Ping’s G440 K driver makes surprising first impression

Welcome to Fully Fit 2026, GOLF’s new platform for providing you with real-golfer insights into what 2026 gear might be best suited for your game. To this end, we assembled six GOLF content creators of varying abilities and ran them through the gauntlet of six full-bag fittings (driver to putter!) at six major club manufacturers in Phoenix and Carlsbad, Calif. Our hope: that you might see shades of your own game in one of our panelists’ and take some learnings and inspiration from their fitting experiences.

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Skies were blue, the air was dry and hopes were high as our Fully Fit panel got set for fitting No. 1 of our six-OEM fitting bonanza at Ping’s Proving Grounds in Phoenix.

Our Fully Fit panel of myself (Jack Hirsh), Johnny Wunder, Jake Morrow, Maddi MacClurg and Wadeh Maroun — Sean Zak did not arrive until the next day of the trip — was ready to get our new WITB journey going.

The Ping Proving Grounds is the only OEM facility we visited that’s not in Southern California. The driving range is in the middle of a industrial park, which is part of Ping’s parent company, Karsten Manufacturing Corporation — none of which detracts from the first-class experience of getting fit there.

MORE FULLY FIT: Fully Fit hub page | Here’s why we’re ‘testing’ golf clubs differently this year | Inside 6 days of fittings and testing | Browse 2026 drivers | Browse 2026 irons

Ping’s pride as an engineering company shows through both its golf clubs and the advanced Ping Co-Pilot app its fitters use to fill out bags, a unique time that only myself, Johnny Wunder and Wadeh Maroun had experienced previously.

This time around, there was a surprise contender at the top of everyone’s bag: the new Ping G440 K driver.

No one had seen the G440 K before this trip, and many of us likely thought it was going to be a high-spin max-forgiveness driver ideal for slow swing-speed players. We were wrong.

Johnny came in wanting to make the driver work for him no matter what, but it turned out he didn’t have much work to do.

“You have your preconsieved notions of what that driver is supposed to be,” he said. “What it actually is thoughly surprised me.

“Typically a driver like that for me is something I’m always worried about it spinning too much or just something I don’t need it to be, and this driver was signifcantly better than everything else that I hit.”

Jake, Johnny and myself all left Ping feeling like we could end up playing that driver — but we still had so many fittings left to do.

PING G440 K Custom Driver

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ALSO AVAILABLE AT: PGA TOUR Superstore

Further down the bag, Wadeh came in thinking he was going to be fit to Ping’s players irons, but ended up in their new (and still unreleased) hollow-bodied players distance irons. Meanwhile, Maddi went deep on gapping out her bag to make sure she didn’t have any clubs that were too close to each other.

Throughout the day, we also had a special guest appearence from six-time PGA Tour winner and Fully Equipped contributor Rocco Mediate, who lives in the area. Rocco plays a full bag of Ping gear and told Johnny his journey was probably over.

“You need to continue on this club test thing here,” Rocco told him. “And then stop.”

At the end of Day 1, each of us felt confident we could play excellent golf with a full set of Ping clubs. But there was still much work to be done.

Be sure to watch the full first episode of Fully Fit above or below on YouTube.

Ready to overhaul your bag in 2026 like our Fully Fit panelists? Find a club-fitting location near you at True Spec Golf.