William L. Coney Blog: First Look: PING Glide 2.0 Wedges

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

First Look: PING Glide 2.0 Wedges

The 20 Second Intro:

Model: PING Glide 2.0 Wedges

Available Lofts:

Thin Sole (TS) – 58°, 60° (6° bounce)
Standard Sole (SS) – 46°, 50°, 52°, 54°, 56° (12° bounce); 58°, 60° - 10° bounce
Wide Sole - (WS) – 56°, 58°, 60° (14° bounce)
Eye Sole – (ES) – 54°, 56°, 58°, 60° (8° bounce)

Retail Price: Steel shaft - $150, Graphite shaft - $175
Availability: Pre-order now

What do you call your new wedge when it looks an awful lot like your old wedge, but with enhancements so subtle you’d need a Holmesian-level of attention to detail to find?

Well, if you’re PING, one thing you aren’t calling it is revolutionary.

And if you feel the name of your old wedge describes it perfectly, why change it just because the calendar turns?

So if you liked PING’s year-old Glide wedges, we're guessing you’re going to like PING's new Glide 2.0 a wee bit more.

DARWIN’S WEDGE

Evolution is technically defined as “a gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex and better form.” Comparing wedges from Sarazen to Hogan to Jack to Tiger to Bubba would create an evolutionary timeline that would make ol' Charlie Darwin grin.

One thing about evolution, though: change is incremental, something PING freely acknowledges with Glide 2.0.

“We feel Glide is a good name for our wedge, so we stuck with it,” says Paul Wood, PING’s VP of Engineering and a Ph.D. “Glide 2.0 is more of an evolution of what we did with Glide, rather than a revolution.”

It was just one year ago that PING gave us hydrophobicity in the original Glide, and the new Glide’s finish remains unchanged and decidedly hydrophobic. But the new Glide 2.0 brings three evolutionary enhancements you’ll want to know about, two of which affect performance and the third may change how you look at PING wedges.

BOUNCE AND GRIND

If you’re used to choosing wedges based on listed bounce angles, there's good news: Glide 2.0 will feature bounce angles stamped on the toe, just below the loft. PING would rather talk about bounce in terms of sole width, but they acknowledge the rest of the world is talking degrees.

“People are used to describing wedges in terms of bounce angle and in 8’s, 10’s and 12’s. No wedge is actually at 8 degrees of bounce. That’s some mystical number from back in the 60s. When Vokey makes a wedge and stamps 8 degrees of bounce on it, it probably has 16 degrees of bounce, but it plays like what you think an 8 should be.” – Paul Wood, PING

So bounce is more of a name than an actual measurement, but Wood says that’s what people know.

"That’s how everyone describes wedges,” he says. “If that’s the best way to communicated that this is the best wedge for you, then we’ll call it the 8 bounce or the 10 bounce.”

PING is sticking with its four sole designations for Glide 2.0: TS for Thin Sole, SS for Standard Sole, WS for Wide Sole and ES for the unique Eye Sole. Wood says one minor change was to add a little more bounce to the Wide Sole compared to the original Glide. “The standard and the wide sole were a little too similar, so we wanted to accentuate the difference a little more,” says Wood.

Also, the Thin Sole grind has changed with 2.0. Wood says it’s more of a half-moon style with a little more heel and toe relief.

THE GROOVE TUBE

When it comes to engineering, some OEM’s are playing chess; some are playing checkers while a few are still playing Candyland. PING is typically playing 3D Chess.

In Klingon.

How else do you describe Glide 2.0’s new grooves?

“We do a lot of testing, and we design experiments for different grooves. You’ve got quite a bit of freedom to design experiments to figure out where were can optimize in the space the USGA gives us. We continue to work on optimizing a groove for the gap wedge and a groove for what we call the more partial shot clubs.” – Paul Wood, PING

A true U-shaped groove would be a vertical groove and would have an angle of 0-degrees. A true V-shaped groove would have an angle of 45-degrees. The USGA limits the transition radius from clubface to groove, and the radius is very importing for generating spin, particularly when moisture is present, which is virtually always.

“We have a sidewall angle of 20-degrees on the gap wedge, and 28-degrees on the sand and lob wedges,” says Wood. “At 28 degrees you’re allowed to go with a sharper radius.”

Wood says that shallower sidewall and sharper radius is better optimized for partial shots, while the steeper sidewall on the gap wedge is designed for full shots.

The original Glide has sidewall angles of 16-degrees for the strong lofts and 24-degrees for the higher lofts. That 4-degree change in sidewall angles, according to PING, results in roughly 300 to 400 more RPM worth of spin with Glide 2.0.