May 2012: Hot List 365: Golf Digest

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Golf Equipment: golfdigest.com

Results for May 2012 Back to Hot List 365 Index

Some fitting advice on shafts coming up in Golf Digest--and right now, too

Thursday, May 31, 2012

I often seek input on equipment questions from those working in the trenches, the passionate fitters who are trying to put their customers in the best position to optimize their potential on the golf course. Our list of America's 100 Best Clubfitters includes a collection of folks with strong ideas on how to make fitting easier to understand, and ideally as a result, more likely that more golfers will consider its benefits.

I just came across a note from one of the more thoughtful fitters in the country, Russ Ryden. Ryden is the owner at Fit2score, which operates in two locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. He offers some wisdom on the complexities of shafts, and I include it here as some meaningful advice, along with some incentive to pay attention to the July issue of Golf Digest, where we try to answer some of basic questions about shaft-fitting. Look for it soon.

Russ Ryden, Fit 2 Score, on the power of shaft-fitting:

"There is no substitute for spending time with a fitter in front of a launch monitor. If you have never been through a good fitting, there is a great deal to be learned from the fitter in the process.

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The search is on for Hot List testers

Thursday, May 24, 2012

How would you like the opportunity to try the latest equipment from every manufacturer long before it reaches stores, and to add your input to the game's leading review of the hottest drivers, irons and putters? Intrigued? Get your application in now to earn a spot as a Golf Digest Hot List panelist this fall.

Equipment Editor Mike Johnson takes notes as panelist Steve Lachman reviews a golf club. (Photograph by J.D. Cuban)

Becoming a Golf Digest Hot List panelist is widely considered the greatest honor any Golf Digest reader can acquire. Our Equipment Editors assemble a panel of 20 amateur players from across the nation to test new clubs at an exhausting (and rewarding) four-day summit at the Wigwam Golf Resort & Spa in Litchfield, Ariz. in October (all travel, room and board is paid by GD). The feedback we receive helps us determine the results of the Hot List, the world's most thorough and comprehensive review of golf equipment, which is published in our March issue.

Every year, we replace a few of our panelists, and we are looking for players with handicap Indexes between scratch and 15. If you think you have what it takes to help us better evaluate golf equipment, earn your chance to become a Hot List Panelist by testing three new clubs at your local pro shop and sending us 30-word reviews about the performance of each one. It is your responsibility to gain access to these clubs (we recommend asking your pro or retailer for a demo).

Here are the three clubs you need to test:

Adams Super XTD hybrid

Odyssey Flip Face putter

Cobra ZL Encore driver

In your e-mail to hotlist@golfdigest.com, please include your name, age, mailing address, telephone number, GHIN number, whether you're a right-handed or left-handed golfer, the current clubs you play and their specs, the three 30-word club reviews, and a short bio. Tell us who you are, what you do for a living and why you'd like to be a Hot List Panelist. We encourage applicants to include a short cell phone video of themselves hitting balls and telling us who they are.

We will select the lucky readers by the middle of August.

Good luck!

Golf Digest Equipment Editors

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Ping research: Fitting makes new club technology better

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Spent a full day learning about some new ideas from Ping, and one of our big discussion topics was driver fitting and just how much fitting matters.

Consider this study, shared with us by Brad Schweigert, Ping's director of engineering. The Ping team took a group of 100 average golfers and tested them with a current 10.5 degree driver. At first glance, a 10.5-degree represents a middle of the road loft that should fit a significant percentage of a population of 100 average golfers, right? Well, when Ping fitters and engineers optimized each of the 100 golfers for ideal loft and shaft, the average gain for the group was 11 yards over that initial 10.5-degree driver. Some players gained less, of course, but others gained more, as much as 35 yards.

Now, we're not talking about an improvement over an outdated driver. That's an obvious technology upgrade. Rather, this is a test of an approximate fit vs. an exact fit, using up-to-the minute technology for both drivers, and more importantly, using up-to-the-minute fitting technology. In essence, this result is purely a measure of the importance of fitting, not merely the power of new clubhead, face or shaft technology.

Still think your old driver you were never fit to is good enough? Still want to pick your new driver off the rack? Think again about what you might be missing. I'll bet it's more than 11 yards. These guys agree.

--Mike Stachura

Follow me on Twitter @MikeStachura

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Clubfitting research: Unconventional improvement

Monday, May 21, 2012

Our research project on the effect of clubfitting, which is being conducted in conjunction with Club Champion, is just getting started and already the results are educating us in ways we haven't thought about before.

