MrBrightside
Assistant Pro
I watched a review of Hybrids on facebook last night, reviewer was dressed head to toe in FJ and favored the titleist, unsurprisingly.
Golf Monthly reviews - for real?
- Thread starter KenL
- Start date
Afternoon all, I asked Neil and Joel as the guys who do the vast majority of our club testing to pen a response - and it's below
>>>>
Hi everyone, we have been interested to read the comments about our review content and it seems that there is a lack of trust in what we are saying. Obviously, this is very disappointing and so we wanted to respond with a few comments here to clarify our testing procedures.
Firstly, a word on how we do our testing. We hit everything on a launch monitor on the same day and we try to eliminate as many variables as possible, so we use the same premium golf ball, same shaft, same loft, face angle etc, etc. Once we have hit a good number of shots then we remove any truly awful ones – so we tend to delete ones that are mishit badly or miss the fairway (more than 30 yards off line on the launch monitor). We then take a look at the data to see if we can pull out any trends. We do not include strike locations for different shots because you should then also really talk about path, attack angle, clubhead speed etc. Doing this makes it very easy to get lost in the detail and then fail to see the overall trends. It may well be that the swings made with one club are better than with another – but we feel as if that is all part of the test. If you feel comfortable looking down at a club, it stands to reason that you will swing it better. Ultimately, and this is something we always say in our videos, we are only trying to give people an idea for what to expect and that people should test and then get fitted for what they want. At no stage are we telling people to go out and buy a certain club.
Secondly, it is true to say that all the major manufacturers support Golf Monthly commercially. One of the upshots of this is that we have been to see many of the top brand’s R&D departments ourselves. We will admit that seeing the investment the brands are making in this area and meeting the incredibly intelligent people who work there, does make it much harder to dismiss what they are saying out of hand as pure marketing, as some other reviewers seem to do. We met the CEO of TaylorMade, David Abeles, last week and he was adamant that his company would never produce a product that does not out-perform the previous generation. Given the investment Abeles is making, if their latest generation is not at least a little better than the last, you have to wonder what they are spending all that R&D budget on! The same is true of all the leading manufacturers. It is 100% wrong to say that manufacturers have reached a ceiling and cannot improve the performance of their clubs.
Finally, just to reiterate - we have relationships with all the key manufacturers, not just one or a select few. These companies advertise with us - buying ads in print, online or pre-roll on our videos. Whenever we publish sponsored content, we make that as clear as possible for the reader/viewer to see by using the following terms (varies depending on channel)…. GM PROMOTION / IN ASSOCIATION WITH / IN PARTNERSHIP WITH. On sponsored videos they’ll also carry sponsor logos/messages on the intro and outro screens. It is naïve to think that anyone reviewing clubs does not have relationships within the golf industry. Over the last 18 months we have responded to a Golf Monthly reader survey asking for clearer verdicts and so we have produced many more head-to-head reviews between brands, all of whom advertise with us, in which there is a winner and a loser.
We take our club reviewing extremely seriously. We fully understand how sensitive this content is (both with the audience and the brands) and so we try to do everything as professionally and honestly as possible whilst also staying true to the idea that this is human testing and so the results only offer a snapshot of performance. Ultimately it would not be in our interest to fabricate the results of a club test to carry favour with a brand as the response from the audience, as this thread shows, would do us more damage.
>>>>
Hi everyone, we have been interested to read the comments about our review content and it seems that there is a lack of trust in what we are saying. Obviously, this is very disappointing and so we wanted to respond with a few comments here to clarify our testing procedures.
Firstly, a word on how we do our testing. We hit everything on a launch monitor on the same day and we try to eliminate as many variables as possible, so we use the same premium golf ball, same shaft, same loft, face angle etc, etc. Once we have hit a good number of shots then we remove any truly awful ones – so we tend to delete ones that are mishit badly or miss the fairway (more than 30 yards off line on the launch monitor). We then take a look at the data to see if we can pull out any trends. We do not include strike locations for different shots because you should then also really talk about path, attack angle, clubhead speed etc. Doing this makes it very easy to get lost in the detail and then fail to see the overall trends. It may well be that the swings made with one club are better than with another – but we feel as if that is all part of the test. If you feel comfortable looking down at a club, it stands to reason that you will swing it better. Ultimately, and this is something we always say in our videos, we are only trying to give people an idea for what to expect and that people should test and then get fitted for what they want. At no stage are we telling people to go out and buy a certain club.
Secondly, it is true to say that all the major manufacturers support Golf Monthly commercially. One of the upshots of this is that we have been to see many of the top brand’s R&D departments ourselves. We will admit that seeing the investment the brands are making in this area and meeting the incredibly intelligent people who work there, does make it much harder to dismiss what they are saying out of hand as pure marketing, as some other reviewers seem to do. We met the CEO of TaylorMade, David Abeles, last week and he was adamant that his company would never produce a product that does not out-perform the previous generation. Given the investment Abeles is making, if their latest generation is not at least a little better than the last, you have to wonder what they are spending all that R&D budget on! The same is true of all the leading manufacturers. It is 100% wrong to say that manufacturers have reached a ceiling and cannot improve the performance of their clubs.
