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BE AN IGNORANT GENIUS

Welcome to the 2021 Golf Digest Hot List. We’ve been testing and ranking the universe of golf clubs for 18 years, but this is our first wholly dedicated issue—nothing but equipment from cover to cover! If you’re holding the print rendition in your hands right now, is it audacious to suggest this might one day become a collector’s item? Probably depends on the collector. Seriously, this is a big deal for us. The analysis and photography presented here are at a scale never previously attempted in golf. You might find yourself overwhelmed. In fact, it’s almost a certainty. Understanding the subtle differences among clubs in a world in which everything new is basically really good—more fastidiously designed and built better than almost any club was five years ago—takes serious concentration. Even though…

BE AN IGNORANT GENIUS

SAY HELLO TO YOUR NEW BEST FRIENDS

After a year in which we were forced to make the best out of having a lot less, the golf-equipment industry has a message for 2021: More is finally here. Exhibit 1A is this year’s Hot List. Our 18th ranking of the game’s most intriguing golf clubs produced the most winning entries ever. Not only that, within our 137 winners are dozens of permutations of models, settings and styles totaling more than 560 options. Like all the new golfers taking up the game, the clubs that will make you play your best golf ever—the clubs that will become your new best friends—are increasingly individualized. There is not one driver or iron or putter everyone must have. But the one driver, iron or putter that you must have is definitely here…

SAY HELLO TO YOUR NEW BEST FRIENDS

CRITERIA OUR JUDGES, listed at right, cast the only votes in the Hot List, but they gather insight from three independent panels. The Scientists advise us on Innovation. Retailers assess Demand. Players evaluate Performance and Look/Sound/Feel. A product’s score is based on its weighted average in these four criteria, with Performance, Innovation and Look/Sound/Feel largely determining the total score. All scoring is based on a 100-point scale for each of the four criteria, relative to the entries in a category. PERFORMANCE 45% Based on interviews with our player panelists, player-testing data and other sources, the judges assess the utility of each product. In other words, this is a grade of what happens to the ball when a player hits it. (Note: Foresight Sports GCQuad Launch monitors are used at every hitting station.) INNOVATION 30% In consultation with…

The question comes fairly regularly when the Hot List makes its annual appearance. Where are the women’s clubs? Our answer: You’re looking at them. We don’t mean to be flippant, but because we believe so strongly in the value of clubfitting and because manufacturers have greatly expanded their selection of lofts, shafts and head styles, every club on the Hot List can work the same for a female golfer as it will for a male golfer with the same specs. We know this from the women golfers on our panel and because fitters tell us frequently that female golfers are vastly better served today than in the past. “Many of our female students fit nicely into men’s irons and drivers,” said Nick Clearwater, vice president of instruction at GOLFTEC, the nationwide instruction…

I’m the furthest thing from a gearhead. This tends to shock my peers because I’m a scratch-level player who covers golf for a living. But when it comes to equipment, I am woefully uninformed. Or I was woefully uninformed. At this time last year, the whole of my knowledge of Golf Digest’s Hot List was that Callaway, Ping, TaylorMade and Titleist seem to do well every year, and that some in the golf industry are convinced the reason for that is the whole thing is bought and paid for by advertisers. I was curious to find out if those accusations are true. I also wanted to know what role the Hot List should play in an age in which just about everyone, including the Hot List editors, believe all golfers should…

WHY YOU SHOULD GET FIT FOR CLUBS

For the entire 18-year history of the Hot List, there has been one constant: the undisputed value of getting custom-fit for new clubs. Although we frequently extoll the virtues of clubfitting, it’s not often we tell you what it’s like to get fit, how the experience is no less—and no more—daunting than hitting a shot off the first tee on a busy Saturday morning, and, most importantly, how results can be both game-changing and soul-soothing. What follows are four stories on recent fittings from three of our editors and our part-time contributor and full-time spiritual advisor Rabbi Marc Gellman. Let their wisdom be an inspiration to see how far new clubs—the right clubs—can take you. NAME: STEVE HENNESSEY, 32 HANDICAP: 14 TYPE OF FITTING: DRIVER A driver fitting at off-course retail: Trust the process Investing…

WHY YOU SHOULD GET FIT FOR CLUBS

A DRIVER MADE JUST FOR YOU

Using adjustable hosels and countless movable-weight settings, equipment designers have been trying to invent the perfect driver that could fit everyone. Turns out even with the infinite possibilities of adjustability, drivers can never be one-size-fits-all. Highly specialized models are the best way to address your shortcomings. That’s why this year’s Hot List features almost as many drivers targeting anti-slice needs as it does those touting low spin for tour-level swing speeds. The same inner workings that benefit the skills of the best of us transmogrify to remedy the flaws in the worst of us—all without sacrificing looks. Titanium faces are uniquely engineered for each loft, and driver crowns are lighter so that more weight can be repositioned one way for one kind of golfer and the opposite way for another.…

