Ping drivers have always been known for being “brick s***houses” — as our gear director Johnny Wunder likes to say — that no matter where you hit it on the face, you barely lose any speed and it flies dead straight.
The new Ping G440 K driver might have taken things to a whole new level.
Thanks to a new Dual Carbonfly Wrap crown and sole, a new acoustic rib structure and an adjustable backweight for the first time on this model, Ping is calling this its most forgiving driver ever at over 10.4k MOI in certain configurations. But, because of a lower CG, it doesn’t come at the expense of speed and high spin.
“We have really challenged our engineers and the team to understand how to put the traits that Ping has been known for in forgiveness, but pair that with the elements that the faster clubhead speed player can really influence getting peak potential in their distance,” Ping Director of Product Design Ryan Stokke told GOLF. “High MOI is important and will benefit all golfers on the planet. But you do need to pair high MOI with ideal CG location.”
Keep reading below for more on the Ping G440 K driver, including my take on the release.
What’s actually new with the Ping G440 K — and why you should care
Making a forgiving driver fast
The G440 K achieves the deepest CG Ping has ever created in a driver and it also has the lowest CG they’ve ever had in a driver of this class.
That was enabled by a new Dual Carbonfly Wrap, which replaces most of the sole with carbon fiber compared to the existing G440 models. That saved a ton of weight, which was reallocated in the head, mostly into the 32 g tungsten backweight (4 g larger than on G430 Max 10K) to drive CG deeper and lower.
The Ping G440 K has a full carbon sole.
Jack Hirsh/GOLF
Ping knows that a deep CG is the most forgiving, but a low CG is what kills spin and allows this driver to appeal to higher speed players who generally stay away from high MOI drivers because of high spin.
“When our highest clubhead speed players, our Tour staff players, hit this, they immediately notice that it launches in the right window. It spins in the right window,” Stokke said. “But then, when they do have their mishits, the regulation and the retention of ball speed, launch and spin, is just unparalleled. And so for a lot of our golfers, we’re just seeing that this does fit a much broader audience.”
Keeping 10k forgiveness with adjustability
You’ll notice that Ping is no longer putting “10K” in the name of this driver as they did with the G430 Max 10K.
But yet, the G440 K still has well over 10,000 g/cm2 MOI forgiveness and even reaches 10.4k in certain configurations.
So why drop the moniker? Because if you want adjustability with both build spec and the new adjustable backweight, the 10k name was actually limiting.
“We didn’t want the 10K requirement to be something that minimizes or marginalizes the fit potential,” Stokke said. “And so MOI is directly tied to head weight, and as you can imagine, one of the big things is as you go lighter in head weight, it will directly influence the measured MOI. And we will have some builds in the market that are below 10K based on actually fitting that optimally to the target customer, which is part of the reason why we just went with K this time around.”
The backweight is now movable and 4 g heavier than G430 Max 10K.
Jack Hirsh/GOLF
That relaxation also allowed them to make the backweight adjustable like the rest of the G440 line. The peak 10.4k MOI is actually achieved when moving the weight into the fade position.
While most other drivers on the market lose MOI when the weights are placed in the toe, the G440K is able to raise it thanks to the deep placement of the weight and the short distance it travels.
“By narrowing the travel and maximizing the mass of that weight, we retain and get the most efficient MOI with also the amount of movement from a fitting standpoint,” Stokke said.
Knowing that an increase in carbon on the sole would significantly alter the sound, Ping ran a finite element analysis (FEA), sound testing and player feedback to build these new ribs to stiffen the sole and crown.
The new sound ribs on the G440 K driver.
Ping
The 440 K takes that another step forward with a new composite crown bridge and sole ribs to tune the sound to be more muted and pleasing to the ear.
They executed a similar process when tuning the sound for the initial G440 drivers as well.
Ping G440 K Driver
The Ping G440 K driver from all angles.
Jack Hirsh/GOLF
What it is: Compared to the G440 Max, the K has a longer profile with a shallower face to pull the CG as deep and as low as possible. A new Dual Carbon Wrap also allowed the reallocation of extra weight low and deep. For the first time, a 32 g backweight allows left-to-right adjustability with the highest MOI setting being in the “fade” position. In testing by our partners at True Spec Golf, the 440 K registered the highest speed (170.3 mph) of any driver tested by our high-speed (116 mph) fitter. It’s also available in a lighter HL build.
Lofts available: 9.0˚, 10.5˚, 12˚
Who it’s for: The 440 K has a unique ability where it will fit both high-speed players looking to play a more forgiving head without spinning too much or sacrificing speed as well as game improvement players looking for all the forgiveness and launch they can get.
My take: The most Ping Ping driver, but with speed
I was lucky enough to test the G440 K driver before I really knew what it was supposed to be.
I wasn’t expecting a max forgiveness head to be one that could potentially challenge for a spot in my bag, but boy was I surprised.
It looks like a Ping driver (although the longer profile is a bit jarring at first), it feels solid and it sounds like a Ping driver (and in a good way!), but this driver does not perform like an any other Ping driver I’ve seen.
That’s not a knock on previous Ping drivers, but I was shocked to see that even on a day where I felt like I had little juice in the tank, I still was able to reach high 160s in ball speeds with just over 112 mph swing speed. That’s almost as efficient as you can get, and I’m not used to seeing that kind of efficiency.
The driver didn’t seem to know that I wasn’t swinging my best, but that’s exactly what you want out of a driver. You want to be able to hit as good on your bad days as your good days and the G440 K is great at that.
It didn’t come at the expense of shaping ability, either. Hitting a fade has usually been a challenge for me with high MOI, deep CG drivers, but not the 440 K.
I got these results when I moved the driver to flat minus and put the weight in the fade position, settings many other players are seeing success with as well.
Ping has made a name for itself building forgiving and easy to hit drivers, but now it has one a lot of high-speed players are going to want too.
Price, Specs and Availability
The Ping G440 K Driver is available for pre-orders starting Jan. 13 and arrives at retail locations on Jan. 29.
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