Finally, just to reiterate - we have relationships with all the key manufacturers, not just one or a select few. These companies advertise with us - buying ads in print, online or pre-roll on our videos. Whenever we publish sponsored content, we make that as clear as possible for the reader/viewer to see by using the following terms (varies depending on channel)…. GM PROMOTION / IN ASSOCIATION WITH / IN PARTNERSHIP WITH. On sponsored videos they’ll also carry sponsor logos/messages on the intro and outro screens. It is naïve to think that anyone reviewing clubs does not have relationships within the golf industry. Over the last 18 months we have responded to a Golf Monthly reader survey asking for clearer verdicts and so we have produced many more head-to-head reviews between brands, all of whom advertise with us, in which there is a winner and a loser.
We take our club reviewing extremely seriously. We fully understand how sensitive this content is (both with the audience and the brands) and so we try to do everything as professionally and honestly as possible whilst also staying true to the idea that this is human testing and so the results only offer a snapshot of performance. Ultimately it would not be in our interest to fabricate the results of a club test to carry favour with a brand as the response from the audience, as this thread shows, would do us more damage.
Grant85
Head Pro
Very interesting and I'm sure 100% on the money.
I also have a lot of faith in Taylor Made and tend to consider their clubs 1st, but I am not a serial club buyer.
My point would be that if you have a driver from 5 years ago and are going to spend £300+ to upgrade, purely to improve your game I would say that £300 would be better spent on lessons / short game membership / range balls etc. i.e. the gains from a club are marginal and your ability to play the shots are far more important.
But of course that's not as fun and for those with the money to do it, they will get enjoyment out of trying and buying new gear.
I also have a lot of faith in Taylor Made and tend to consider their clubs 1st, but I am not a serial club buyer.
My point would be that if you have a driver from 5 years ago and are going to spend £300+ to upgrade, purely to improve your game I would say that £300 would be better spent on lessons / short game membership / range balls etc. i.e. the gains from a club are marginal and your ability to play the shots are far more important.
But of course that's not as fun and for those with the money to do it, they will get enjoyment out of trying and buying new gear.
Piece
Tour Winner
I would love to see a graph of distance and/or dispersion over the model years for a particular brand. You would expected to see a nice northward trend from a year dot TM driver, compared to the latest M3/M4. Naturally, all other parameters will have to be same or as close to (e.g. loft, person hitting, etc.). Didn't Shiels do a test like this recently? What was the outcome???
mikeb4
Head Pro
Is there ever a bad review ?? Don’t think so
Grant85
Head Pro
You see the odd one.
Mark Crossfield, youtuber and serial club reviewer, got blacklisted by Nike (I think) at one point.
Basically meaning that they wouldn't send him gear to test / review. He could obviously still source his own and post content - but just shows you how sensitive companies are to reviews that aren't glowing.
D
Deleted member 16999
Guest
Why would there be a bad review? There’s no “bad†equipment out there, there maybe products more suited to one person or another or equipment that does not perform as well as others, it doesn’t make it bad.
Find it disappointing anyone would actually question the integrity of the reviews.
chrisd
Major Champion
I did a fitting at Callaway a year or two back and asked why I wasn't getting the advertised increase in distance. The answer was that the new clubs at Callaway were being measured against the one 2 series back and mine was the one that the new one was replacing. He also said that most manufacturers compared their latest gains to the model 3 years back. None of them highlight this in their adverts as far as i can tell.
big_matt
Assistant Pro
Then you had the wrong shaft in the G. No club is noticeably longer than the previous model. If they were then the driving distance of the pros would have increased over the last 10 years.
Appreciate the response from the GM testing team. Dont think anyone is questioning their personal integrity, it just seems strange having reviews saying clubs are significantly longer when even the manufacturers dont claim this (they only talk about ball speed, forgiveness etc).
I also dont know why you never see a bad review. I just dont believe that every golf product is great. There are poor cars, phones, tv's, washing machines. Why do you never see anyone in the golf media saying a product (shoe, glove, ball, club) are dissapointing. There must have been one.
I enjoy watching the GM reviews on youtube, but as with any review i watch i just switch off when it gets to the improvements over last year.
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Grant85
Head Pro
I don't think it's a bad review necessarily, but more that it doesn't perform as they claim or in cases where reviewers rank drivers from different manufacturers and it is ranked lower.
D
Deleted member 16999
Guest
Exactly, bad (imo) is the wrong word to use, you see plenty of reviews were reviewers mention their issues with the products, it doesn’t make it a bad product.
