Ping G5 Fairway Wood

The Ping G5 Fairway Wood rightfully has a place on the 2006 Golf Digest Hot List. Like all of Ping’s club’s, it’s designed to be easy-to-hit, but still usable by low handicappers.

The G5 is the successor to the G2, which was itself an outstanding fairway wood. A friend of mine has a whole bag full of Pings and I had a chance to hit his G2s last year. I hit some very nice shots with it, and was duly impressed.

This year’s offering from Ping comes in 3, 5, 7 and 9 woods. In each, the internal weight pads are strategically positioned, moving further back as loft increases. Thus, Ping says, you get more distance with the lower lofts, and more accuracy with the higher ones.  The face is made of thin 455 Carpenter steel, and is plasma welded to the body. A ‘rocker sole” design is supplsed to help you get the ball moving, and the face squared through all sorts of lies.

The club has a crescent moon- shaped alignment aid on the top, which seems to be a theme lately with Ping. Their new putters also have the crescent. I think that it looks very nice and is confidence building. Somehow, the curve looks as though its going to sweep through the ball.