I’ve been a Golf Digest subscriber for some time now and in the past I’ve looked forward to the annual “Hot List” issue.  I thought it was interesting to see what the editors and testers thought of the latest gear and like many it somewhat influenced the short list of clubs that I would try heading into every golf season.

As I’ve become more acquainted with the golf industry, I have become less enamored with the Golf Digest Hot List.  Its obvious that the major OEM’s dominate the reviews and it doesn’t take a huge leap of faith to believe that advertising plays a part in the final results.  However, I didn’t understand how misguided the whole thing was until I read a post from Tom Wishon (who is a well respected golf club designer, researcher, and author) on the TWGT Forum regarding his participation in the 2005 event:

We did submit several of our models to Hot List, and I really did believe that since we have had some models in past years make this list (515GRT fwys, 949MC fwys, 770CFE irons), I felt with models like the 870, 560, 949 fwys, 785 hybrids which really do stand out almost from the first ball you hit, we might break through again. Those years we had a club listed, we were pretty much the only company to make it that wasn’t a big time major OEM. So for that in the past, I am pleased and honored that someone on the panel took enough time to check us out.

But when I heard that the Smoooth Series mallet putter had made it into the issue before Hot List, I knew then we were shut out of 2010 Hot list and that the inclusion of the SMoooth putter in the previous issue was the GD equipment writers only “throwing us a bone” to try to make up for us not making it in the Hot List this year.

Back in 2005, I actually was “secretly” invited to the actual Hot List conclave that GD puts on, so I was able to see how this was actually done. I say “secretly invited” because that year GD was forming a panel of university Ph.D’s in engineering fields that they were trying to use to bounce OEM technical claims off to hear if the claim was scientifically sound. Since this was the first year of this Ph.D panel, and since all of the GD writers were scared to death of 8 Ph.Ds around a table, they asked me to come to “translate” (the term they used when they invited me!). But they made it very clear I had to say nothing about my coming because if any of the golf companies found that I was there, they would get all sorts of bitches and accusations of “collusion” from these companies.

So I’ve really told no one I was at this Hot List conclave until now – at this point I care not what GD thinks of me because I am so critical of this whole Hot List thing for being largely an advertising pandering thing.

Anyway, watching the panel of industry retailers and industry club pros who were the Hot List hit testing people for all the clubs was literally a joke the year I was there. First of all there were way, way too many clubs there for 16 people to ever hope to hit. They had all the companies’ Hot List submitted clubs all set up in huge golf bags, all lined up on the range. I mean, I have been around lots of golf clubs in my career, but I have never seen this many clubs all in one place at one time.

While it was a “kid in a candy store” thing for someone who is nuts about golf clubs, there were way, way too many clubs for the hitting panel to ever hope to hit to gain any semblance of conclusion about the clubs. So what happened? As I watched from the background, these people went to the big companies models first and pretty much only hit the clubs from the biggest companies or clubs from the larger companies for which they had already heard some marketing buzz. Many times I would see someone hit one shot with a company’s club and hear a comment to the effect of “man I’m voting for this one.”

A few weeks later all our clubs we had sent in for that Hot List were shipped back to us. Of the 20 some different clubs I submitted that year, ONE of the clubs had a grass mark on the face and sole. The others were completely new and untouched, meaning what I thought at the time I was there that there was no way most of the lesser known companies could get their clubs hit tested or evaluated.

Such is life in the golf industry.

Now, this was several years ago and maybe the process has changed, but I doubt the magazine has drastically altered the way they conduct the “testing”.  The intro to the 2010 issue claims that the playing panel is unbiased but that clearly wasn’t the case in 2005 and there is very little evidence of that this year.  In fact, it appears to be getting worse as the number of smaller equipment companies represented on the list went down this year.  And what about the Hot List judges who “carefully consider” the players advice along with the “mountains of technical data”?  Well, I find it a bit unsettling that Mike Stachura (aka “Gouge”), the GD Senior Editor of Equipment, has an index that is only slightly lower than mine.  Clearly, he needs to spend more time on an actual golf course.

The biggest issue I have with the Hotlist testing is that it isn’t rocket science despite the fact that the Golf Digest editors attempt to make the whole process look very scientific (they even include…wait for it…a rocket scientist on the panel).  It is disappointing to hear from an industry insider that the process is so unstructured and is basically a free-for-all.  The magazine shouldn’t try to dupe consumers into thinking that their “year’s worth of investigation” is nothing more than as Wishon puts it,  “an advertising pandering thing”.

In the aftermath of the Tiger debacle, we’ve had enough deception in the name of capitalism.  Golf Digest should step forward and fix the process or expose the Hotlist for what it really is – a glorified demo day.