Case in point: Today I had a conversation with Glenn Goldsborough, a physics and astronomy teacher and golf coach at Pennsbury High School in Fairless Hills, Pa., who is one of the participants in our study. His intense fitting resulted in changes throughout his bag, but one of the more interesting developments is one even the more sophisticated equipment geeks might find counterintuitive: Slower speeds yielding more distance.

Here's how that idea played out for Goldsborough, who plays to a 10.6 index: His current irons, TaylorMade's Tour Burner, feature a stock graphite shaft that weighs just 65 grams. But Goldsborough was fit to TaylorMade's R11 irons with a KBS Tour C Taper shaft that weighs nearly twice as much.

Not surprisingly, the new, heavier shafts, reduced his clubhead speed with the 6-iron slightly, but they increased his distance by as much as a full club through the set.

"Even though I'm not swinging as fast, I'm still seeing a bigger distance gain because I'm hitting it more squarely and I also think the shaft is maximizing the energy that I'm putting into it," Goldsborough said.

"It feels like I have a metal ring around me on my swing plane. It just seems like the club just stays there through my whole swing."

Goldsborough said the opposite was true with his fairway woods and driver, where the lighter shafts produced the better results.

"It really was an amazing education for me. You really can't pigeonhole anybody's swing or what they do with different clubs until you actually get on the launch monitor and see the numbers."

The mission of the Golf Digest-Club Champion clubfitting study is to take players who had not been fit for clubs before and see if a clubfitting changes their game. The range of players participating in our project includes low single-digit players as well as those who have a difficult time breaking 90. We'll continue to track the performances and perceptions of the participants in our clubfitting study throughout the summer.

You can find more information about participating in the study here.

--Mike Stachura

Follow me on Twitter @Mike Stachura

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Golf Town buys Golfsmith for $96 million in retail mega-merger

Monday, May 14, 2012

Mergers, acquisitions and consolidation have been a part of the headlines on the golf manufacturing side in recent weeks, but now the golf retail space is getting in on the game and in a big way.

Golf Town, the largest golf retailer in Canada with 54 stores, had begun expanding in the U.S. in the last two years by opening seven large stores in the Boston area. Today, it announced an even larger expansion: It will purchase U.S. retail giant Golfsmith.

Golf Town, which is owned by Toronto-based OMERS private equity firm, said Monday it has signed a definitive merger agreement to purchase Golfsmith International Holdings for $6.10 per share. Golfsmith closed at $4.71 on Friday. Golfsmith, which was founded 40 years ago as a clubmaking supply company but has since grown to become the largest golf-specialty retailer in the U.S. with 85 stores, had previously announced that it was pursuing strategic alternatives including the sale of the company. With 15.81 million shares oustanding, the Golf Town purchase price adds up to a little more than $96.4 million.

In a press release, Don Morrison, Senior Managing Director and Canadian Country Head of OMERS Private Equity said, ""Golfsmith is a company that we have admired for years. This transaction will give us a formidable footprint in North America and will also provide a strong platform for future growth. Together with management we look forward to enhancing the value proposition for the companies' loyal customers."

Among the plans for the merger: Martin Hanaka, current CEO of Golfsmith, will assume the role of CEO of the combined company. Sue Gove, President, COO and CFO of Golfsmith will become the President and COO of the combined company and Ron Hornbaker, who had been interim CEO of Golf Town, will assume the role of Executive Vice President-Stores.

"We have been very pleased with the building momentum at Golfsmith and I am proud of the accomplishments that our team has made over the last three years in developing a solid foundation for long term growth. We hold Golf Town in the highest regard and believe them to be an ideal partner to take Golfsmith to the next stage of growth," Hanaka said in a statement.

The Golfsmith model in recent years has been toward developing large square-footage "experiential" retail outlets with multiple hitting bays, large putting greens and an emphasis on clubfitting and increased apparel offerings. In addition, Golfsmith has seen substantial growth in the online arena with golfsmith.com.

Golf Town's model is similar. While it is Canada's No. 1 golf retailer and it bills itself as the second largest golf retailer in the world, it recently opened seven stores in the U.S., all in the Boston region in the last two years. That expansion included more than 100,000 square feet of retail space. Golf Town is also bringing a new technology to the clubfitting space through a partnership with Swing Labs, an unbiased, fitting sofware designed to more efficiently match players to clubs based on swing data.

Related: How club-fitting is getting smarter, faster, better.

The full text of today's press release announcing the acquisition is here.

--Mike Stachura

Follow me on Twitter @MikeStachura

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Fitting clubs is getting smarter, easier

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

One of the (many) perks of this job is the opportunity to go for a club fitting often. I probably haven't been through as many fittings as a tour pro, but I've probably been through more fittings than any 10 average golfers combined.

One thing stands out every time: Why aren't more golfers getting this done and what are they waiting for?

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