Happy 1-Year Anniversary to Me! – (Thanks to all of you)

by: GolfSpy T

One Year Ago Today

It’s been exactly one year since my first review (Adams Speedline Fast 10 Driver) posted on MyGolfSpy. Just looking back on that review gives me some perspective of how much I thought I knew about what a golf club review should look like, and how little I actually did. How we ended up where we are today, doing what we’re doing now is as confounding as it is unremarkable.

The Background

Last February 2nd, shortly after missing the PGA Show I thought for sure I would finally attend (for the 3rd year in a row), I decided that the time and effort I was putting into to my golf (and a little bit of everything else) blog just wasn’t bringing in the type of return on investment I had imagined. Growing a blog into a destination website takes a lot of time, and plenty of solid industry contacts. I had neither. Of course, I had also been working part time at Tark’s Indoor Golf in Saratoga Springs, NY since before the doors had opened for business, and my time there had really gotten me to thinking about potential ways to improve on a nearly 100% subjective review process that had more or less become the internet standard.

I was familiar with MyGolfSpy (I’d actually finished 2nd in a fairly big MGS contest the year before), but there were a handful of other golf blogs that were on my radar. I surveyed the landscape, and decided that MyGolfSpy was probably the best fit for what I had in mind. If you’re wondering, the biggest influences on my decision to approach MGS first included:

• The completely unbiased, reader-centric approach to articles and reviews. Most sites at the time appeared to bend over backwards not only to coddle the OEMs, but to protect those same OEMs from any negative feelings their readers might happen to express about those brands.
• The almost complete lack of what I call marketing regurge. It’s hard to talk about golf clubs without covering some of what the manufactuer says is the reason why you should bag said club, but too many sites out there simply reblog the marketing collateral, and then tell you how much they love the club. I can read a press release in one hundred different places. Where’s the objectivity? Where’s the original thinking?
• The lack of a dictatorial atmosphere. I used to frequent other sites, but frankly over time was turned off by the “I’m right, you’re wrong, so shut the hell up” mentality that owners, and moderators often displayed. A free exchange of opinion, it seems, was only tolerated when those opinions gelled with those of the admins.
• The relative lack of product reviews. When you look at the landscape of the golf blogosphere and how the other big sites made their bones, it’s absolutely remarkable that MyGolfSpy was able to achieve the type of growth it did with a comparably minescule number of reviews. There was so much going on here, and yet so little of it centered around product reviews. It seemed like the right opportunity.

The Pitch

I sent GolfSpy X a very brief email reintroducing myself (we had exchanged a few emails back around the time of the last big contest). I explained that I was shutting down my site (tired of writing articles nobody read), but that I had an idea for a new kind of club review, access to the simulators for testing, and just enough writing skill to make it happen.

To my surprise, mere hours after I sent the email I received a phone call (on my way back from grabbing Hot Harry’s for lunch) from GolfSpy X. We talked about my ideas (me…and just me testing clubs, collecting data, publishing results). Then we talked about his ideas (me…and a bunch of other guys testing clubs). My idea was simple, but his was better.

A few more email exchanges later and golf clubs started showing up at my door. We developed the original incarnation of the ULTIMATE Review System, and set about the business of not just reviewing, but testing golf clubs.

Fast Forward 1 Year

If you’ve been reading from the beginning you know a lot has changed since the first ULTIMATE Review. SpecCheck is gone (it took a lot of time, and in the end only proved that nobody is shipping tour quality product to the consumer), the scoring sytem has been revised, and then revised again, and tweaked a bit more. Apart from a significantly overhauled scoring model, we’ve added a touch of interactivity to our reviews, which is what I’m personally most proud of. It’s one thing for me to tell you that tester A averaged 256 yards, and 16 yards offline, it’s quite another for you to be able to see shot by shot how we got there.

Of course plenty has happened that I never would have imagined. Where we are today is so far beyond what I had in mind when I sent that first email. I figured I’d personally test one club a month or so and that would be that. I never dreamed of a situation where we have 6+ clubs in for review at a time, where I’m coordinating SIM time for multiple testers, importing data in to Excel (never dreamed I’d be this good with Excel), and trying to crank out multi-perspective reviews on a weekly basis – all without sacrificing the quality we’ve promised from day 1.

It also never occurred to me that this thing would grow to the point where I’d talk to GolfSpy X more than I talk to my own wife, and that’s before we start talking about the multitude of emails that go back and forth on a near daily basis. I never imagined I’d fly down to Florida to spend a couple of days at the PGA show with a man I’d never met. That part is all a little weird really.

To say we always agree would be a slight exaggeration (outright lie). There is plenty we agree on, some things we don’t, and others where we are no less than worlds apart, but it works. I don’t know if I should say “to his credit”, or “as a testament to his insanity”, but either way, GolfSpy X, who I have grown to consider a friend, has pretty much deferred a hell of a lot to my judgement, let me do my own thing, and mostly turned the entire review process over to me. How nuts is that? The revised ULTIMATE REVIEW process is the result of what can happen when you give a lunatic plenty of rope.

So while the obvious thing to do here is to say thanks to GolfSpy X for the opportunity, I’d be remiss if I also didn’t say a very heartfelt thanks to all of you who visit MyGolfSpy day after day, especially those of you who take the time to comment on our reviews, post in our forum, and respond to our surveys. While feedback has not always been 100% positive, it’s extremely clear to us that so many of you appreciate what it we’re trying to accomplish at MyGolfSpy. It is amazingly difficult to create an environment where, for example, a company like TigerShark is truly on equal footing with the Titleists of the world, and we couldn’t have done it without your support.

Believe me when I tell you this is just the beginning. Stick around, it’s only going to get better.

Once again, thank you for supporting MyGolfSpy.

GolfSpy T