Hot List Summit: When journalists meet with doctors: Hot List 365: Golf Digest

Hot List Summit: When journalists meet with doctors

Monday, October 17, 2011

LITCHFIELD PARK, Ariz. -- It is not unusual for journalists to consider themselves the smartest people in the room, but each of the five present in this particular room on Sunday were smart enough, at least, to know better.

Golf Digest's annual Hot List Summit at the Wigwam Resort outside Phoenix began as it usually does, with the first of two sessions with its technical panel of six of the brightest minds in North America. Collectively they seem to have more degrees than a right angle.

They are here to help explain and evaluate the technology in the newest equipment, and the discussions are lively and at a level that would rapidly disavow any journalist of the notion that he or she was on the same intellectual plane.

Do we have validation for a CDF computation, one of the eggheads, as we affectionately call them, asked? We'll check on that after our academics explained to us that CDF stands for computational fluid dynamics. This is a perfect example of what we have maintained for years about the Hot List: We may not be experts in all things relating to equipment, but in the areas we are not, we have access to those who are.

Occasionally the conversations veer off on amusing tangents. For instance, if you're on an elevator that is in free fall, why can't you save yourself from harm by jumping up a split second before it crashes?

This led to a discussion of Galileo's "Dialogue Concerning Two Chief World Systems" and Zeno's Paradoxes.

What does this have to do with golf? We'll get back to you on that, after our headaches subside.

--John Strege