PING Uses Visualization Technologies to Help Golfers

Almost everyone in the golf world is familiar with Karsten Solheim, the founder of PING Golf.  Karsten and PING pioneered many of the innovations in club fitting and has long been the key player in the market for custom clubs.  Recently, PING embarked on an ambitious effort to radically improve the process of club fitting and to give the consumer a more scientifically accurate and visually compelling fitting experience.  Enter nFlight®.

According to the PING website, “nFlight uses PING's proven multi-step fitting processes for metal woods, irons and wedges to guide the fitter through the process. Familiar concepts such as the interview, static measurements and color code remain part of the process. In addition to providing detailed club specifications, nFlight includes a gapping analysis feature to make full set recommendations. By analyzing data from three clubs hit during the fitting session - typically a hybrid, iron and wedge - the software configures a set to produce proper distance gaps between every club.” 

This rather dry description masks some wonderful software engineering and visualization techniques inherent in the nFlight app.  After pursuing a more “conventional” process for a period of some months, the engineers at PING discovered the power of Microsoft Expression Blend and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).  Combining these toolsets with Visual Studio 2008, the developers working with their design team were able to achieve significant improvements in developer productivity and developer/designer efficiency.  The combination of PING’s years of experience and the scientific (especially physics) principles applied to this effort have made this a superior implementation for the fitter, the customer and PING.

I was excited to see this product come out and validate the Expression/Visual Studio productivity concept and I encourage you to review the excellent resources noted here for more details:

John Mullinax’s blog – Details on the technologies used

Microsoft case studies – White paper and Video

Ping Web Site – nFlight fitting section – Video also

Engineering Details – PING team discusses the science of fitting