BOMB: Well, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, "here we go again." We're here in Orlando at the Ginn Reunion Resort to conduct our Hot List golf ball testing with player panelists and after one day here's the conclusion I've come to:

I must totally suck at my job.

This self-loathing has nothing to do with our ball test which went swimmingly. But I was appalled at some of the clubs that are in some our testers bags. I had two fine guys and decent players in my group today--a 14 and 17 handicap--but both had irons in their bags that debuted in a year starting with a 1 and a 9. I mean seriously. If our job is to inform and educate readers on why they should be buying and playing with new equipment and why the new stuff is better, we clearly have failed miserably. That said, I was heartened by this moment that perhaps they will come around. One of my players, Wes, also had an old TaylorMade Firesole driver with a STEEL shaft. After hitting his Sunday punch on one hole I encouraged him to use the Cobra 454 Comp driver my other panelist had. Not exactly the latest and greatest, but at least a hint of modern technology. Making solid contact yet again he airmailed his initial tee ball by a minimum of 20 yards. Another convert.

We may have to get them one at a time, but we have to get them. The pros may be closed to maxed out, but the everyday player has plenty of room to improve. And if I'm not getting it done in my magazine, just what the heck are you doing to help out Mr. Golf Digest, you of the six million readers?

GOUGE: I refuse to believe average golfers show such callous disregard for logic. But then I also was there when one of our newfound testers suggested that he really didn't put much stock in the legitimacy of the Golf Digest Hot List, thought the whole thing was a glorified catalog. Until he saw the way we went about our business today during the golf ball evaluation session. Five hours on the golf course hitting shots from tee to green several times over on each hole, all in the hopes of reaching some meaningful conclusions about golf ball performance. Nothing definitive to report yet. And I will not sit here and tell you that we will turn the industry around with our findings. But through our combination of player evaluations, indoor air cannon analysis and robot testing, we hope to educate ourselves in meaningful ways about golf ball tendencies so we can present that understanding to help the average golfer 1) better understand the entire range of golf ball performance and golf ball construction options and 2) find a group of balls that fit their economic and skill requirements. The Hot List for golf balls, our most comprehensive investigation of the golf ball market, is slated to appear in a spring issue of Golf Digest. What you will not find is a list of balls and the distance they flew on a robot. That is at best incomplete and at worst grievously misleading information that in the end brings only more heat than light to the golf ball selection process. We're looking to help golfers better understand what performance issues are at stake with their choices in the golf ball market today. That comes with solid reasoning and careful explanation, not exclamation points and bold letters.

But a final word on the issue at hand: If you believe that golf technology isn't really worth getting excited about, that nothing that's been introduced in the last few years is all that better than what was already in place, I have to say that what you're really doing is casting a pretty dim view of the relative group expertise at the world's top golf companies (and most of the small ones, as well). As an example, I can offer what I'm hearing about the golf intellectual horsepower being brought to bear in response to the institution on tour next year (and in subsequent years for elite amateurs, etc., etc.) of the new groove rule, which as you'll recall is designed to limit the effectiveness of grooves in generating spin by as much as 50 percent. I have spoken to several in the industry hard at work at attacking this challenge, and the consensus seems to be that through a combination of face treatments and ball developments, whatever spin might have been lost to the newly downsized grooves could be recouped in as little as 18 months. If the boys in Carlsbad, Huntington Beach, Phoenix and Fairhaven (and a few other laboratories) can work that fast to solve a relatively recent technological conundrum, imagine how much they've been able to improve your game in the last decade. Of course, they all could just be blowing smoke. Sort of like they were with the titanium driver, huh?