LITCHFIELD PARK, Ariz. -- The old saw that you drive for show and putt for dough? "Then that was one heck of a show," Dan Grattan, a financial services consultant from Manhattan, said on Friday while proudly displaying a blistered hand. And that was his glove hand.

It was the second day of player testing at the annual Golf Digest Hot List Summit at the Wigwam Golf Resort & Spa here, and this was the day most of the players had been awaiting, driver testing. Twenty-five drivers were tested. "It's the most I've ever conceived of hitting," Grattan said of the number of swings he made with a driver. "I hit 25 drives, maybe 10 times each."

Grattan took the glove off his left hand. There was tape and the aforementioned blisters. "I won't complain about my hands being beat up," he said, "because this is playing. This isn't work."

Dan Grattan show his hands after two days of club testing. (Photo by J.D. Cuban)

Somehow, that was the consensus opinion of all the club testers. "If I'd tried this hard in school I'd be president," one of them, Jason Musser, said.

Another consensus was that virtually every driver tested would be an acceptable addition to their own bag.

"I couldn't believe how many excellent drivers there were," Grattan said, thankful all the same that he doesn't have to hit any more of them.

On deck: Blade putters, hybrids and players irons.

-- John Strege

LITCHFIELD PARK, Ariz. -- The heavy lifting began on the fifth day of the annual Golf Digest Hot List Summit -- player testing, a full and exhausting day of hitting countless shots with a variety of fairway woods, game-improvement irons and mallet putters.

Veterans of this process tend to note how competitive some of the categories have become over the years, game-improvement irons one of them. This is the iron category to which companies commit vast research and development resources, given that the greatest number of players are likely to find their irons in this category, and the range runs the gamut, from the low-handicapper to the high-handicapper. One Hot List Summit veteran, Donnie Luper, a low-handicapper, actually continues to use a set of super game-improvement irons he bought following the Hot List Summit one year when he discovered the ease with which he could hit the ball with them.

Eighteen sets of game-improvement irons were tested at the Wigwam Golf Resort & Spa. "I think I'll buy one [club] of each," one tester said jokingly, finding several brands with which he'd be comfortable.

Mallet putters, meanwhile, present a wide variety of styles. Given the personal-preference nature of putters, some were received better than others. "I hope all my friends buy this one," said Jim Jones, a Hot List Summit veteran, figuring that in the hands of his friend it would give him a competitive advantage.

On deck: Day two of club testing, with wedges and the glamour category, drivers, moving to the fore.

-- John Strege

LITCHFIELD PARK, Ariz. -- Like a good ball club, each year the Hot List Player Panel is a group of core veterans infused with a few eager rookies. Their season may only last four days, but with all the golf balls hit it feels much longer. Time on the sun-baked range can lull, and the sixth station of game-improvement irons can start to feel not totally unlike the race for the AL West in early August.

This year five new swings have been added to the squad, the winners from our online contest, and like every season, these greenhorns must be initiated at the welcoming dinner. Judge E. Michael Johnson, filling in as interim manager for Judge Michael Stachura (currently on the 15 day disabled list), clinked his glass and went through what they needed to know. I paraphrase:

Rule One: Pace Yourself.

You may be jacked up to try all these new golf toys, but don’t rifle through two buckets in ten minutes and expect to make it to the end of the day, let alone Sunday. Unless you’re Vijay Singh, you’ve never experienced an eight-hour range session in your life. Blisters will be treated but pulled muscles will receive no sympathy. Stretch, take water breaks, apply sunscreen, and make sure you bring the same mental and physical energy to every single club you evaluate.

Rule Two: This is Not a Vacation.

Yes, we flew you in and are putting you up at the lovely Wigwam Golf Resort & Spa. We hope that you are comfortable and enjoy your meals, but you are here to work. This is the biggest editorial project Golf Digest undertakes each year, and the course of the entire golf industry rests in large part in your hands.

Rule Three: Prepare to be Surprised.

