My Ping G440 hybrid has become one of my favorite clubs.
Jack Hirsh/GOLF
Welcome to I Tried It, a GOLF.com series about golf items — apparel,gear, accessories, etc. — that we’ve recently taken out for a spin. We’re here to give our honest, no-frills takes on the latest and greatest golf or golf-adjacent items. So, scroll down to read about what we love about golf’s newest (or new to us) products.
***
The hybrid is one of those clubs that is both great for highly skilled golfers and recreational amateurs alike, but also one that can be very divisive.
I know of one longtime PGA Professional who used to play the PGA Tour and refused to play hybrids into his 60s because he said he hit them too high. The number of highly skilled players who don’t like hybrids because as soon as they set one down, they fear a left miss.
On the flip side, there’s Fred Couples, the former World No. 1 who now has as many hybrids (3) as irons in his golf bag.
Growing up, I played two hybrids in the bag, but as I got older and developed more speed, I started to fall into the camp fearing that left miss.
The last hybrid I owned until this year was a TaylorMade SIM Max Rescue that I impulsively bought because it was the one hybrid Rory McIlroy ever played. But that was a club, despite some healthy lead tape on the toe, I was never really comfortable with. Instead, I played a driving iron that was really great in dry conditions, but it was hard to hit out of the rough or high enough to be of real use to me.
I tried a few different shafts in a 5-wood, but nothing really fit my gap correctly until I got fit for Ping’s new G440 hybrid.
The fitting
I was fortunate enough to tack on a visit to Ping’s Proving Grounds performance facility in Phoenix, Ariz., while I was in town for the WM Phoenix Open earlier this year. While I loved all the clubs I was fit into from the G440 Max driver and 3-wood to the Blueprint S set of irons, the biggest improvement for me was the G440 hybrid over my current 3-iron.
After my fitter, James, and I finished with the 3-wood, I was surprised to see him go straight to a hybrid as opposed to a higher-lofted wood.
I add a lot of loft to the club at impact so getting the ball in the air has never really been a problem, but that makes it really hard to find a second fairway wood. While I think 7-woods are great for most players, I’ve never had one. I hit it too high and they don’t go very far. Usually, a 5-wood hits the right gapping number for me (around 235 in the air comfortably, with the ability to push to 240), but I often have to strengthen them to almost a 4-wood loft to get the right launch window.
Obviously, James picked up on this and went straight for a 20-degree G440 3-hybrid. Since I wasn’t playing a hybrid and hadn’t for years, there was some trial and error when it came to shafts, but we eventually settled on the Nippon N.S. Pro Modus3 Hybrid GOST, also known as the shaft Scottie Scheffler plays in his driving iron, in a TX flex. It’s a 112 gram shaft.
Why did I need something so heavy? I’m not entirely sure, but I do tend to pull hard on the handle of the club from the top of the swing and something heavier is always helpful for that.
But that combination of shaft and head really brought in my dispersion. The nice thing about Ping’s Trajectory Tuning 2.0 hosel is that it can go flat, so once we adjusted the loft down a degree (to open the face too) and flattened the club (F – setting), it felt almost like I was hitting an iron, but I was flying it 235 and peaking at 120 feet in the air.
Shockingly, with the setup we landed on during my fitting, I never hit one ball left. Obviously, it’s a small sample size, and the fear of hitting hybrids left doesn’t go away that easily.
So as soon as that first left miss happened, it changed how I stood over the club. And this is the best club I have found to solve my gapping issue at the top of the bag, so I wanted to keep it in the bag.
The solution was stupidly simple: Just add a small strip of lead tape to the toe. This was just a few grams, and I haven’t hit one left since I did it. This also makes sense since I have movable weights in both my driver and mini driver moved toward the toe.
Now I’ve got a versatile club that I’ve used from the tee, the fairway, the rough and around the green. I’ve hit it from as close as 215 uphill to as long as 250. For reference, I carry my 4-iron 217 yards and my mini driver around 265 off the deck. I’m certainly comfortable hitting the hybrid from 240 and getting it to stop quickly, and that’s exactly the gap I need.
Bottom line
PING G440 Custom Hybrid
The G440 hybrids appeal to a variety of skill levels, each engineered to deliver different ball- flight characteristics – from the slightly fade-biased 2 hybrid for off-the-tee performance to the draw-inducing 5, 6 and 7 hybrids that help optimize gapping. They all share a new, shallower and thinner face design, which improves face contact for more ball speed and higher-launching shots that hit and hold the green.
FLIES HIGH LANDS SOFT
Optimized launch and spin ensure distance with stopping power.
FREE-HOSEL DESIGN
Saves weight to lower CG, optimize launch/spin and increase forgiveness.
ROUNDED SOLE
Ensures pleasing face angle in all hosel settings
CARBONFLY WRAP
Lightweight carbon crown saves weight to increase MOI, lower CG.
This is another great example of being open-minded to trying something new when going into a fitting. I went in thinking I was still probably not a hybrid player and left with a club that might be one of my favorites in the bag.
Jack Hirsh is the Associate Equipment Editor at GOLF. A Pennsylvania native, Jack is a 2020 graduate of Penn State University, earning degrees in broadcast journalism and political science. He was captain of his high school golf team and recently returned to the program to serve as head coach. Jack also still *tries* to remain competitive in local amateurs. Before joining GOLF, Jack spent two years working at a TV station in Bend, Oregon, primarily as a Multimedia Journalist/reporter, but also producing, anchoring and even presenting the weather. He can be reached at [email protected].