A DRIVER MADE JUST FOR YOU

TOO HARD TO HIT? NOT ANYMORE

The challenge with designing fairway woods and hybrids is balancing the need for driver-like speed and forgiveness with the ability to cut through turf and land shots on the green as easily as 7-irons. An impossible set of engineering goals, right? Consider that the latest metalwoods are plenty hot up front. With their use of heat-treated steels (even titanium) and elements that replace heavier materials with lighter ones (and vice versa), these clubs produce shots that launch faster and with less spin for more efficient trajectories. Down in the undercarriage, soles use angled shapes, rails and smoother recessed curves to reduce contact points with the ground. A cleaner ride gets the club to the ball faster so that the hotter face can do its work. Even better, fairway woods and…

TOO HARD TO HIT? NOT ANYMORE

PERFORMANCE INNOVATION LOOK • SOUND • FEEL DEMAND PLAYER COMMENT “The weighting on this head is perfect. I can feel the clubhead throughout the swing, which helps me keep it on plane longer.” CALLAWAY APEX • APEX PRO $270 It’s not as if Callaway’s Apex hybrid was one of those secret-menu options at In-N-Out burger reserved for burger-a-holics. But the club did have a limited, enthusiastic audience of mostly elite players who liked the ultra-compact size and iron-like setup. However, this year’s Apex hybrid is more like In-N-Out’s Double-Double, fully loaded with forgiveness and ball-speed ingredients in two sizes based on how hungry your game is. The standard Apex (pictured) is for those who want all they can get. It’s larger and features a huge slab of tungsten in the rear and toe to balance the center of…

PRO TIP: PLAY MORE LOFT

HYBRIDS AND high-lofted fairway woods are handy clubs to have in the bag. At the inaugural Workday Charity Open at Muirfield Village Golf Club in July, Collin Morikawa was locked in a Sunday duel with Justin Thomas. Standing 230 yards out on the 506-yard, dogleg-right fifth hole, Morikawa pulled a club he had little experience with, a 19-degree TaylorMade SIM Max Rescue he had in the bag for only a few tournaments during the year. Morikawa hit the shot to three feet, setting up a key eagle. “It’s a good club for coming into par 5s when you need some height and it’s not very windy,” Morikawa says. “The SIM Max Rescue has been an amazing club, especially when you compare the height to a 2-iron.” Webb Simpson (below) also knows the…

PRO TIP: PLAY MORE LOFT

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

“Who are you? Who, who, who, who?” That song lyric by the rock band The Who is a fitting start to your iron search. As clubmakers continue to splinter the market into several categories—for the Hot List, we group by Players, Players Distance, Game Improvement and Super Game Improvement—it’s important consumers are honest with themselves about what they need from their irons. Is it a hint of forgiveness with the workability, thinner topline and sole width that appeals to better players? Are you seeking to regain that lost half-club to Father Time without using something that resembles a shovel? Perhaps it’s a slightly bulkier iron that offers enough forgiveness to let you reach the front of the green on a slight mis-hit. Or maybe you’re relatively new to the game…

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

PERFORMANCE INNOVATION LOOK • SOUND • FEEL DEMAND PLAYER COMMENT “The lightweight feel gives it some pop at impact. The ball flight has the piercing trajectory I love.” CALLAWAY APEX PRO (2021) $185 (prices are per iron) Callaway hasn’t always tried to conceal the technology in its clubs, but it has done a good job of seamlessly melding technological improvements within a clubhead that looks like a gift package from Tiffany. The latest example is the new Apex Pro, which features a hollow-body construction for the first time. Callaway relied on artificial intelligence—which thinks of things a designer might not and does it a lot faster—to help its engineers give each iron face in the set a unique variable-thickness geometry. In essence, each clubface is customized. The back of the face looks more like a wave than a…

PLAYERS-DISTANCE IRONS

PERFORMANCE INNOVATION LOOK • SOUND • FEEL DEMAND PLAYER COMMENT “Felt like they really had a motor in them. You get a lot of distance without sacrificing feel. It’s an ideal size head for shotmaking as well.” CALLAWAY APEX (2021) $185 (prices are per iron) The standard is the standard. That’s a phrase Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin is fond of. It also could apply to the Callaway Apex irons, which have been the epitome of a players-distance iron since debuting in 2014. An iron in this category must satisfy a pair of simple, but strict criteria: It must be a players iron in shape and playability as well as possess a distance-producing element that results in yards a normal players iron can’t deliver. The most recent version of the Apex does both of these things incredibly well.…

