- 1 year ago
Can a 40-year-old golf club compete with the latest technology? We test the legendary Ping Eye2 wedge, famous for its revolutionary sole design and incredible bunker performance, against its modern-day equivalent, the Ping S159.
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00:00I've got an absolute monster for you today. I want to take you back to 1982 and relative
00:06newcomers and upstarts in the equipment industry Ping have just released their first set of
00:11beryllium copper irons the i2 and little do they know within that set they've actually developed
00:17one of the most iconic wedges of all time the Ping i2 copper beryllium wedge. So I've come down
00:26to the Berkshire golf club probably my favorite golf course in the whole of the uk and we've teamed
00:31up with golf clubs for cash one of the leading retailers of pre they provided us with some
00:37absolute gems to test so please check them out in the description below and i've picked this up for
00:42the bargain price of 79.99 this golf club is over 40 years old so i can't wait to put it through its
00:49paces and see how it stacks up against the modern day equivalent so as i said this was first introduced
00:54in 1982 and the design was pretty revolutionary as you can see it had a cavity back so that
00:59perimeter weighting helped with the forgiveness but the really interesting bit for me was this
01:04particularly thin sole area so they thinned out this sole which saved weight which allowed them
01:08to move it further up the club to give you a higher toe so arguably this is the original high toe wedge
01:14another really interesting design feature which made it exceptional out of the bunkers was the sole
01:20geometry if i bend the club back here and you begin to see the sole you'll see how there's very very
01:25little bounce on the heel side of the club now when you open the face the heel is generally the first
01:30bit that gets into the sand so this made the entrance to the sand really really smooth then as you move
01:35along the sole of the club and you get to the middle and the toe there's loads of bounce and that
01:40would kick in and help the exit of the club so the club itself just traveled really smoothly through
01:46the bunkers and as i said made it one of the best bunk clubs of all time so there's only really one
01:50place to start this test in the sand and i've got a bunker just here now i've tested an awful lot of
01:56wedges in my time so i'm really keen to see how this legend gets on so let's hit a couple away and see how
02:00it feels oh i have to say i mean we've got some really high quality sand here at the berkshire and
02:10it's beautifully raked which does help but that really did slip through with very very little
02:15resistance let's go again then if you can hear that lovely sort of nippy slappy sound as it hits
02:27the sand that that feels fantastic and i'm quite relieved it stands up to the hype there so i wonder
02:33how this sole would stand up if i give myself a slightly trickier lie so that's pretty unpleasant let's
02:38see if it can dig this out that's come out pretty well as well so the versatility of the sole
02:49that stacks up as well okay well that was really good out of the sand but i did kind of expect that
02:54because of this club's reputation but we need it to do more than just be a one-trick pony out the
02:59bunker so i've got kind of a bread and butter pitch shot here 25 yards i'm going to go to this short
03:04right pin here off some quite tight heathland turf so let's see if this sole can do anything with
03:09this shot the answer i think is yes that stiffed it that felt great it was a little bit of resistance
03:23from the turf there didn't slide through quite as easy as it did through the sand but the result was
03:27really really good so i don't think i need to hit anymore so that was some really nice performance from
03:32the bunker and i really enjoyed that nippy little pitch shot but as a man who's prone to the odd
03:37wonky approach shot i need to know whether it can get me out of some trouble some long stuff so i've
03:42dropped one here in this kind of heathery gorsy rough area it's buried a bit and i want to see if this
03:46clubhead still got it what it takes to cut through this grass and i'm pretty short-sided as well so
03:51let's see what it can do it's come out nicely again cut through really nicely i think that
04:02minimal bounce on the heel is something really interesting that was some really good short game
04:07performance but one concern i do have about buying a wedge that's over 40 years old is has the spin
04:12rate diminished so i'm going to head to the practice ground i want to use my foresight gc quad launch
04:17monitor to take some spin rates and see where it stands but i want to see how it stacks up against
04:21potentially a modern day equivalent so i've got with me ping's brand new s159 e-grind wedge which
04:28is based on the i2 so let's get to the practice ground let's get some numbers and see how it stacks
04:33up we're down at the practice ground now because i wanted to hit some mid-length pitch shots now
04:39we're going to use real balls so i've got tightless pro v1 x's and we're going to measure the data on the
04:45foresight gc quad launch monitor now we're off mats here it's really nice artificial surface which is
04:51probably a good thing it means i'm not going to get any grass caught between the club and the ball
