BOYLSTON, Mass. – Dozens of curious New England PGA Professionals gathered at Cyprian Keyes Golf Club on Monday for a unique NEPGAU education seminar hosted by PING Vice President of Fitting & Performance Marty Jertson, PGA.
Jertson, a named inventor on over 125 patents and the lead designer on the PING G410 driver, gave a deep dive into some of the research, data and science that goes into the club design and fitting process today.
“If you as a fitter understand that better, you can know when to pull on a certain lever to fit a particular player, or characteristic, or miss or shot-shape,” Jertson said after the seminar. “You can get to the fitted solution more quickly and more efficiently. In that process, depending on your customer, you can explain the technology to them better, the why. For some customers, maybe not all, but for some customers it can be really good to tell the story.”
Given the technological advances of the last decade that have reshaped the club-fitting process and maximized the gains a player can realize from a properly fit set of clubs, Monday’s topic, and presenter, were particularly timely.
“Ten years ago, if you asked who has a launch monitor, a couple people might have raised their hand. Whereas now it’s 90 percent, or even more,” Jertson said. “In the last 10 years who would have thought all these places would have pretty expensive launch monitors? But it’s worth it. It’s worth it to help the golfer get better, to fit better, to teach off of these tools, and that’s what we’re seeing.”
Even though today’s technology enables fitters and players to realize never-seen-before gains, Jertson expects the technology to keep advancing at rapid pace.
“Where are we going to be in 10 years? I don’t know, there’s no way to predict the future,” the three-time PGA Championship participant said. “But we want to measure things that we currently can’t, and that’s kind of fun. It’ll be never ending. As long as we stay curious and hungry and question the status quo, there will continue to be advancements.”