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From Garage to Greatness
How PING Put Arizona on the Map

This week: The story of Karsten Solheim, a loud little putter, and the golf empire that changed Phoenix forever.

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Before Scottsdale was swarming with Tour vans and Troon polos, before the Valley became a snowbird golf mecca, one man was in a Phoenix garage trying to fix his putting stroke.
Karsten Solheim wasnât a golf lifer.
He wasnât raised in country clubs or coached by short-game gurus. He was a late-blooming engineer who found golf frustrating enough to reinvent it. Armed with a workbench, some steel, and too much brainpower, he started tinkering with putters in his garage in California.
One of his early prototypes made a distinct ping sound at impact, which stuck as a name and a calling card for a brand that would grow into one of the most iconic in golf.
1959: The First âPINGâ in the System
Solheimâs first creation, the PING 1A putter, didnât look like much. It was flat, boxy, and⌠letâs be real, weird. But it worked. The genius lay in how it redistributed weightâheel-toe weighting, which made off-center hits more forgiving. Revolutionary at the time. Still standard today.