The slightest hint of brand bias will not be tolerated. Be ready to be underwhelmed by a club from a popular manufacturer and likewise, be ready to fall in love with a club whose name you’ve never heard of.

Rule Four: These Clubs are Confidential.

The majority of the clubs you will hit will not be publicly available until 2011. In several cases, they are prototypes rushed here direct from a foundry in China. The makers of these clubs go to great cost to time the launches of their product cycles, and any leak of what’s to come undermines not only their business, but their trust established with Golf Digest. Any written or photographic dissemination of what you see, via a blog, Twitter, Facebook, or other, is strictly prohibited. For this reason you all must sign NDA’s (non-disclosure agreements).

And with that Skipper Johnson raised his glass, again thanked the player panelists for coming, and kindly asked everyone to please eat. For dessert there was a choice of warm black cherry compote and ice cream, or raspberry truffles with honey sesame crusts. It was just the first of many difficult decisions facing the players. In the next four days they will give over a 1,000 numerical grades to the best golf clubs on the planet.

-- Max Adler

LITCHFIELD PARK, Ariz. -- Having worked for several years in a golf shop in the 1980s, I always look forward to our retailer panel discussion. And this year’s retailer panel did not disappoint. In fact, the answer to one particular question brought an alertness to the room more than the flaming hot coffee served by the fine folks here at The Wigwam Golf Resort & Spa.

The question was this: “Does price now override brand association and technology?”

Given the still-sluggish economy and the plethora of closeout deals, the expected answer may have been a quick “yes” and lets move on to question 2. Instead, a thoughtful discussion ensued among our panel of eight retailers—a group that represents facilities that have earned Golf World’s 100 Best Golf Shops honors more than 100 times.

In short, they said, golfers were less likely to take a flier on a brand they were unfamiliar with, which in turn resulted in them relying more on their vendors with star-power name recognition, leaving niche companies to fight for the scraps.

“There’s just more comfort in strong brands right now,” said Susan Roll, co-owner of Carlsbad (Calif.) Golf Center.

The retail panel in discussion at the Golf Digest Hot List Summit (photo by J.D. Cuban)

One of the complaints regularly heard about the Hot List is that it tends to be dominated by the large equipment companies. Our counter to that has always been that big equipment companies are usually big for a reason: they tend to spend more on research and development and more on quality materials and manufacturing, thus usually (but not always) leading to pretty good products. Still, hearing Sven Kessler, VP of Retail Operations at Edwin Watts Shops national headquarters in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., speak about the viability of smaller companies, was a bit like having a sledgehammer dropped on our heads.

“There’s very little room at the bottom anymore,” said Kessler. “The companies that own a category have a bigger advantage now than ever before.”

Ouch.

That’s because one of the joys of being a Hot List judge is finding the hidden gem—the hybrid no one has heard of that has gouges balls out of the rough like a weedwhacker. The wedge that looks like a shovel and performs just like that. Or the no-name putter that has your opponent snickering that you wasted your money—until he’s the one digging into his pocket at the end of the round instead of you.

The golf equipment landscape may have narrowed for those purchasing bats and balls and perhaps even for the retailers who sell them. But not for the Hot List. We’ll continue to search for products we feel are significant in their category and, more importantly, will help you play better golf.

Thankfully, our retailer panel was in agreement with that. We asked a follow-up question: “Would it be a bad idea then to even consider niche companies?” The reply came as a relief.

“I don’t think it’s a mistake to have small brands on the list,” one Leigh Bader of Joe & Leigh’s Discount Golf Shop at Pine Oaks GC in South Easton, Mass. “I think it may be a mistake not to.” Several heads nodded in agreement.

Sure, the days of an Ely Callaway coming along with his hickory-stick clubs and turning it into an empire likely will never happen again. But the niche company still has its place in the game. Products from those companies may or may not make this year’s Hot List. But they’ll get the same chance to be included as everyone else.

Why? Because performance is more heavily weighted in the purchase decision than ever because it can be quantified. The advent of fitting systems, launch monitors and the like allow the consumer to truly see what works best for them, and, in the process, bring comfort to the purchase decision.

