Whether you’re an aspiring competitive player or a weekend hacker, hitting the ball higher is usually something that will help you get your next shot closer to the hole.
Ping’s latest irons accomplish that very task — but in two different ways.
The company has announced the addition of the i540 (player’s distance) and G740 (super game-improvement) irons to their lineup, two irons that help golfers in two different ways: more speed for the players’ distance golfer and ultra-forgiveness and launch for super-game-improvement players.
“i540 is the iron that has the look of that i240, that Blueprint-inspired shaping at address, but we try to pack it with all the distance that our game-improvement construction can give us,” Travis Milleman, Ping senior manager, design engineering, told GOLF. “G740 is our longest iron and our highest-launching iron. The goal was super-game improvement — how do we help the player who needs the most help get the ball in the air?”
Keep reading below for more on the Ping i540 and G740, including my take on the release.
What’s actually new with Ping i540 and G740 — and why you should care
The lightest and heaviest materials you can put in a club
The design of the i540 relies on both the lightest material and the heaviest material you can put in a golf club.
The iron retains the hollow-body design that players have come to know for the players’ distance category, but to help sound and feel, Ping utilized its InR-Air insert. The inflated air pocket insert was first used in the iDi driving iron last summer, and Ping prefers it over a foam or ceramic insert because of its weightlessness.
“Air is one of the lightest things you can put in anything,” Milleman said. “It lets us dampen the vibrations without restricting the face bending that we designed into the club. It is not there to help make the face thinner and it’s not there to change the bending. It’s there to dampen feel and sound.”
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Jack Hirsh/GOLF
The inR-Air insert frees up mass that is then reallocated low in the sole of the club, specifically in the 4-7 irons, which is done with tungsten weighting.
Ping wanted the i540 to be a distance first iron, but with that came the need for height, because distance isn’t very useful if your ball is bounding through the green. By lowering the CG with tungsten, one of the densest materials used in a club, Ping can achieve higher peak apexes for increased stopping power.
“The way you get more height in an iron, if you don’t want to change the loft, is to lower the CG,” Milleman said. “The lower you can go on the CG, the more efficient the impact is going to be. You get more ball speed, higher launch angle, and that drives peak height.”
An iron with A LOT of sole
A lower CG was also a focus of the G740 to help players launch the ball in the air.
Players using G740 usually need all the help they can get, so the iron is the lowest CG in the Ping lineup.
Instead of using tungsten, Ping engineers accomplished this through the iron’s shape by shortening the face height and dramatically widening the sole.
“If we’re trying to get a low-CG iron, we need to take mass away from the top rail, we need to take mass away from the hosel, and we need to put it in the area that’s the lowest on the club, which is the sole,” Milleman said.
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Jack Hirsh/GOLf
While game-improvement irons typically have wider soles for extra forgiveness through the turf, Ping made the G740’s sole even wider to push more mass low.
Had Ping designed a traditional sole, it likely would have been too bulky for many players and gotten stuck in the turf.
To combat this, Ping created a dual-camber where a large portion of the trail edge is angled away, reducing the effective sole width of the club.
“The extra mass we added you kind of see on that back edge,” Milleman said. “We tried to get it out of the way so the club gets into the turf and out of the turf the same way. On the toe side we tried to add a little bit more relief, but on the heel side, we actually flattened it to get even more CG-lowering feature.”
The new Ping iron lineup
i540
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Jack Hirsh/GOLF
What is it: A player’s-distance iron with similar shaping and sizing to the i240, but with a hollow-bodied design, stronger lofts and ultra-low CG for increased launch and distance.
Who it’s for: Players who want to prioritize speed and distance above all else with their irons, or golfers who would like to regain lost distance.
G740
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Jack Hirsh/GOLF
What is it: A super game-improvement iron with the longest blade length, thickest topline and widest sole of any Ping iron for maximum forgiveness.
Who it’s for: Players who need help launching the ball in the air or who miss all over the face.
My take: Helping golfers hit it higher is becoming a theme
You could argue the i540 and the G740 accomplish the same thing for different types of players.
The i540 is for the more accomplished ball striker who wants to hit it farther; the G740 is for the beginner who needs to hit it farther.
Both of these irons help their targeted golfer by lowering the CG and getting them to hit the ball higher. It seems like a trend more and more companies are following to help players hit the ball higher, which in turn will help them be more precise in holding greens.