HomerJSimpson
Hall of Famer
I will look at reviews from a number of sources (GM, youtube etc) and get a feel for what the tester thinks vs what the manufacturers are claiming and listen to/read the review and the data provided. Having done that, and deciding it's a product I'm interested in (Twistface and the price as an example of one that left me cold), and the crux of it all is, I'll go and test it either at a demo day (usually on a monitor and compare my own club(s) or with the pro I have lessons with. I'll always compare my own club against the new but the new model would have to be performing better and have the data to back that up
I would compare it to buying a car. You'd look at the magazines, catch up on the reviews and examine the specs, you'd never buy without test driving. That's what I feel you need to do with golf clubs. I wouldn't question the integrity of the reviews or reviewers but just take the claims with a pinch of salt and make my own mind up.
I would compare it to buying a car. You'd look at the magazines, catch up on the reviews and examine the specs, you'd never buy without test driving. That's what I feel you need to do with golf clubs. I wouldn't question the integrity of the reviews or reviewers but just take the claims with a pinch of salt and make my own mind up.
big_matt
Assistant Pro
Agreed. They are being honest and certainly dont fix the results. When i say i dont trust the results i just think there are reasons for the improvements that they see rather than the tech in the driver (maybe the strike with the new driver went right out the screws, maybe the previous shaft didnt suit, etc). There is overwhelming evidence that the new clubs go no further than older ones on centre strikes - you have to see the reviews as a fun watch but not improvements youll necessarily ever see yourself.
Id like to know from Neil and Joel: on the taylormade review that saw the massive distance increase (m4?), what do you personally put it down to? Do you feel your best swings just happened to be with this years club?
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HomerJSimpson
Hall of Famer
I've been on GM demo days including Titleist at Silvermere when we tested drivers (can't remember if it was the 915 version) and we were testing our own against the new model. The fitters worked hard, especially with my game, to get a set up that worked and in the end it did go further than my G25 when I put like for like swings on them. It may even have been 10 yards or so, so potentially a club less into the green but would I have been convinced on the basis of reviews and videos? No and I benefited from having their guys there with the different shafts and head set ups. Had that been AG or other high street retailers would I have seen the same improvements like for like?
richart
Major Champion
I bought my last car without test driving. Also bought my driver, 3 wood, hybrids, wedges and putter.
Did try the irons out though.
HomerJSimpson
Hall of Famer
I bought my last car without test driving. Also bought my driver, 3 wood, hybrids, wedges and putter.
Always an exception of course. Did Reading buy their team without testing (scouting) first? I would still counter that in most cases the car analogy applies
richart
Major Champion
Definitely judging by the rubbish we have bought this season !
Regarding clubs I think nearly all my mates bought their clubs off the shelf. Forumers generally take the game much more seriously than the average member. Funny breed forumers.
Regards cars, I was probably the exception because got mine from a forum stalwart, who looked after his old mate.:thup:
HomerJSimpson
Hall of Famer
Definitely judging by the rubbish we have bought this season !
Regarding clubs I think nearly all my mates bought their clubs off the shelf. Forumers generally take the game much more seriously than the average member. Funny breed forumers.
Regards cars, I was probably the exception because got mine from a forum stalwart, who looked after his old mate.:thup:
I can see your point about the clubs. I've bought off the shelf (including my second hand I series last week from Golfbidder) and been fitted. I really enjoy the process of being fitted and trying different options but have had success with both types of purchase. Has it ultimately helped/hindered my handicap? No idea and as an average golfer I am capable of hitting fitted and off the shelf clubs well and badly in equal measure. I get the arguments behind custom fitting and as I say really enjoy it when I have it, but the older I get, the more I wonder what long term benefits I see. I understand those that are tall, or slow swingers and need a fit or assistance with lighter shafts getting help but in general do off the shelf v custom make a difference. I'm beginning to change my mind.
Hi Big Matt here's some feedback from Neil ref the TaylorMade testing...
Good question… The equipment comparison where I noticed the biggest difference in performance was with the new M3 v previous generations of the M1. In my opinion, and I know that for many people this is not popular, the M3 is a significantly better driver. Let me explain. For me, all the launch monitor numbers were better – ball speed, launch, spin were better optimised despite using the same shaft, loft, golf ball etc. This equated to a big gain in distance. Now, a lot of people seem to be very sceptical about that but if you look at the launch monitor data on that video you will also notice that I only had to delete one shot from the batch I hit with the M3. Ultimately, I just felt much more comfortable with it - I was straighter, more in control of the clubhead and as a result, I am certain I started to swing the club faster.
As we said previously, this is human testing and a lot of it is subjective. For me, both the launch monitor numbers and the results in the flesh were better with the M3. I stand by that. The irony is that our video would almost certainly have had more likes, comments and shares if I’d said the opposite, but that simply wasn’t the case.
Jacko_G
Blackballed
If you want good honest reviews head to Golf Spy. Not a review that is "inadvertently" influenced by buying advertising space.
I also tend to agree that you don't get significantly different increases in distance unless your last year's model was poorly fitted or not fitted at all
I also tend to agree that you don't get significantly different increases in distance unless your last year's model was poorly fitted or not fitted at all
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