“Golf equipment has become less of an impulse buy and more of a considered purchase,” said Carl Rose, owner of Carl’s Golfland in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. “Consumers need to validate the improvement of a new club over what they’re currently using.”

Whether it’s from a large company or not.

-- E. Michael Johnson

LITCHFIELD PARK, Ariz. -- The subject was putters, a category unlike any other, as a panel of retailers explained on Wednesday at the annual Golf Digest Hot List Summit at the Wigwam Golf Resort & Spa here.

The retailers concluded two days of meetings with the Hot List judges, who rely on them to help gauge potential demand for products in the marketplace, and putters present different challenges, among them the vast array of brands. The putter category, though still difficult, is the easiest category in which to gain a foothold for an interesting smaller or newer brand.

This is a byproduct of the fact that retailers are more likely to take a chance on an off-brand in the putter category than other categories, the panelists agreed, particularly if the putter comes in under $100 retail.

Then there's the fitting aspect, or lack of one. Club fitting might continue to expand, but putter fittings are substantially less important to consumers, who generally rely on how one looks and feels to them.

"Jim Furyk didn't do much to emphasize putter fittings," one retailer, Leigh Bader, said kiddingly, but making the point. Bader is the co-owner of Joe & Leigh's Discount Golf Pro Shop in South Easton, Mass., the store that sold Furyk the used putter he used to win the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup. Furyk simply walked into the story, saw the putter in a used club barrel, liked its look and purchased it.

The last chapter of the Hot List Summit, meanwhile, commences on Thursday, the first of three days of club testing on the range at the Wigwam Golf Resort & Spa. The categories of clubs to be tested include drivers, fairway woods, hybrids, players' irons, game-improvement irons, super game-improvement irons, wedges and putters. The skills of the testers range from low handicappers (including teaching professionals) to mid-handicappers to high handicappers.

It is a grueling three-day exercise that is not recommended for those with low thresholds of pain. When one has to test upwards of 20 drivers, then move to another stage and test a like number of fairway woods, and continue this process over the better part of eight hours a day for three days, well, only gamers need apply.

-- John Strege

LITCHFIELD PARK, Ariz. -- Golf retailers don't usually make news or break news, but when the retail panel took center stage at the annual Golf Digest Hot List Summit on Tuesday, there was evidence of both.

First the news. Bobby Jones Golf is being merged with the HMX Group, which heretofore had licensed the Jones name to the equipment company. HMX is the owner of the Bobby Jones line of apparel.

The newsmaker on hand is Leigh Bader, co-owner of Joe & Leigh's Discount Golf Pro Shop in South Easton, Mass., the store that sold a used Yes! putter for $39 to Jim Furyk, who used the putter to win the Tour Championship and the FedEx Cup, an $11.5 million payday.

"We got a lot of attention for it for at least a week," Bader said Tuesday, during a break the day's proceedings at the Wigwam Golf Resort & Spa here. "The first two or three days, the phone was ringing nonstop. It was our Andy Warhol [15 minutes of fame] moment."

Joe & Leigh's is a one-store business, but Bader is a heavyweight on the retail side of the industry, among the more knowledgeable retailers in the business, as are the others who comprise the panel: Ken Morton Jr., from the Haggin Oaks Super Shop in Sacramento; Carl Rose of Carl's Golfland in Michigan; Casey Baker, from Miles of Golf in Ypsilanti, Mich.; Susan Roll, owner of the Carlsbad (Calif.) Golf Center; Sven Kessler of Edwin Watts Golf; and John Lyberger, head pro at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md.

The retailers are here for two days of meetings to help the Hot List judges better understand how the products will fit into the marketplace in 2011. The retailers were also given the opportunity to examine and hit the products under consideration and were seeing many of them for the first time.

Retailer Casey Baker examines some of the new equipment (Photo by J.D. Cuban)

Among the discussions that followed was whether a product category would stand out in 2011 the way wedges have done in 2010, ahead of the new USGA grooves rule. Manufacturers have been asked to cease producing wedges with the old grooves after 2010.

