Please click here for other new drivers which we will be offering this season!

Ping I-25 Driver

Note: I am excited to announce that Ping is flying me out to headquarters next month for a week long workshop with their designers and engineers. Look for future posts regarding more detailed feedback and analysis of the new 2014 Ping Line. 

The immediate thing you will notice about the new I-25 is it’s look. It has that great flat black finish like the I-20 but also has subtle “racing stripes” along the crown to help you line up your drives for even better accuracy. According to Ping, it has taken them nearly 3 years to perfect these stripes which run perfectly horizontal across the crown (a difficult feat due to the curvature of the crown/head itself). According to Ping most drivers have a lie angle of 45d but when most golfers actually set up to their driver the actual lie angle is more like 45 degrees  If the driver is not placed in the optimum position at address then the stripes will not line up correctly (kind of like the see more putter approach). Ping also placed the COG more forward in the face vs the G-25 in order to lower spin. Although the I-25 is not as forgiving as the G25 I think it is a great improvement to both the Anser ad I-20 which I found to be quite spinny on shots struck towards the top of the face. This is summarized by Ping engineers improving both the inertia and MOI of the I25 (Ping engineers were able to make a significant improvement in the top-to-bottom MOI of the i25; it’s 8 percent higher than its predecessor, the i20 driver. That creates more consistent spin rates on shots struck both above and below the sweet spot, leading to longer drives. The i25 also has 15 grams of tungsten weighting positioned on the rear portion of its sole, helping boost heel-to-toe MOI by 1 percent over the i20.

Ping’s new i25 driver has a center of gravity that is more forward than the company’s G25 driver to help golfers reduce spin on their tee shots. But discussion about the i25’s engineering feats will likely take a backseat to a more obvious change to the new club: black racing stripes that run from the top of the driver’s face to the back of its crown to help golfers set up square to their target line.average golfers use a driver with a lie angle of about 58 degrees. But when they place their drivers in the address position behind the ball, their lie angle measures about 45 degrees. That’s why if you look at the racing stripes in most orientations other than the setup position, they don’t look straight. But they look perfectly straight at address thanks to the special tooling Ping created to stamp the stripe on the head and verify its proper placement.