About 2016 Most Wanted
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The 2016 Most Wanted Test is, bar none, the most comprehensive driver test conducted anywhere in the golf equipment industry. Unlike others in golf media who conduct club tests, MyGolfSpy does not accept advertising dollars from any of the companies in this year’s test. We don’t just claim unbiased, we live it. That means performance is the only thing that matters. Forget logos (and ad spends), you can be sure the best drivers finish on top, regardless of whose logo is stamped on the soleplate.
The Test
As a group, our testers hit a sum total of more than 7,500 shots to help us determine our 2016 Most Wanted Driver. All testers hit Bridgestone B330-RX Balls. All shots were recorded using Foresight GC2 Launch Monitors with HMT.
This year, testing took place at the MyGolfSpy Test Facility in Yorktown, VA. Over the course of several weeks 20 testers hit each of the 28 drivers in this year’s test.
Following the tradition we started, we will make our data available to you with the hope that you will use it to reach the conclusions most applicable to your game.
Tomorrow we will publish those results. This year’s addition of our annual Most Wanted Driver test is the first significant test conducted in our new testing facility. We hope you’re as excited to see the results as we are to share them.
Invitees and Participants
*Of the brands that declined to participate in this year’s test, MyGolfSpy elected to purchase drivers from the market leaders at retail.
Here’s the full list of the 28 driver models we tested this year:
What’s New for 2016
For 2016 we have introduced two significant changes to our data evaluation process.
Improved Outlier Detection – Removing all subjectivity from the outlier detection process has long been one of our goals. This year we’ve done that. The credit goes to MyGolfSpy reader, Dr. Steven Clark of Utah Valley University. Steven, who has provided his own compelling analysis of our data in the past, volunteered his time to see if he could find a methodology that would help us better identify outliers.
Dr. Clark took a subset of this year’s data and used it to evaluate several methods of outlier detection. Median Absolute Deviation, or MAD, was shown to be the most reliable. We’ve integrated that into this year’s test. In addition to removing all subjectivity from the process, the end result is fewer dropped shots, and more visible performance differences between clubs.
We’d like to take this opportunity to thank Steven for his time and publicly acknowledge his contribution to this and future tests.
Strokes Gained Methodology – What’s the appropriate balance between distance and accuracy? How do you evaluate total performance of a driver? We believe the best available answers lie in Mark Broadie’s Strokes Gained methodology.
We love Strokes Gained because it considers both distance and what we like to call functional accuracy in evaluating the probabilities of success. In some respects this is a significant departure from how driver performance is traditionally evaluated, but we believe its an avenue well worth pursuing.
For those who still prefer the old ways of looking at driver performance, all the data will be made available to you.
Publication Schedule
Unlike past years we won’t make you wait to find out which driver is 2016’s Most Wanted. Tomorrow morning we’ll announce our Most Wanted Driver of 2016. Early tomorrow afternoon we’ll post the best overall selections for high and low swing speed golfers.
Wednesday will be distance day. We’ll look specifically and exclusively at what we call peak distance. For those of you who want to know which drivers will provide maximum distance on your best struck shots, we’ll have your answers.
Unlike years past we won’t be dedicating a separate day to accuracy. Accuracy is a significant contributing factor to Strokes Gained and we don’t see a pressing need to highlight it this year. For those who want the data, however; both yards from center line and a revised version of our truAccuracy scores will be provided. We’ll also publish Shot Area (90% confidence ellipse) sizes for each driver.
Finally, as we always do, we’ll publish a follow-up post containing some additional details that we found interesting, along with answers to some of the questions you ask in the comments section.
Thank You
Finally, we’d like to again say thank you to our readers for your support, and the financial contributions that helped build our test facility.
We’d also like to thank each of the 9 companies; Bridgestone, Callaway, Cobra, Knuth, Mizuno, Nike, PING, Srixon, and Wilson, who chose to stand behind their products, put the consumer first, and willingly participate in this year’s Most Wanted test. Kudos to all.
For those waiting for the results, tomorrow can’t come soon enough.
CLAY
8 years ago
Seems the publication schedule has gone off the rails a bit, totally understandable given the huge amount of data. I am really looking forward to the breakdown by swing speed. Also, would be nice to know what goes furthest when you absolutely nut one.