The consensus was that the driver category would be more interesting in 2011, though remains a concern that in a difficult economy value might still be the overriding issue. Manufacturers hope to counter with technology, including aerodynamic, material and adjustability stories.

Inevitably, someone will mention chippers to the panel. Against all reason, they sell, the retailers collectively say, shrugging their shoulders. "It's free money, like stealing," one said.

-- John Strege

LITCHFIELD PARK, Ariz. -- Journalists often consider themselves the smartest people in the room, but the golf journalists in this room at the Wigwam Golf Resort & Spa here were under no such illusion (or delusion). Hence the questions.

Over the first two days of the annual Golf Digest Hot List Summit, 25 questions were presented to six of the brightest minds in North America, each belonging to a scientist on the academic panel. The Hot List judges, each of them an editor at Golf Digest, rely on their expertise to help them evaluate the technology in golf equipment under consideration. Sometimes the answers can be blunt. Scientists want data, which occasionally is missing.

"We're supposed to be scientists, not fortune tellers," one of them said.

The questions might seem mundane, but in order to accurately evaluate equipment, it is essential they're asked. For instance:

-- In a stainless steel iron, how thin does the face have to get to have a significant spring-like effect vs. the relative non-springiness of a traditional iron? Is that effect only true for really high [swing] speeds?

-- What is the best execution of the new groove rule, more grooves that are shallow or fewer grooves that are deeper (see the next post)?

-- Is the best driver one whose face area aspect ratio (height vs. width) is as close to 1:1 as possible, while still remaining sufficiently large?

The ensuing debates are often wildly amusing before usually producing a consensus. Then there are those issues that produce the aforementioned blunt responses.

“This is false," one said of a particular product and the technology story the company was telling. "You should not talk about this any more. It’s false.”

Or when the discussion turned to the psychology that some manufacturers attempt to address in designing a club that might promote confidence for the golfer.

“I’d like a putter that plays Mozart. It would have a very calming effect on me,” one scientist said, sarcasm among his many talents.

They'll be missed, these eggheads.

On deck: The retailers. Six of the leading golf equipment retailers from around the country, on and off course, arrive for two days of meetings to help the judges evaluate how the equipment under consideration will fit into the marketplace.

-- John Strege

LITCHFIELD PARK, Ariz. -- The scientist panel meetings at the Golf Digest Hot List Summit came to a close at the end of day two, and this year I'm proud to say we ended up making it through every prepared question for every different category and still sent our Ph.D. friends to the airport on time. All in all, our eggheads didn't disagree with each other on a lot this time around, so we were able to stay on schedule and cover a lot of ground (even though it's popcorn-munching fun to veer off topic once in a while and watch them battle over the different interpretations of a product's finite element analysis in a language that's completely foreign to mere mortals).

The one topic that took longer to get through than any of the others this morning was groove technology in wedges. Since the implementation of the USGA's new groove rule (stricter limits to the total volume and edge sharpness of the grooves in irons and wedges), equipment companies have had to dig deep to come up with ways to create grooves that still generate spin from other than perfectly clean lies. As a result, the groove landscape of 2011 will be very diverse and some companies are promoting grooves that are narrow and deep to help channel more debris, while others prefer to go the wider and shallower route to allow the grooves to be closer together. Which is the better mouse trap? After much back and forth, the consensus among our geniuses was that it depends on what kind of ball you're playing with and the conditions you're playing in. Are you in the Pacific Northwest, using distance balls and having to dig out of deep, wet rough on a regular basis? Stick with the deepest grooves you can find. Do you play mostly desert golf and favor softer-covered balls? Then go with wider and shallower grooves.

In most cases, the benefits of one technology story over another are so minute that you're literally splitting hairs. But as our most distinguished science panelist (he shall remained unidentified for this purpose, since I'm not sure his comment was on the record) so wisely said, "It's like circumcision: Every little bit counts."

