The net sends me to Building 105 at Ping HQ where they run their repair and mod center. Pitch the story of the submitting to the (free) fitting process across the street, explain my journey, show the graphs and propose the mods needed for the clubs. Expecting the "product wasn't intended to do that so we can't help you or give you any advice" response, which is what the SquareSpace support people tell me.
Cut the shaft lengths back to normal: no problem. Great. Make pitching, gap, sand and lob wedge all same length as 9 iron: no problem. Great!
I raise the whole swing weight issue with the shorter irons and ask why the fitting Doc (whom I implicitly trusted) kinda side stepped my question. As expected, turns out that the club heads are mass produced, so inevitably the clubs just feel heavier as the shaft length increases. This message is obfuscated in the fitting process and the tall customer with fitted clubs now feels something is wrong with him (or her) as in I'm weak and I suck, which is also kinda true. Ping is a business, so they can't fix the mass production process, but at least tell customers that trust you during the fitting process with the Doc. That's a gap, and Mr. Ping needs force innovation to solve the problem by calling it out.
The surprise, however, is that without the Japanese obsession with 0.001%, there's significant variance in the weight of club heads that come out of the casting process. So it's possible to cherry pick club heads that are six sigma light, and use those to bring the swing weights down on the loftier but longer shafted short irons. Sometimes imperfection begets happier customers.
Work order entered. Time to go practice some patience while waiting for the rebuild.
(via Jiro on iPhone)