We were lucky enough to get our hands on Bubba Watson’s new G driver at Ping’s HQ in Phoenix as they launched their G range of woods, irons and crossover.
Ping’s PGA Tour rep Christian Pena gave us the lowdown on how it came to be.
Bubba saw and tested the Ping G driver for the first time at last summer’s WGC Bridgestone in Akron.
His driver was black, we didn’t have any pink ones yet, and he kind of had a vision for what he wanted the driver to look like, said Pena, whose job it is to work closely with staff players on the equipment in their bags.
His original request was kind of a funny story.
“He said: ‘I want this to be pink, I want the lines to be pink, and can make the dragonfly white.’ So we did that, and made a pink-and-white prototype and took it up to John (Solheim, Ping’s CEO) before we showed Bubba.
“John didn’t care for the white, which was great feedback.
John said it would be better in black or some sort of dark charcoal, so we went back to the drawing board and produced this for when Bubba came in to do his final testing.
Bubba then agreed that the black looked better than the white, added Pena.
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Bubba’s Ping G driver spec
Loft: 9Ëš
Shaft length: 44.5
Shaft: Grafalloy BiMatrx X tipped by .5
Grip: Ping 703-Gold (+10 layers top hand, +12 layers bottom hand)
Bubba Watson’s pink Ping G driver
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