The Honest Truth About the Scores You See in My Golf Tech Product Reviews

Here’s something I’ve only confessed to my editor.

Scoring golf products is hard as hell. Like, genuinely, make-me-want-to-procrastinate-the-whole-thing, stare-at-the-ceiling hard.

And I say that as someone who’s spent a lot of time doing it, someone who appreciates why it matters, and someone who is absolutely committed to giving it my best effort every single time.

But it’s hard. And, if I’m being honest, it’s not my favorite part of the gig.

And if you’re going to trust my scores, you deserve to know exactly what you’re dealing with.

Here’s where it starts to get weird.

The Problem With Living in a Golden Age of Golf Technology

We are, without any exaggeration, in a remarkable era for golf technology. The launch monitors, the rangefinders, the GPS watches… I mean all of these products that exist in 2026 for the prices that they sell for with the things they can do… This would have all seemed almost fictional 10 years ago. Seriously.

I test these things firsthand. I hit shots with them. I wear them. I carry them. I study them. And what strikes me, over and over again, is how genuinely incredible so many of them are.

Which is exactly where the problem begins.

When you’re scoring products on a scale of one to 10, that scale kind of assumes a normal distribution. Some clunkers down at the bottom, some standouts up at the top, most things bunched somewhere in the middle. That’s the theory of a scoring system.

But what happens when there aren’t enough clunkers? Or hardly any of them?

When the “budget” option and the “premium” option are both doing things that seem almost miraculous, suddenly everything wants to be a nine or a 10. But if everything’s a nine or a 10, the scores stop meaning anything at all. They stop being helpful.

So I calibrate. I try to look for opportunities to create separation. I find the relative strengths and weaknesses between products that are all, truthfully, excellent. And that calibration introduces its own kind of distortion.

Then there’s the time problem.

A product comes out. It’s extraordinary. Nothing like it has existed before. I score it accordingly — high, because it deserves it. A year later, another product arrives that does everything the first one did and then some. Now what? I can’t score the new one lower than the old one. But I’ve already used up a lot of ceiling on the product that’s now, relatively speaking, the lesser of the two.

The part that I don’t really love admitting is that I’ve started building in headroom. Consciously holding scores back, even for products that probably deserve higher marks, because I know the next wave is coming and I need somewhere to go.

That feels like a compromise of honesty, even when it’s done in the name of long-term accuracy. It leads to a cascading set of problems I haven’t fully solved.

I know. I could continuously update all the scores. But, dude. I’m already busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest trying to keep up with all the products I still haven’t reviewed.

Anyway, it’s an imperfect method. I know that. Just trying to come clean and make sure you know that I know that you know. You know?

So What Should You Actually Do With the Scores?

My honest recommendation is that you don’t lead with the overall number.

I know that sounds strange coming from the person who assigns the overall number. But that top-line score carries all of the baggage I just described.

What tells at least a bit more useful story are the individual category scores. That’s where you can find my drill-down take on a specific thing that might matter to you the most.

Read the Hits and Misses too. I work hard on those. They’re specific, honest, and they’re in plain English.

And then… You know, you could read the review. The full thing. That’s where the real story is. That’s where I share my experiences, what I really liked a lot, and what I did not like at all, even about products that I overall loved. The score is the headline. The review is everything underneath it.

I see value in the scoring process. I do. Especially for readers who need a fast take on a product they’re considering. I’m not here to hate.

But I also believe you deserve the full picture. The scores are my best effort under genuinely complicated circumstances. Use them as a starting point. Let the details do the rest.

That’s what they’re there for.

About PlayBetter Golf Reviewer Marc Sheforgen

Marc "Shef" Sheforgen is a golf writer whose passion for the game far exceeds his ability to play it well. Marc covers all things golf, from product reviews and equipment recommendations to event coverage and tournament analysis. When he’s not playing, watching, or writing about golf, he enjoys traveling (often golf-related), youth sports coaching, volunteering, and record collecting.