Ping G425 Max Fairway Wood Review

Ping G425 Max Fairway Wood Review

Ping’s fairway wood offerings have impressed us in recent years and the G425 Max continues this trend. Designed to give golfers greater confidence over the ball from long distance or on holes where hitting driver would not be a prudent play, it has multiple innovations that make it one of the easiest to use versus the competition while also offering competitive distance and versatility. 

During our testing, we found that less than ideal shots hit from low on its clubface still traveled reasonable distances. That is due to the club’s low center of gravity, which is created by the addition of a tungsten weight found at the rear of the club. Ping claims that this weight's positioning helps boost the G425’s MOI, keeping its face square through impact, thereby improving its accuracy. But while many clubs might sacrifice ball speed and distance for enhanced consistency, we found the G425 provides an optimum balance of them all. 

That is down to the addition of what Ping is calling their ‘Maraging Steel Facewrap’ clubface technology, which increases ball speeds across the face by up to 1.5mph. It also increases the size of the club’s sweet spot, meaning that any shots we struck just off-center still traveled good distances. Given the forgiveness built in, more experienced golfers may find it a little harder to shape the ball left or right, but there is the LS version that affords more creativity.

You’ll also notice that Ping has removed the Turbulators that were seen on the top of the G410 clubhead designed to improve the club’s aerodynamics. Instead, it has replaced them with a simple three-dot pattern on the G425, which seemed to help improve the consistency of our ball striking by centering the ball in the face at address.

Ping has also outdone itself in the design of this club, which has a very sleek aesthetic, thanks to its black and silver finish. A nice added bonus is that its grips all come with built-in Arccos Caddie smart sensors for shot tracking and game analysis. If you subscribe to Arccos and buy a Ping fairway wood, you are also entitled to claim 14 free Arccos Caddie Smart Sensors that screw in to the rest of the clubs in your bag, which would typically cost upwards of $200. This is another fantastic benefit that the G425 fairway woods deliver, giving golfers of all abilities access to the tour-quality game-improvement systems that Arccos Caddie provides. Overall the G425 is one of the best fairway woods on the market given the blend of distance, forgiveness and versatility golfers will experience.