November 17, 2014 – When Fernando Cambronero started playing golf, he didn’t know what a Ping golf club was. And when he took over the distribution of the brand in Spain in the late 80s he still hadn’t even used one. He couldn’t have imagined the success that the brand he distributes in Spain would achieve, boosting the motivation of amateur golfers with custom fitted clubs and making their game more enjoyable.
Nor did it occur to Fernando that, as a manager of the company, he would contribute to raising the image of Ping to the very top of the Tour, when more than a quarter century ago he decided to take on a chap from Guadalhorce (Malaga, Spain) without knowing anything about him except that he apparently ‘hits very well.’ A guy called Jimenez, alias the ‘Pisha.’
“I first got to know the Ping brand in 1986,” explains Fernando Cambronero to MyGolfWay.com. “I’d been a member of the Board of Directors of the Club de Campo del Mediterráneo, here in Castellon, for four years, when Victor Arandes became the new President. He had a golf equipment distribution company called Golf Pro. He soon asked me if I would be interested in working with him to manage a brand that was pending to be granted.”
At that time Fernando, a born worker from a humble family, was the representative of a pharmaceutical company in Barcelona (Dr. Esteve Group) in Castellon, but he dared to say yes to Victor Arandes, and that’s how the two partners threw themself into the adventure of Ping in Spain.
“I recognize that at the time I didn’t have much idea about what Ping was, and I didn’t use any Ping clubs”, Cambronero confesses. “We started the company, but after three years Ping decided to create its own subsidiary, and it then offered me the position of Manager of Ping Spain”.
By then Fernando Cambronero was in his forties, and just then something happened which would mark the rest of his life. In 1989 he went to the USA for the mandatory interview with Karsten Solheim, founder of the brand, at the Ping headquarters in Phoenix. He wanted to meet Fernando and make sure that the future of Ping in the Iberian Peninsula was being handed to someone with his same feeling. “I said to him, ‘Look, what I’m looking for right now is a job for me and my family to get going. I‘m not trying to become a millionaire’. And he answered, ‘Fernando, do you know that I was much older than you when I started with Ping?”
Undoubtedly, the engineer who worked as a shoemaker when he started developing his first prototype irons and putters in his garage in Redwood City (California) in 1959, was always very clear about how to run his business, but he couldn’t have imagined how far his legacy would reach in the golf world of the 21st Century.
A family business to attending the golfer
From then until now, the growth of Ping in Spain has paralleled the popularization of golf in Spain, which has gone from the 50,000 licenses of 1990 to 300,000 licenses in 2014. Today everyone who frequents a Spanish golf club knows the brand well, like in any golf course around the world.
What a great feeling to be involved in Ping! “Incredibly, or rather, ‘credibly’ for me, I’m in the best company in the world,” says Fernando Cambronero, “in every way. And although things have changed in recent years because of the competition and the demand for profit, it is a sensational company for its workers. I am 67 years old and I could have retired, but I’m here, working happily, and all thanks to my team which still puts up with me, ha ha.”
What is it that distinguishes Ping from other brands. “Well, Ping is a golf company, and others are businesses dedicated to golf,” clarifies the Director of the brand in Spain. “Ping is a family business, and others are on the stock exchange. As we are not accountable to any board of administration outside the Solheim family, it’s the product and the superb, unquestionable ability of our engineers to improve the current products which marks our times. We put all our efforts into offering the player the best possible golf club, with the specifications with which they can develop their best game.”
What is it that makes those who play with Ping clubs generally not change brand? “This is because they know that Ping doesn’t release a product into the market until it has substantially improved on the previous one.” At a time when golf multinational companies try to increase sales at all costs, the launch of new products has accelerated and the life cycle of new clubs has shortened to hitherto unimagined limits. And yet, “the life of a Ping product right now is between 18 and 24 months,” says Fernando.
“Previously it could be 5 to 6 years, but due to rapid advances in R & D, together with competition and demand pressures, we are managing to improve previous products faster. But most of our competitors are releasing new products every six months. I am not a technician in this sense, but in the company we know that this is not enough time to make substantial improvements. One and a half or two years are needed to work with new materials, redistribute weights, change the centre of gravity… and getting them to work together requires a series of tests so that the player can notice an improvement in his or her game. In some models we’ve even taken three years to make improvements.”
The best example is the G line which, counting from the G2 to G30, represents 15 years of success for Ping during which each new G family has outdone the previous one. “Over the years, the continuous improvement of this line of clubs has meant that the G30 caused a lot of expectation before being launched three months ago on the market, which made it our biggest product launch ever. The G30 family is causing a tremendous admiration amongst both amateur and professional players. The G30 driver is being used by 72% of our players on the PGA Tour and 88% on the European Tour.”
