GOUGE: Another idyllic, crystal clear day here at lovely CordeValle. Not that our panelists had time to notice the afternoon sunshine glinting off the carpet-like range. It was a full day of batting around 33 drivers, 17 wedges and about a dozen mid-mallet putters. I wasn't keeping an official running count, but the day lasted a steady eight hours and conservatively our team of human golf club taste testers amassed easily a combined well over 700 swings of a golf club, whether it be drives, chips, bunker shots, pitches or putts. You think you're tough enough for the Hot List? That's why we start with a big breakfast and interrupt the proceedings with a visit from the staff massage therapists here at Cordevalle.
But it wasn't all the big swings that got my attention today. Instead, it was some of the finesse moves that got me thinking. In a field of 17 wedges, nearly all with some form of square grooves and many with the most aggressive grooves allowed by the U.S. Golf Association, one (fairly obvious) word kept emanating from our panelists: Spin. Quite simply even the highest handicappers in our group were able to get their short shots to check up. Whether they be the high lofted flop shots from first-time contributor Ricky Brown or the lower, softly checking chip and run shots from second-year veteran Sterling Price, the confidence each player had with their ability to execute these sorts of shots was unsettling, especially to someone like me whose short game conjures up images of Roberto "Hands of Stone" Duran. Still, knowing what I know about where the rules of the game are headed starting in January 2010, I couldn't help but wonder if the general population, to say nothing of the game's elite players, are prepared for the relative shock to the system that might ensue when they find out that short game shots don't behave the way they used to with grooves that could be as much as 40 percent less efficient. You see, what's amazing is that spin seems to have been presented as the exclusive domain of the game's elite players, yet from what I saw today, it's out there to be had for nearly anyone, even those who catch as many in the teeth as they do on the screws. or more importantly, in the grooves. We've recently seen video from one of our Hot List scientists showing just how much a multilayer urethane covered ball is caught in the aggressive grooves of a new wedge. That experience could be on its way to becoming as distant a memory as the deft execution of a stymie. For me and for you. What really stood out as the sun drifted toward the ridgeline late Friday afternoon was just how often the wedges that had the least aggressive groove technology (though still dramatically more aggressive than what will be allowed to be manufactured starting in 2010) were found to be lacking as our panel of players and teachers evaluated the performance of the current crop of wedges. And I wondered just how those evaluations might sound, oh say, next fall when manufacturers (maybe) start introducing "new" products that might not be so good at, er, grabbing your attention around the greens.