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Can a 40-year-old golf club compete with the latest technology? We test the legendary Ping Eye2 wedge, famous for its revolutionary sole design and incredible bunker performance, against its modern-day equivalent, the Ping S159.
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00:00I've got an absolute monster for you today. I want to take you back to 1982 and relative
00:06newcomers and upstarts in the equipment industry Ping have just released their first set of
00:11beryllium copper irons the i2 and little do they know within that set they've actually developed
00:17one of the most iconic wedges of all time the Ping i2 copper beryllium wedge. So I've come down
00:26to the Berkshire golf club probably my favorite golf course in the whole of the uk and we've teamed
00:31up with golf clubs for cash one of the leading retailers of pre they provided us with some
00:37absolute gems to test so please check them out in the description below and i've picked this up for
00:42the bargain price of 79.99 this golf club is over 40 years old so i can't wait to put
00:48it through its
00:49paces and see how it stacks up against the modern day equivalent so as i said this was first introduced
00:54in 1982 and the design was pretty revolutionary as you can see it had a cavity back so that perimeter
00:59waiting helped with the forgiveness but the really interesting bit for me was this particularly thin
01:05sole area so they thinned out this sole which saved weight which allowed them to move it further up the
01:09club to give you a higher toe so arguably this is the original high toe wedge another really interesting
01:15design feature which made it exceptional out of the bunkers was the sole geometry if i bend the club
01:21back here and you begin to see the sole you'll see how there's very very little bounce on the heel
01:27side of the club now when you open the face the heel is generally the first bit that gets into
01:31the
01:31sand so this made the entrance to the sand really really smooth then as you move along the sole
01:36of the club and you get to the middle of the toe there's loads of bounce and that would kick
01:40in
01:41and help the exit of the club so the club itself just traveled really smoothly through the bunkers
01:46and as i said made it one of the best bunk clubs of all time so there's only really one
01:50place to
01:51start this test in the sand and i've got a bunker just here now i've tested an awful lot of
01:56wedges in
01:56my time so i'm really keen to see how this legend gets on so let's hit a couple away and
01:59see how it feels
02:07oh i have to say i mean we've got some really high quality sand here at the berkshire and it's
02:11beautifully raked which does help but that really did slip through with very very little resistance
02:16let's go again
02:22i don't know if you can hear that lovely sort of nippy slappy sound as it hits the sand that
02:28that
02:28feels fantastic and i'm quite relieved it stands up to the hype there so i wonder
02:33how this sole would stand up if i give myself a slightly trickier lie so
02:37that's pretty unpleasant let's see if it can dig this out
02:45that's come out pretty well as well so the versatility of the sole that stacks up as well
02:50okay well that was really good out of the sand but i did kind of expect that because of this
02:55club's
02:55reputation but we need it to do more than just be a one trick pony out the bunker so i've
03:00got kind
03:00of a bread and butter pitch shot here 25 yards i'm going to go to this short right pin here
03:05off some
03:05quite tight heathland turf so let's see if this sole can do anything with this shot
03:18the answer i think is yes that stiffed it that felt great it was a little bit of resistance from
03:23the
03:23turf there didn't slide through quite as easy as it did through the sand but the result was really
03:27really good so i don't think i need to hit anymore so that was some really nice performance from the
03:32bunker and i really enjoyed that nippy little pitch shot but as a man who's prone to the odd wonky
03:37approach shot i need to know whether it can get me out of some trouble some long stuff so i've
03:42dropped
03:42one here in this kind of heathery gorsy rough area it's buried a bit and i want to see if
03:46this club
03:47had still got it what it takes to cut through this grass and i'm pretty short-sided as well so
03:51let's see
03:52what it can do it's come out nicely again cut through really nicely i think that minimal bounce
04:03on the heel is something really interesting that was some really good short game performance
04:08but one concern i do have about buying a wedge that's over 40 years old is has the spin rate
04:13diminished so i'm going to head to the practice ground i want to use my foresight gc quad launch
04:17monitor take some spin rates and see where it stands but i want to see how it stacks up against
04:21potentially a modern day equivalent so i've got with me ping's brand new s159 e-grind wedge which
04:28is based on the i2 so let's get to the practice ground let's get some numbers and see how it
04:33stacks
04:33up we're down at the practice ground now because i wanted to hit some mid-length pitch shots now we're
04:39going to use real balls so i've got Titleist pro v1 x's and we're going to measure the data on
04:45the foresight
04:45gc quad launch monitor now we're off mats here it's a really nice artificial surface which is probably
04:51a good thing it means i'm not going to get any grass caught between the club and the ball and
