Words: Duncan Lennard

Photography: Ping; TaylorMade; Mizuno; Callaway

Golf’s most famous-sounding golf club gave its tone to an entire company. When struck from its enlarged sweetspot, Karsten Solheim’s 1959 A1 putter gave a mellow mid-pitched ring, not unlike a small bell or a musical triangle, thanks to its so-called sound slot. It’s a hard tone to put into words, but suffice to say Lee Westwood could quite easily be walking around today with a large DING or even TING on the side of his bag.

Solheim was one of the first golf club engineers truly to embrace the importance of impact sound. He appreciated that sound is our second-most immediate way of telling how much we like a club, behind visual appeal. He used it to give feedback on the shot – if you didn’t get the right ding, you had mishit the ball. He even used it in his early marketing, creating ad campaigns that featured the sound.

But above all, he recognised the intimate and consummate relationship between sound and feel. “With a putter, probably 90 percent of its feel is down to the sound it makes,” claims Ping’s senior design engineer Marty Jertson.

“We’ve done tests with golfers wearing noise-cancelling headphones. They hit a putter that made a ding like the A1, one that made no sound at all, and one that made a normal modern medium sound. Without hearing impact, they could not tell any difference in feel.

“It’s a perception thing. When a club sounds muffled or quiet, we perceive the face as feeling soft and the ball coming off the face slower – even if it isn’t. When a club sounds louder or harder, we feel the face as hotter or more powerful.”

Perception it may be, but sound’s influence is no less profound. In 2001, Callaway launched the Big Bertha C4 driver. Despite an advanced design and competitive performance, the dull impact from its carbon composite head gave it the impression of being powerless and dead – especially when set against the fiery cracks of the burgeoning titanium market. Callaway phased the club out within two years. Apparently, when it comes to golf clubs, hearing is believing.