The March Check
Soft, layered clay and cold air. We are looking for wedges that will dig, iron gapping that has quietly collapsed in the cold, and grips that spent four months in a garage.
What Actually Happens Between Two And Four
No surprises is the whole point, so here is the entire sequence written out. Times below are for a standard iron sitting, which is our longest. Driver and wedge sittings compress the middle sections; putter sittings replace them entirely.
Three Things To Bring
- Your current clubs. All of them, including the ones you have given up on. The baseline is taken from what you own, and the club you never hit sometimes explains the club you do.
- The shoes you play in. Lie angle is measured with your actual stance height. Street shoes with a thin sole will hand you a number that is wrong by half a degree.
- A glove you have broken in. Grip pressure changes with a stiff new glove, and grip pressure changes delivery. It is a small thing that is genuinely worth mentioning.
You do not need to warm up beforehand, and you should not try to play well. We are measuring the golfer who shows up on a Tuesday, because that is the golfer the clubs have to serve.
Minute By Minute
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0:00 – 0:20
Intake, And The Only Conversation Of The Day
Where you play, how often, and in which months. What your miss is and whether you believe it. What you have already bought trying to fix it. We write this down because the specs at the end have to answer these sentences, and by hour two everyone has forgotten what was said in minute four.
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0:20 – 0:35
Your Clubs Go On The Bench Cold
Loft, lie, length, swingweight, shaft frequency, and grip build-up on every relevant club. No swings yet. This is where we find the 6-iron that is two degrees strong, the wedge shaft that is forty grams heavier than its neighbours, and the set that was bent once and never checked since.
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0:35 – 1:00
The Strike Census
Fourteen swings with your own club, face tape on each, on turf. We record ball speed, launch, spin, and where on the face it happened. From that we compute the keep rate — median against best — which is the single number the rest of the sitting is trying to move.
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1:00 – 1:15
The Ground Answer
Lie board on turf, then sole entry work. We look at where the club is entering, how deep, and whether the trailing edge is releasing or fighting. On irons and wedges this is where most of the real gain lives, and it is the section a mat-based fitting cannot honestly perform.
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1:15 – 1:35
The Address Picture
We put candidate heads down behind the ball and ask a specific question: what does your eye do with this. Offset, hosel setback, topline thickness, and leading-edge position change startline before the swing starts. If a head makes you aim differently, we would rather find that out now than in the seventh fairway in May.
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1:35 – 2:00
One Variable At A Time
Head, then shaft, then length, then weight. Never two together. Each change gets a short block of swings and a written result, including the ones that did nothing. A fitting where every change is an improvement is a fitting where somebody is grading their own work.
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2:00 – 2:15
The Second Season Check
We rerun the two or three most important shots on the opposite turf condition — soft if we have been on firm, firm if we have been on soft. If the recommendation collapses under that, it was not a recommendation. It was a good afternoon.
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2:15 – 2:30
The Spec Card And The Price
Every number goes onto the card. Components get listed with cost and build fee shown separately. Nothing is ordered in the room. You leave with the card either way, and if you never come back it is still a complete document that any competent builder can work from.
If You Order, Here Is The Build
Assembly happens on Wednesdays, which is why the floor is closed to sittings that day. Components usually land within seven to twelve working days; a specialty shaft or a custom grind can run three weeks and we will say so before you commit.
- Shafts pulled, checked for spine, and oriented consistently across the setStep 1
- Tip and butt trimming to the card, not to the stock chartStep 2
- Heads weighed, sorted, and adjusted with tip weight where the set needs matchingStep 3
- Epoxy cure, then loft and lie set on the machine after cure, never beforeStep 4
- Grips installed to the recorded wrap count, logo alignment checkedStep 5
- Final swingweight and frequency recorded and written onto your cardStep 6
When you collect them, we hit three or four shots with the finished clubs on the same turf you were measured on. If a number has drifted, it goes back on the bench that day.
Two Checkpoints A Year, Forever
This is the part of the studio that is genuinely unusual, and it costs you nothing.
Your spec card goes into a season file. In early March we go through the files and get in touch with anyone whose clubs are about to meet conditions they were not fitted in. In September we do it again from the other direction. Neither check is a sales call — most of them end with “nothing to do, play well.”
The September Check
Hard ground and fast run-out. We are looking for leading edges that have started skipping, effective bounce that is now too high, and a driver that is suddenly launching lower than the card says it should.