John Axe, Ph.D. and ball-club interaction specialist, explains the impact of striking a ball above the equator with a putter face. Photo by J.D. Cuban

-- Stina Sternberg

LITCHFIELD PARK, Ariz. -- Day one of the Hot List Summit commenced with seven and a half hours of discussion on the industry's latest solutions to make the tee ball fly farther. With driver volume, moment of inertia and spring-like effect all capped by the Rules of Golf, it might seem making a more powerful driver is like trying to draw water from a stone. With rational severity, our panel of six Ph.D.s systematically cut down to size the prospective yardage gains touted by several emerging technologies. These technologies included, but were not limited to, adjustable hosels for better custom-fits, lighter and longer drivers to help you swing faster, more aerodynamically shaped heads, and a new lighter and stronger type of carbon. In no case did the panel's math suggest that more than a few more yards were possible. Calling out calculations without calculators (showoffs), they used things like singular pendulum models with assumed linear torques. By no means perfect, but good enough for class.

"I like to be convinced," said George Springer, Paul Pigott professor of engineering, aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University. "And right now there is no data that makes me convinced."

Dr. John McPhee tries the Ghost Putter as Dr. George Springer (left) and Dr. John Axe look on.

"Evolutionary but not revolutionary," said Thomas Lacy, associate professor of aerospace engineering at Mississippi State University.

If you're a golfer looking for more distance (and who isn't), don't let these docs quash your hopes just yet. The potential for what can happen when the right club gets in the right golfer's hands, the magic meeting of several elements, well, there is no math for that. Indeed, one leading club company has evidence that by just matching the right club appearance to the right player, psychologically it can enable that player to swing much freer and faster.

At three p.m., when we released our docs from the meeting room so they could have their reward of nine holes in the Arizona sunshine, we quickly saw that they too were not immune to such psychology. After striping three in a row on the range, David Lee, associate professor of physics at Gordon College, turned with a boyish grin and simply said, "I like this one."

Later at dinner, professor Martin Brouillette of Sherbrooke University, had to be told no, he was not allowed to keep the driver he played with.

-- Max Adler

LITCHFIELD PARK, Ariz. -- One has a Ph.D. in Thermodynamics and Kinetics of the Oxygen Sublattice Phase Transition in the Y-Ba-Cu-O Superconductor. Another is a rocket scientist. A couple are physicists. All are Ph.Ds.

What does this have to do with golf? They make up the academic panel that opened Golf Digest's Hot List Summit on Sunday at the Wigwam Resort here in this Phoenix suburb. More than 2,700 pounds of golf equipment was shipped from company headquarters in Wilton, Ct., to Arizona. More than 1,000 clubs were part of that shipment.

Golf Digest's Hot List judges -- Mike Stachura, Mike Johnson, Stina Sternberg and Max Adler -- rely on the panelists' scientific expertise to help them evaluate the technology employed in the clubs. Suffice it to say, the panel raises the average IQ in the room by no small margin.

David Lee is an associate professor of physics at Gordon College and has a Ph.D. from Caltech (and the aforementioned Ph.D. in Thermodynamics and Kinetics); Martin Brouillette also has a Ph.D. from Caltech and is a professor at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, Ontario, Canada (and is the aforementioned rocket scientist); Thomas Lacy Jr. has a Ph.D. from Georgia Tech and is an associate professor of aerospace engineering at Mississippi State; John Axe is a retired physicist who earned a Ph.D. from Cal Berkeley; and John McPhee is professor of systems design engineering at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada).

They're here for two days, the first of which largely was spent dissecting drivers. One conclusion regarding off-center hits -- "they're all pretty good," one panelist said -- doesn't begin to address the breadth of their analyses, designed to identify differences in the clubs, however minute.

There were discussions of beveled perimeters, adjustable clubheads, lighter and longer drivers, linear torque profiles and round (or roundish) clubfaces.

Heavy discussions from a panel of academic heavyweights.

-- John Strege