04:55give us
04:56any misreading so i've got three shots in my arsenal really my pitching game i tend to play what feels
05:01like a half a three-quarter and a full so i'm going to do that with both clubs and i
05:05want to see the
05:05launch and the spin numbers to see how they compare so i'm going to start with the i2 and hit
05:09my half
05:10shot oh hang on before i forget if you're enjoying this content please hit the like button comment
05:20down below if you play the old ping i2 copper beryllium wedge and if you haven't already subscribe
05:25to the channel okay so that's interesting so launch angle there just under 30 degrees at 29.4 backspin
05:38feels relatively high at 8498 revs so it'll be interesting for that to compare that to the s159
05:46so the s159 i'm going to give it that same sort of half feel that position i'm pretty familiar with
05:52and let's see how it compares in launch and spin
06:00yeah touch more spin actually popped up a little bit more slightly higher launch angle 30.7
06:05and the spin number is coming in at just under 8600 so i'm getting a little more grip off the
06:10face of
06:11that very similar carry so it's interesting let's hit some three-quarter ones now and see if that carries
06:21through okay 30.6 launch has come up a little bit and 9489 in the spin that feels like quite
06:29a good
06:29healthy number again so let's find out what the s159 will do
06:38okay launch a little bit lower there 29.4 so coming out a little flatter window and 9484 revs of
06:45spin
06:46so some interestingly similar spin numbers so far so let's hit my full shot and see if it continues
06:57and that was under 30 degrees of launch again 29 and a half and then 11 837 revs of backspin
07:05again
07:05which seems a lot so let's see how the modern day equivalent compares with a full swing
07:16okay popped up in launch a little bit 31.1 again comparable but a bit less so 11 615 revs
07:24on that
07:24one very very interesting you'll have seen through that the spin numbers are actually pretty comparable
07:31and on the full shot this was actually generating a little bit more the older wedge it's 42 years old
07:36and it's taken me back a bit because this new s159 wedge is literally fresh out of the wrapper
07:41it's never hit any more any shots before so the grooves are as fresh and as new and as sharp
07:46as
07:46possible but there is potentially another story to be told here because back in the day when they were
07:52making these i2s and the irons as well as the wedges some of them were built with what we called
07:58box
07:58grooves u-shaped grooves which ultimately the usga and rna deemed to create too much spin and they made
08:05them illegal for competition now we've spoken to ping we've given them the serial number
08:10it's actually really difficult to tell whether your club has box grooves or legal grooves for
08:17competition but from the spin numbers i'm looking at there i would suggest that this is probably one of
08:23the old box grooves now i want to do a further test here because those were dry and we've got
08:29a new
08:29finish with the ping wedges which ping are very proud of and i know a lot of the other manufacturers
08:34are
08:34quite jealous of the hydra pearl finish which claims to produce exceptional spin when wet so let's spray
08:41these faces up i've brought a little spray bottle along hit the same sort of shots and figure out
08:45where the spin is now so i've got with me a handy little bottle of water i'm going to absolutely
08:49drench
08:50the face we're going to start with the older i2 first i'm even going to drench up that ball
08:55and let's see what that does to the spin number i'm going to go in my half shot again
09:04okay so spin came off quite significantly there that was only just over 5000 revs
09:11so 5079 launch popped right up so when you get less friction launch generally pops up spin comes down
09:18that's exactly what's happened there 36.9 launch 5079 spin let's try the s159 and let's do the same
09:25thing that similar half shot feel and see where we go
09:31wow that is a big old difference so the launch has only just gone up it's not even 31 degrees
09:39but the
09:39backspin is over 3000 revs more but 8155 revolutions per minute out of this which would suggest to me
09:48that ping's hydra pearl finish is working very very well here well i found that fascinating around the
09:55greens this old copper beryllium ping i2 still did a really great job for me the entrance and exit through
10:02the sand how little resistance it created let me play some really really good bunker shots even the
10:08little nippy shot off the tight turf the pit shot and hacking it out of that longer rough still
10:12performed really really well and then when we came here to the practice ground and started hitting
10:17those three quarter half and full shots the spin number was super comparable with even a brand new
10:23fresh s159 which got me even suspicious about the grooves however then we introduced the moisture
10:29and i think as you can see the s159 and the hydra pearl technology there from ping
10:35elevated it to a completely different level of spin so if you're someone who plays in the desert and
10:40never sees any moisture whatsoever you can probably get some really similar performance for a little bit
10:45less money but if you play an early morning dew rain or any type of moisture then you're going to
10:50really sacrifice some spin numbers from a newer model
10:54you
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