PING is an American sports equipment manufacturing company based in Phoenix, Arizona. It focuses on golf equipment, producing golf clubs and golf bags. The company was founded by Karsten Solheim, following a career as an engineer at the General Electric company. In 1959, he started making putters in his garage in Redwood City, California.In 1967, he resigned from his job at General Electric to develop the PING company.
Employing a patent-pending technology known as AlumiCore™, PING today introduced the i59 iron, a forged blade that delivers the look, feel and trajectory control preferred by better players with forgiveness unprecedented in blade-style designs. “There’s been a lot of anticipation for the i59 iron since we took them out on tour a few months ago, so we’re very excited to bring them to golfers around the world,” said John K. Solheim, PING President. “It’s a true forged blade on the outside, but inside it’s like nothing ever engineered in golf equipment. Our team took on the challenge of disrupting an iron category that traditionally has lacked a lot of performance innovation and they developed an iron unlike any other. The combination of the look, feel and forgiveness ‘when you need it’ sets it apart from anything else in the industry. Once golfers hit it, they’ll be pleasantly surprised by its versatility. The i59 will clearly appeal to better golfers but the combination of forgiveness and clean appearance will attract golfers of all skill levels.”
During the development of the iron, PING’s innovation and engineering teams spent significant time perfecting the manufacturing process which includes 100% inspection of numerous steps, including sole shaping, head polishing, face machining and head forging. Joining the 1025 carbon steel forged body, aluminum insert and laser-cut 17-4 stainless steel face employs a forging process known as swaging, which applies pressure to the three parts, creating a unibody-style part that is then plasma-welded to seal the seams. from a durable 17-4 stainless steel — a material that offered very little forgiveness, when compared to the 460cc head that’s today’s TOUR standard, and has since been replaced by titanium and lightweight carbon fiber.