Review: Ping G30 3-wood

Getting Just the Right Balance

3-woods have changed greatly in just the past 3 years. They are so much more than a matching club to your driver. Now they can be about distance or accuracy or off-the-tee or recovery or some combination of all of those. The Ping G30 is designed to fill all your 3-wood needs. It is all about getting the right balance of all of those qualities.

The Ping G30 line is all about Turbulators. These ridges on the crown are built in for better aerodynamics. As I found with the Driver, this head is fast. I squeaked out about 1 mph extra clubhead speed with the G30 3-wood.

In addition to the Turbulators is new face material and hosel adaptor. Instead of 3 setting there are now 5 settings that allow you dial it in a little better for your swing. I tried all the settings and -.6 was the best for trajectory and dispersion. The new Carpenter steel face feels really good too, especially because it is rather large meaning the sweet spot is pretty big on this club. I certainly used all of it, and still had consistent results.

On the course, I found this to be longer than expected. Typically I expect the G-series clubs to be more about control and accuracy than about distance, but the G30 line added distance to forgiveness. Because the face is wide from heel to toe and yet shallow faced, it was pretty easy to hit from any lie (within reason). I teed it up on the higher side so that I found the middle of the face more often and off the turf I made sure to really stay down on it. For some reason I had a slight tendency to hit this club on the lower grooves.

My Flightscope testing showed me how good this head really is. I had fast speeds; ball and swing speed, as well as fairly low spin with decent launch. While the dispersion was pretty good, all my misses were right. I know I had the setting at -.6, but when I moved it to +, they went further right which you’d think would be opposite, but for me this club just didn’t go left. While there was consistency, I was surprised on the left to right ball flight pattern.

The stock shaft on the Ping G30 3-wood is the TFC-419F High-Balance shaft. It is offers many excellent qualities of a solid 3-wood shaft. The feel is nice, the launch is about mid high, and the overall weight is good. Unfortunately I’m not sold on the extreme counterbalance property. I had no success with the high balance driver shaft (I bombed the Tour 80), and found that I could control the 3-wood most of the time for really good results, but if I tried to really swing hard, I would lose it way right. I’m just not sure this shaft is ideal for my timing. I was able to manipulate my swing and adjust, but I still ended up losing too many to the right. I’m not sure this shaft is for “slicers”. I’d really recommend checking out the other fairway shafts when you get fit.

It might sounds like a broken record, but get fit before you buy a G30 3-wood. Ping wants you to have the best performing clubs in your bag and recommend getting fit too. The G30 3-wood head is really good, these Turbulator things work! It is really the combo feel, distance, control and consistency that make this a well balanced 3-wood.

Check the price online here

For more information: www.ping.com

Quick Hits
+Faster head
+Solid sound and feel
+Good trajectory
+Hot and forgiving face

–High balance point shaft might not work for everyone