I’m playing the Bridgestone B X now, and have to say I just like it alot. Great ball… Wish I had bought more of the 3 packs for $120.
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I’m going to fix Ballnamic (just like Koepka is going to win more majors than tiger)…
On the engineering side, I 100% trust PING. I think their data is good, and I think the recommended balls seem to be pretty spot on… The Bridgestone B X has been the best ball I’ve played all season, and it was the top choice for me once I had figured the system out (not to get it to spit out the ball I wanted, but there are a decent number of levers to pull and it’s not always obvious what they do). I’m excited to try the Srixon XV at some point, but I truly believe the process works.
I think the implementation needs a significant overhaul.
Let’s start with price, and what you get for it… $40 gets you 5 different results. Those results are e-mailed to you and any tweak in the “recipe” costs you a try. So if you get a ball you really like, but hate the way it feels on the putter, and you switch to “Soft” putter feel, it costs you a try… or $8 to change a single setting. You also have 24 hours to use the system, and, once again, the results (and the parameters used to get those results) aren’t saved.
This aspect of it is just a little silly. My assumption on this is they wanted each user to only put in their own ball data, and get personalized suggestions… They want to give you enough tries to tweak the system but not enough that you can fit your friends and family. Honestly, I think their implementation gives them the worst of both worlds. Gear nerds like me don’t get a chance to play with the data all that much, but there are enough tries to easily split with 1 or 2 other people (or 5 once you know the settings)
Granted, this assumes it’s built to be used by average golf junkies and not just PING fitters… If this is purely a tool built to add to a fitting cart and add some value to a PING fitting, and the “at home” version is built to anchor a $40 value into consumer’s minds while also providing proof of concept as gear junkies like me feed $40 into the machine to see what id does, then it’s more or less perfect. Fitters can create accounts, load data from a club fitting and run with it…
But let’s pretend that isn’t what this is for! Let’s fix the Ballnamic, deliver a PING level customer experience to those who spend the $40, acquire more data on avid golfers AND recommend the best golf balls possible…
Ballnamic 2.0:
Basics:
$40 gets you a year long subscription to BALLNAMIC. You can change the variables of your driver launch and iron launch 5 times per year. Add speed? Change drivers? Buy new irons? Input that data. You still have some flexibility on the player parameters, but can’t just fit all your friends (and Bryson) anytime you are bored.
Results Screen: Shows all your selections. From altitude, to wind choice, to feel off the putter. When you are looking at a ball recommendation it shows you want inputs it’s making that choice off of. The current results KINDOF do that, but it would be nice to have the exact specifications built out.
Saved Results: You can save results directly into Ballnamic and name them. Looking for a recommendation for your trip to Idaho? Open the “Idaho Trip” ball recommendation, and it shows you what ball you should play in high altitude with strong winds.
Variable Changes: This is where I think the biggest change needs to be made… all of these options should be changeable (outside the launch paramaters) as much as you want. I do not see any reason to lock these options down. I think this is the interesting bit for Ballnamic, and maybe they don’t want people playing with infinite parameters and reverse engineering their data, but I don’t think that’s super likely. (If needed, some sort of cap at 20 per day could be used)
Ball Optimization: There should be some standard options for “ideal” ball based on the numbers given. Farthest carry, farthest roll out, highest stopping power into greens… maybe some other characteristics, but allow players to just pick “I want the ball that flies the farthest” and not toy with any other settings and see what results it spits out.
So at the end of the day, you get access to the ball fitting results for a year, and can change your playing conditions as much as you want (and save the results) but can only change your launch data a few times. That would be a steal at $40.
Long Term Data: Allowing players to be more invested in Ballnamic and feed it more information could be great for PING. Add in some variable information on the data entry side (swing speed, driver and iron information) and you can start building better profiles of golfers, and find out not only what they are playing (both clubs and balls) but offer some recommendations on what PING products they can try to improve their numbers.
Overall, I think Ballnamic was a fun product to try. I spent $40 and got some results… it’s made me rethink what balls I am playing this season, but I likely won’t spend the money again, even if I make major changes to my game. It would be cool if it allowed me to play with the data some more and explore possible niche ideas. I haven’t recommended others try it in it’s current iteration, but if it’s free at a PING fitting, I will definitely tell people they should give it a go.
Also, I’m assuming this is going to be a free option at PING fittings moving forward. At least one round of data. Fitter will fill in your data on site with your current information, then get the “best” numbers from the PING equipment on hand, and show you the ball recommendations for both (and also show the benefits of the new PING equipment)… then you have a BALLNAMIC account in case you want to play with it moving forward… I’m assuming that’s the plan…
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Not gonna say you over-thought the whole thing 
… but seriously there are some good ideas in there! Hope you emailed a copy to Ping customer service…
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Overthinking golf ideas in my stock and trade… just need to figure out how to monetize it!
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