PLAYERS-DISTANCE IRONS

GAME-IMPROVEMENT IRONS

PERFORMANCE INNOVATION LOOK • SOUND • FEEL DEMAND PLAYER COMMENT “The ball rockets off the face with a climbing, driving trajectory. Love the silver-clubhead, black-badge combo.” CALLAWAY APEX DCB $185 (prices are per iron) The Apex name has long been associated with clubs for better players, dating to when it adorned many noteworthy Ben Hogan iron models. Callaway now has expanded its Apex family to include a game-improvement iron that lives up to the name’s heritage. The forged, carbon-steel body features a cavity-back that is a little deeper and a sole a tad wider than the standard Apex, but there are many shared technologies. Chief among them is a cupface that wraps around part of the topline and sole to maximize rebound on the 4-through 9-irons. The company also continues its use of tungsten encased in microsphere-filled urethane,…

GAME-IMPROVEMENT IRONS

SUPER-GAME-IMPROVEMENT IRONS

PERFORMANCE INNOVATION LOOK • SOUND • FEEL DEMAND PLAYER COMMENT “A fresh look with an approachable topline that hides the thicker bottom. Plenty of distance and stability.” CALLAWAY BIG BERTHA B21 $128 (PRICES ARE PER IRON) Whether a developing golfer or one with a rusty swing, high-handicappers typically struggle with three areas of the game: distance, forgiveness and launch. To address those challenges, these irons have a cupface enhanced by artificial intelligence that produces hundreds, if not thousands, of face designs in the time it would take a human to do a handful. This helps Callaway create different thickness patterns for each iron face. That’s important because compression at impact for a 5-iron is much different than it is for a wedge. However, an “active” face will tend to vibrate, and that can lead to poor sound and…

SUPER-GAME-IMPROVEMENT IRONS

BRAND NEW CLASSICS

It’s too easy to call the driver the most sophisticated and difficult-to-understand piece of equipment in the game. Consider the wedge instead. The driver might start the hole, but it’s sometimes the wedge that adds the closing exclamation point. Asked to perform an endless array of score-saving tricks, the wedge in its many lofts, sole grinds and bounce options requires more versatility and variety than a Swiss Army knife halfway up the Matterhorn. It’s not just matching up the correct mix of lofts with the short irons in your bag, or even the subtleties of sole grinds and bounce options that help move the wedge properly through the turf. Today’s wedges are full of subtle angles and curves and interior weighting that heighten the edges of grooves or shift the…

THE PERFECT ROLL PLAYER

Putters are where freedom in golf-club design truly lives. What else can explain a category in which a shape that looks like a discarded metal detector works as well and feels as good as one that looks like a museum-quality piece of jewelry? We cannot in good conscience claim that there is any such thing as one perfect putter. In their current form and function, mallets and blades seem more like two sides of the same bitcoin, exploding exponentially in value with every purely struck roll. Each offers a unique take on golf’s ultimate confidence game. The modern mallet, with its unshakable stability on off-center hits and its nearly self correcting aim, seems to solve every balky stroke’s worst nightmares. Meanwhile, the lure of today’s blades goes beyond their naturally…

THE PERFECT ROLL PLAYER

PERFORMANCE INNOVATION LOOK • SOUND • FEEL DEMAND PLAYER COMMENT “So smooth off the face, this felt effortless. Reservations about the look? Please. Not the way this putter performs.” BETTINARDI INOVAI 7.0 $400 If mallets have a go-to, it’s “moment of inertia,” that stability on off-center hits that turns full-on misses into near-makes—if not makes. Well, this is Bettinardi’s highest MOI putter ever produced. Grown from the shape made famous by Jim Furyk’s U.S. Open win in 2003, the head is fully milled with soft stainless steel in the face and a military-grade aluminum body. The design optimizes weight distribution with its hollowed-out body, allowing for maximum forgiveness on off-center strikes and a more stable-feeling head during the stroke. A stiffer shaft promotes a more controlled putting motion back and through, regardless of the player’s style of stroke.…

PERFORMANCE INNOVATION LOOK • SOUND • FEEL DEMAND PLAYER COMMENT “The bronze finish is so attractive that it inspires better putting. My putts roll well with a sturdy, solid feel.” BETTINARDI QUEEN B (2021) $400 You’ve likely heard that putter design is more art than science, but designer Robert J. Bettinardi has long demonstrated that the art is the science. The Queen B series of one-piece, milled-carbon-steel blades is perhaps his most clear expression of that understanding. The tweaks made for 2021 are subtle but functional: The heads have a slightly different shape from past models, including a wider flange to help with consistency through the stroke. However, a thinner, tour-inspired topline prevents the putter from appearing bulkier. The new rose gold PVD finish gives the Queen B an elegant look, but it’s also functional—more durable with cleaner…

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