“Billy Horschell, Ping PGA Tour player gained 12 yards with the change to the G30 driver just a few weeks before winning the much coveted FedExCup. And it isn’t only successful in the hands of our professionals Angel Cabrera, Bubba Watson, Hunter Mahan, Miguel Angel Jimenez and Azahara Muñoz. It’s already become the sales leader in the US, UK and most of Europe, including Spain.”
From perimeter weighting to custom fitting
Initially Ping offered pioneering and innovative technology in its clubs, starting with the perimeter weight distribution towards the toe and heel with the famous Anser putter, and the back cavity irons that have been copied throughout the world. But Ping’s big break came as the precursor and developer of custom fitting, for which it has established itself as a world leader.
“Actually, Ping clubs are only sold custom fitted”, says Fernando Cambronero. “We don’t have factory-mounted clubs or prefabricated sets. Instead we have all the heads, shafts and grips possible. When we get an order from Spain, it comes from our UK factory, where they put it together according to the characteristics of the player, so that it is completely custom built.”
According to the General Manager of Ping Spain, at the moment Ping carries out around 50-55% of the fittings done worldwide, in spite of the fact that the big multinationals have been attacking this service in their business operations for some years. Although unlike Ping, most companies have focused initially on finished product customization – the adjustability of drivers and woods, and irons of the same pattern with different player profiles – and later on the professional fitting as developed by Ping. Normally, a golfer for whom a fitting has been done for Ping clubs, only has to wait 8-10 days at the most before being able to play.
So the Ping clubs in the shops are there for fitting, or to sell? “Well yes, they are for sale, but we don’t push,” explains Fernando Cambronero, who distributes Ping through some 200 authorized shops. “The stores have a representative sample of our product range to offer. What happens? Well, there are some more or less standard measures, such as the Black dot of our Colour Code with Regular shaft, which fits a relatively high percentage of players, some 15-20%. Although it could be that these same players require a Yellow dot grip, a little thicker, or Green dot, a little thinner, and have to retouch it. But of course, they see the clubs, they try them and they want them now.”
“That’s why I always recommend that they buy clubs, then they do a fitting and if adjustments are needed, they send them to us in Castellon, where we’ll change the Colour Code to suit the player’s swing, free of charge.” And he continues: “Changing the Colour Code, the essence of our brand, is a free service that Ping offers for life as often as necessary in the same set. We like to say ‘a player decides to change the model because of the improvements in the new club, not because the current club has cease to serve.'”
THE HISTORY OF ‘PISHA’ WITH PING
To find out about the loyalty of Miguel Angel Jimenez to the Ping brand, we have spoken to the key person. Fernando was the one who paved the way for ‘Pisha’ to now be one of the most loved brand ambassadors, not only for his international victories – he has over 20 golden putters and a wedge in the Ping Gold Putter Vault in Phoenix – or more than 600 tournaments appearances on the European Tour, but for his charisma on and off the course that he is nicknamed “the most interesting man in the world”. How the spark between Miguel Angel and Ping occur?
“Miguel Angel has been with Ping since 1987,” said Fernando Cambronero. “Two players who are good friends of mine, Emilio Rodriguez and Jose Luis Mangas, who are now in Villamartin and Aloha, respectively, said, ‘Hey, there’s a guy who plays very well in Malaga. See if you can do something for him’. I didn’t know him and I hadn’t seen him play, and I knew he was in La Manga where the European Tour’s Qualifying Schoolused to be played.”
“On the last day I said to myself, I’ll see if I can find him. I was standing in front of the marker board, when I saw a player come by and I asked: Hey, you know Miguel Angel Jimenez? ‘That’s me!’ What a coincidence. Do you want to play with Ping? ‘It’s just that I haven’t got the card yet,’ he said. Never mind, they have spoken very highly of you. Do you want to play with Ping? ‘That would be fantastic’. Well, what do you need? We sent him what he asked for, and it’s been like that ever since. He got the card in 1988, he took over the Ping department on the European Tour, and look how far he’s come.”
PERSONAL CARD
- Name: Fernando Cambronero
- Job: General Manager of Ping Spain
- Age: 67 years
- Handicap: 7.7 and going up
- Favourite club in the bag: G30 Driver
- Holes in one: None
- Hobbies: Reading (reads 15 to 20 books a year)
- Who would he play a round of golf with: Karsten Solheim (now impossible) and Miguel Angel Jimenez