball as long as possible for you, and that's because if you had less spin than that, your launch angle of nine degrees goes down to six degrees and that ball is just going nowhere. And if you had if you try to get your launch up from eight or nine degrees up to twelve, your three thousand spin turns into four thousand. That ball is also going nowhere. So it's counterintuitive, but three thousand spin is the right number for someone who's four down. And then the other side of you can actually move up into plus four territory. Then you can get to some nicer sounding spin rate it's of twenty two hundred or something, and that will help you. That will be the new optal, so you can move along that angle attack kind of X access and see what your target spinarate should be. I think it's pretty eye opening for golfers.

Yeah, so I think it definitely kind of goes back to my kind of first color projects at PAYING. So after kind of looking at some of that competitor data where it's kind of looking at applying strokes gain to some of our driver data, the next project I actually worked on was looking at ball flight laws. And so that's not just the kind of undepending there is. When you have a club path angle attack and a face angle, a big question is where's that ball going to launch? So that's really important for coaches if they're trying to tell a golfer how to hit a functional drawer fade. I think a very common piece of teaching was you want to have the face point where the ball ends up and the path goes where you want the ball to start. And that doesn't actually quite match what we see on the side of things, but it kind of gets your brain kind of thinking about what where should that path and face be. And so similarly on the kind of vertical side of things, it's if you have an angle attack and then a loft in the club, a big question is where's the ball going to launch? And so we have with our focal data a lot of really good information on how the club is delivered, what that path is, and where the face is pointed. And so one of my big projects goes, okay, what is that ratio? So if you have a path that is ten degrees right and the face is pointed right at the target, where will the ball launched? And it's roughly eighty percent, So the ball would launch two degrees to the right if your face is aimed right at the target and your path is ten degrees to the right, and we end up going through the whole whole club set. So a driver that numbers actually around eighty five percent, and then down to wedge that number is down to sev percent. So that's I mean, one one piece that kind of ties things together is like Joe Mayo's big on on ten down on a wedge, and so it's like, if you're ten down and you want to launch the ball at thirty degrees, you have to have a you have a four degree difference between your launch angle and your angle attack. So what spin loft do you need? You actually need a sixty degree spin loft. That forty kind of launch minus single attack number goes into that sixty loft minus single attack number to get your thirty degree launch angle. So it's kind of really important fundamental kind of physics things that that drive how your driver through wedge is perform. And we were like, okay, we probably apply us to to understanding that angle attack and driver launch didition in side of things as well. So kind of a similar kind of thought process I'll go through is what angle attack drives your launchicition on drivers. So, like a common target that I've heard thrown out is you want to hit like seventeen launch and seventeen hundred spin and from a ball flight model perspective, that ball goes very very far. That's that's basically that's that's where we would see like the peak of carry distance and total distance. But we know from PGA tour data that people are living a lot more in like that ten to eleven launch and twenty five hundred spin zones. It's like something's missing a little bit if we're going to say that seventeen and seventeen hundred goes as far as possible, but we don't really see that on tour. And so the kind of key kind of similar to that Lee West's story is that the key underpaining thing is that golfers PGA tour golfer's average angle attack is around zero. So if they want to launch a ball at seventeen degrees, they if they use this eighty five percent number, they need to have a loft delivered an impact at twenty degrees, So that twenty degree loft difference turns into a seventeen degree launch difference. And the issue with having a twenty degree kind of spin loft number on a driver is it's going to spin a tremendous amount, So you're crazy, Yeah, you experience is gonna be five thousand. Yeah, So like yeah, it's definitely not the way you don't want a driver that's launching at seventeen to five thousand spin, and then on the other side of things like, hey, well what if we try to get down to seventeen hundred soon you know it's the knuckleball. It goes pretty far, and it's okay, probably divide those that loft number by three. Let's take that twenty degrees of loft down to seven, and now you're launching it at six degrees, so again that that ball flight loss knowledge really matters, and it's like, Okay, we're in a pickle here. You don't really want to launch it six degrees and seventeen hundred spin. You don't want launch it seventeen degrees and five thousand spin. There's some happy medium in between, and it's like, Okay, this is probably something that that some modeling can can help us out with here, and through the power of having a ball flight model, having an impact model developed by Eric Henrickson, you can kind of nicely toggle through all the different loft options and just plug in, Okay, which combination of loft and angle attack and club at speed produces the most carry distance, most total distance. And that's kind of the kind of thing what starts down this path of trying to develop an oft to launch a spin chart, and so I might be able to pull it up, but there's angle attack on the bottom ball speed going up like the y axis, and we can for each those combinations go into an impact model and figure out the loft that maximizes someone's distance, and there's some cool trends that show up. I think Marty was kind of hinting at it. But if you go look at the angle of attack, that is a really clear indicator of what your spin rate should be. So if you're four down, your optimal your optimal spin rate is three thousand. That's the spineraryates. Then they hit the ball as long as possible for you, and that's because if you had less spin than that, your launch angle of nine degrees goes down to six degrees and that ball is just going nowhere. And if you had if you try to get your launch up from eight or nine degrees up to twelve, your three thousand spin turns into four thousand. That ball is also going nowhere. So it's counterintuitive, but three thousand spin is the right number for someone who's four down. And then the other side of you can actually move up into plus four territory. Then you can get to some nicer sounding spin rate it's of twenty two hundred or something, and that will help you. That will be the new optal, so you can move along that angle attack kind of X access and see what your target spinarate should be. I think it's pretty eye opening for golfers.

I think, Shane, what's fun here about what Brody just talked about is that it's a lot of numbers, a lot of angles. I'm always having to jot things down and do some trigonometry in my head, and that can go over a lot of the listeners' heads, no doubt. But what's fun is that we turned it into a practical, actionable fitting chart in a fitting tool that's helped golfers unluck distance right, super fun. It explains Lee Westwood four down three thousand spin, number one player in the world. It explains Cameron champ one ninety five ball speed. He hits down two degrees, and he launches it at like seven and a half eight, you know, and spins it twenty six twenty seven hundred, and that's perfect actually for him. Or it explains you know, like Bubba Watson. We used to is this high straight one. He'd hit up on it, He'd hit up like five or six, and he would launch it a fifteen to seventeen with you know, seventeen nineteen hundred spin when he went to go hit his high bomb where he straightened out the curve. So this chart explained finally we've cracked the code on explaining you know why angled attack is super duper important. And again, Brody, I think going back to baseball, it's just like a brand new thing in baseball. But here we are in golf, we've already cracked the code on this.