Who Owns PING?

Karsten Solheim was a Norwegian immigrant working as an engineer at General Electric when frustration with his own putting drove him to design a better putter in 1959. His prototype produced a distinctive "ping" sound on contact, which gave the brand its name. He built the first PING 1A putters in his garage in Redwood City, California, with his wife Louise handling orders and youngest son John helping assemble them.

When GE transferred Solheim to Phoenix in the early 1960s, the family kept building putters around his day job until 1967, when professional wins, most visibly Julius Boros's PGA Tour victory, convinced him to commit to the business full-time. Karsten Manufacturing Corporation incorporated in Phoenix and became the formal home of the brand.

Solheim's engineering instincts produced a string of category-changing designs. Perimeter weighting, distributing mass to the edges of the clubhead for forgiveness on off-center hits, debuted in PING irons and remains fundamental to club design. The Anser putter, introduced in 1966, became the most copied putter shape in golf history. Custom color-coded fitting, matching club specifications to individual golfers, turned PING into the industry's fitting pioneer.

The company expanded into irons, drivers, bags, and apparel through the following decades. Iconic lines included the PING Eye2 irons (1982), whose square grooves briefly triggered a famous legal fight with the USGA over groove rules, resolved in 1990 with the existing clubs grandfathered.

Karsten Solheim died in 2000. His son John A. Solheim took over as chairman and CEO, and the third generation, John K. Solheim, now serves as president. Recent years brought the G410, G425, G430, and G440 product families, continued tour staff success, and investments in the Phoenix manufacturing campus, including expanded putter production and the famous Gold Putter Vault holding commemorative replicas for every professional win with PING equipment.

In 2024 and 2025 the brand refreshed its product line across the G440 driver and iron families while deepening its custom-fitting network of more than 3,000 authorized fitters worldwide.