Surviving the Hot List: Season 2

What happens when you drop a golf-crazed Hollywood actor and a retired NFL player into the most grueling gig in golf? At the 2023 Hot List summit, Golf Digest's cameras followed Michael Peña and Danny Woodhead's quest to ace their new jobs as rookie club testers.

Players Irons

You might not have a name plate on the practice range, but your swing is still the envy of almost everyone on it. They stop and watch you hit balls. You are a player. And the irons you use state that fact to anyone peeking in your bag. What they don’t know is that today’s best new Players irons have changed greatly to where some of them have enough forgiveness features to rival game-improvement clubs. Helping this is the ability of designers to produce clubs with more forgiveness that are still workable and have toplines and sole widths thin enough to appeal to better players. Most of these irons continue to be forged from a soft metal such as 1025 carbon steel although some are still cast. Many manufacturers also realize that even better players need some help with the long irons, leading to the use of tungsten or other means in the long irons to lower the center of gravity for an easier launch. Oh, and if you think having all that technology in a visually appealing package isn’t cool enough for you, take a look at what’s being played on the PGA Tour and you’ll see most of the irons on this list. After all, being a player doesn’t mean that you have to be overly proud.