The Ping G440 K driver cracks the code with speed and forgiveness

Ping drivers have always been known as “brick houses” – as our director of equipment, Johnny Wunder, likes to say – that no matter where you hit it in the face, it barely loses speed and flies straight for dead.

The new one Ping G440 K Driver may have taken things to a whole new level.

Thanks to the new Dual Carbonfly Wrap crown and sole, new acoustic rib structure and adjustable back weight for the first time in this model, Ping is calling this its most forgiving driver ever with over 10.4k MOI in certain configurations. But, due to a lower CG, it doesn’t come at the expense of high speed and torque.

“We’ve really challenged our engineers and the team to figure out how to put the features that Ping has been known for into the forgiveness, but combine it with elements that the player with the fastest club speed can really influence to get the maximum potential out of their distance,” Ping’s Director of Product Design, Ryan Stokke, told GOLF. “High MOI is important and will benefit all players on the planet. But you have to pair high MOI with the ideal CG location.”

With the G440 K, they think they’ve cracked the code on the ideal CG location. It is one of the reasons that The G440 K has already generated a ton of buzz with some high profile playerslike Sahith Theegala, putting it into play.

Continue reading below for more on the Ping G440 K driver, including my take on the release.

What’s really new with the Ping G440 K — and why you should care

Becoming a forgiving driver quickly

The G440 K achieves the deepest CG Ping ever created in a driver and also has the lowest CG ever in a driver of this class.

This was made possible by a new Dual Carbonfly wrap, which replaces most of the carbon fiber sole compared to the existing G440 models. This saved a ton of weight, which was reallocated to the head, mostly to the 32g tungsten rear weight (4g more than the G430 Max 10K) to drive the CG deeper and lower.

Ping knows that a deep CG is more forgiving, but a low CG is what kills spin and allows this driver to attract higher speed players who generally stay away from high MOI drivers due to the high spin.

“When our players with the fastest club speed, our Tour staff players, hit this, they immediately notice that it launches in the right window. It spins in the right window,” Stokke said. “But then when they have their mistakes, the adjustment and maintaining the ball speed and the launch and the spin, it’s just unparalleled. And so for a lot of our golfers, we’re just seeing that it fits a much wider audience.”

10k forgiveness hold with adjustability

You’ll notice that Ping is no longer putting “10K” in the name of this driver, as they did with G430 Max 10K.

But still, the G440 K is still over 10,000 g/cm² MOI is forgiving and even reaches 10.4k in certain configurations.

So why remove the name? Because if you want adjustment with both the build specs and the new adjustable rear weight, the 10k name was actually limiting.

“We didn’t want the 10K requirement to be something that minimizes or marginalizes the potential of adaptation,” Stokke said. “And so MOI is directly related to head weight, and as you can imagine, one of the biggest things is that when you go down in head weight, it’s going to directly affect the measured MOI. And we’re going to have some builds on the market that are under 10K based on optimally fitting the target customer, which is part of why we just went with the K this time.”

This relaxation also allowed them to make the rear weight adjustable like the rest of the G440 line. The 10.4k MOI peak is actually reached when moving the weight into the fade position.

While most other drivers on the market lose MOI when the weights are placed in the toe, the G440K is able to raise it thanks to the deep weight placement and short travel distance.

“By narrowing the travel and maximizing the mass of that weight, we maintain and get the most efficient MOI with also the amount of movement from a fit standpoint,” Stokke said.

A sound design

If there is one thing The G440’s drivers have really improved over previous Ping drivers, it was sound.

Knowing that an increase in carbon in the sole would significantly change the sound, Ping performed finite element analysis (FEA), sound testing and player response to build these new ribs to stiffen the sole and crown.

The 440 K takes it one step further with a new composite crown and single rib bridge to tune the sound to be quieter and more pleasing to the ear.

They performed a similar process when tuning the sound for the G440’s entry-level drivers as well.

Ping G440 K Driver

What is: Compared to the G440 Max, the K has a longer profile with a shallower face to pull the CG as deep and as low as possible. A new carbon dual coilover also allowed additional weight to be redistributed low and deep. For the first time, a 32g rear weight allows left-to-right adjustment with the highest MOI setting in the “fade” position. In testing by our partners at True Spec GolfThe 440 K recorded the highest speed (170.3 mph) of any driver tested by our high-speed assembler (116 mph). It is also available in a lighter HL build.

Lofts available: 9.0˚, 10.5˚, 12˚

Who is it for: The 440 K has a unique ability where it will suit both high speed players looking to play a more forgiving head without spinning too much or sacrificing speed, as well as game improvement players looking for all the forgiveness and release they can get.

My take: The biggest Ping Ping driver, but with speed

I was lucky enough to try the G440 K driver before I really knew what it was supposed to be.

I didn’t expect a maximum forgiveness head to be one that could challenge for a spot in my bag, but boy was I surprised.

It looks like a Ping driver (although the taller profile is a bit off-putting at first), feels solid, and sounds like a Ping driver (and in a good way!), but this driver doesn’t perform like any other Ping driver I’ve seen.

This isn’t a knock on previous Ping drivers, but I was shocked to see that even on a day when I felt like I had a little juice in the tank, I was still able to hit 160 seconds on ball speed with a swing speed of just over 112 mph. That’s about as efficient as you can get, and I’m not used to seeing that kind of efficiency.

The driver didn’t seem to know that I wasn’t doing my best, but that’s exactly what you want from a driver. You want to be able to get through your bad days as well as your good days, and the G440 K excels at that.

It didn’t come at the expense of shaping ability. Hitting a fade has usually been a challenge for me with high MOI, deep CG drivers, but not with the 440K.

I got these results when I moved the driver to minus flat and put the weight in the fade position, settings that many other players are also seeing success with.

Ping has made a name for itself building drivers that are forgiving and easy to hit, but now it has one that many high-speed players will love, too.

Price, Specifications and Availability

Ping G440 K Driver is available for pre-order starting January 13 and arrives at retail locations on January 29.

It will cost 649 dollars.

Want to find the best driver for your bag in 2026? Find a convenient club location near you at True Spec Golf.

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