04:55and give us any misreading so i've got three shots in my arsenal really my pitching game i tend to play
05:00what feels like a half a three-quarter and a full so i'm going to do that with both clubs and i want
05:05to see the launch and the spin numbers to see how they compare so i'm going to start with the i2 and hit
05:09my half shot oh hang on before i forget if you're enjoying this content please hit the like button
05:20comment down below if you play the old ping i2 copper beryllium wedge and if you haven't already
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05:25okay so that's interesting so launch angle there just under 30 degrees at 29.4 backspin feels relatively
05:39high at 8498 revs so it'd be interesting for that to compare that to the s159 so the s159 i'm going to
05:48give it that same sort of half feel that position i'm pretty familiar with let's see how it compares in
05:53launch and spin yeah touch more spin actually popped up a little bit more slightly higher launch
06:03angle 30.7 and the spin number is coming in at just under 8600 so i'm getting a little more grip
06:10off the face of that very similar carry so it's interesting let's hit some three-quarter ones now
06:15and see if that carries through okay 30.6 launch has come up a little bit and 9489
06:28in the spin that feels like quite a good healthy number again so let's find out what the s159 will do
06:33okay launch a little bit lower there 29.4 so coming out a little flatter window and 9484 revs of spin
06:46so some interestingly similar spin numbers so far so let's hit my full shot and see if it continues
06:51and that was under 30 degrees of launch again 29 and a half and then 11 837 revs of backspin again
07:05which seems a lot so let's see how the modern day equivalent compares with a full swing
07:10okay popped up in launch a little bit 31.1 again comparable but a bit less so 11 615 revs on that one
07:25very very interesting you'll have seen through that the spin numbers are actually pretty comparable
07:31and on the full shot this was actually generating a little bit more the older wedge it's 42 years old
07:36and it's taken me back a bit because this new s159 wedge is literally fresh out of the wrapper
07:41it's never hit any more any shots before so the grooves are as fresh and as new and as sharp as
07:46possible but there is potentially another story to be told here because back in the day when they
07:52were making these i2s and the irons as well as the wedges some of them were built with what we
07:57called box grooves u-shaped grooves which ultimately the usga and rna deemed to create too much spin
08:04and they made them illegal for competition now we've spoken to ping we've given them the serial
08:09number it's actually really difficult to tell whether your club has box grooves or legal grooves
08:17for competition but from the spin numbers i'm looking at there i would suggest that this is probably one
08:23of the old box grooves now i want to do a further test here because those were dry and we've got a new
08:29finish with the ping wedges which ping are very proud of and i know a lot of the other manufacturers are
08:34quite jealous of the hydra pearl finish which claims to produce exceptional spin when wet so let's
08:40spray these faces up i brought a little spray bottle along hit the same sort of shots and figure out
08:45where the spin is now so i've got with me a handy little bottle of water i'm going to absolutely
08:49drench the face we're going to start with the older i2 first i'm even going to drench up that ball
08:56and let's see what that does to the spin number i'm going to go in my half shot again
09:04okay so spin came off quite significantly there that was only just over 5000 revs
09:11so 5079 launch popped right up so when you get less friction launch generally pops up spin comes
09:17down that's exactly what's happened there 36.9 launch 5079 spin let's try the s159 and let's
09:24do the same thing that similar half shot feel and see where we go wow that is a big old difference so
09:36the launch has only just gone up it's not even 31 degrees but the backspin is over 3000 revs more
09:43but 8155 revolutions per minute out of this which would suggest to me that ping's hydra pearl finish
09:51is working very very well here well i found that fascinating around the greens this old copper
09:57beryllium ping i2 still did a really great job for me the entrance and exit through the sand how little
10:03resistance it created let me play some really really good bunker shots even the little nippy
10:08shot off the tight turf the pitch shot and hacking it out of that longer rough still performed really
10:13really well and then when we came here to the practice ground and started hitting those three
10:17quarter half and full shots the spin number was super comparable with even a brand new fresh s159
10:24which got me even suspicious about the grooves however then we introduced the moisture and i think
10:30as you can see the s159 and the hydra pearl technology there from ping elevated it to a completely different
10:37level of spin so if you're someone who plays in the desert and never sees any moisture whatsoever you
10:42can probably get some really similar performance for a little bit less money but if you play an early
10:47morning dew rain or any type of moisture then you're going to really sacrifice some spin numbers from a
10:53newer model
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