Loft And Lie Check
Every iron and wedge measured and brought back to spec. Cast heads drift; forged heads drift faster. Worth doing once a season if you play more than forty rounds.
Six Sittings, Each With Its Own Protocol
Clubs fail in different places, so they get measured in different ways. A driver loses its keep rate high on the toe; a wedge loses everything in the third inch of turf. Below is what each sitting is actually for, what it measures, and roughly how long it runs.
Driver
Roughly 100 minutes. The goal is a narrower spread of ball speed across your real strike pattern, not a single tall number you produced once at the twenty-minute mark.
We start with a strike census on your current driver — fourteen swings, face tape on every one, photographed. That gives us your dispersion on the face before we touch anything. Then head mass, shaft profile, and playing length get worked one at a time against that map. Most golfers here end up shorter than their stock length and heavier in the head than they expected.
- Face strike map with tape, kept in your file
- Keep rate: best strike against median across the group
- Shaft profile by frequency and deflection, not by the letter printed on it
- Playing length and swingweight resolved together, never separately
- Loft and face angle set against your measured delivery, not the stock setting
Irons
Roughly 130 minutes for a full set. The longest sitting we run, because a set has to agree with itself across nine clubs and two seasons.
Lie angle comes first and gets checked on a board with real turf underneath, not on a mat that lets a toe-down strike slide. Then sole geometry against the ground answer, then shaft profile, then the thing most golfers have never had looked at: whether the offset and leading-edge position drift sensibly from your 4-iron to your pitching wedge or jump somewhere in the middle.
- Lie board work on turf, every club in the set
- Sole width, camber, and trailing-edge relief against Pittsburgh clay loam
- Progression audit through the set — where the address picture changes and whether it should
- Gapping in carry, checked at both spring and late-summer ball-out numbers
- Shaft weight and profile matched across the set rather than club by club
Fairway Woods
Roughly 90 minutes. The most misunderstood club in the bag and the one most often bought on a tee shot it will rarely hit.
A 3-wood has three separate jobs and they conflict. From a tee it wants length and a high launch. From a clean fairway lie it wants a sole that will not dig. From the semi-rough in October it wants mass low and forward and a leading edge that does not snag. We test in the proportion you actually use it, which for most golfers here is about one tee shot to four from the deck.
- Testing split across tee, fairway, and a marginal lie
- Sole camber and turf entry, measured the same way as irons
- Head profile against your address picture — face progression drives startline here more than in irons
- Gap to your longest iron or hybrid checked, both directions
Hybrids
Roughly 75 minutes. The question is not “do I need one” but “where exactly does my long iron stop earning its place.”
That crossover point is measurable. We hit your existing long irons for carry and, more importantly, for keep rate. The club where the median falls off a cliff relative to the best strike is the club that should go. Then we work out what belongs on the far side of it — which is sometimes a hybrid, sometimes a high-lofted fairway wood, and occasionally a driving iron with a different sole.
- Long-iron keep rate curve to locate the crossover honestly
- Head shape and offset against your address picture — hybrids look wildly different at address
- Sole width for the lies you actually face, including rough
- Shaft choice reconciled with both your irons and your fairway woods
Wedges
Roughly 90 minutes. Where the seasonal argument is loudest, and where the studio probably changes the most minds.
Bounce is not a number you choose once. Effective bounce — what the club actually presents to the ground at your delivery, on the ground as it is that month — swings by several degrees between a soft April and a baked August. We fit for the middle and then tell you which grind is worth having a second version of if you play seriously in both extremes.
- Turf entry testing on soft and firm panels, back to back
- Grind and camber matched to local bunker sand, which around here is coarser than tour spec
- Full gapping from your shortest iron down, in carry not in loft stamps
- Shaft and swingweight, which most golfers have never had matched to their irons
Putters
Roughly 75 minutes on a surface rolled to match what your home greens actually do, which in this area is usually slower than golfers guess.
Length and lie come first because everything else is downstream of where your eyes sit. Then loft at impact, which is the number nobody checks and which explains most complaints about a ball that hops on the first two feet. Then head balance against your measured stroke arc — not against a face-balanced-versus-toe-hang chart, but against your actual arc, traced.
- Eye position and length resolved before any head is considered
- Dynamic loft at impact, measured, not assumed from the stamped figure
- Stroke arc traced and matched to head balance
- Roll quality on a surface stimped to your home course, adjusted for the month
Things That Are Not Sittings
Not every problem needs two hours on the floor. Several of the most useful jobs we do are bench work that takes an afternoon and costs less than a sleeve of premium balls.
Regrip And Build-Up
Grip size is a delivery variable, not a comfort preference. We measure hand and wrist action first, then choose the wrap count, then check what it did to swingweight.
Gapping Review
Forty-five minutes, no head changes, just carry numbers through the bag. Finds the two clubs doing the same job and the thirty-yard hole nobody had noticed.
Season File Check
March and September, no charge to past clients. We open your card, ask what changed, and decide whether anything needs to move before the conditions do.
If You Only Book One
| What you would say out loud | Where it usually belongs |
|---|---|
| “My good ones are fine, my average ones are terrible” | Driver or iron sitting — this is a keep rate problem |
| “I pull everything and I do not feel like I am pulling” | Iron sitting — lie angle and the address picture |
| “Fine in June, unplayable by August” | Wedge sitting — effective bounce against baked clay |
| “My 4-iron went somewhere and never came back” | Hybrid sitting — find the crossover, then replace it |
| “Two clubs go the same distance” | Gapping review, not a full sitting |
| “The ball hops before it rolls” | Putter sitting — almost always dynamic loft |
| “I have never been fitted at all” | Iron sitting first — it touches nine clubs |
If none of those describe it, write the actual sentence into the booking form. We read them, and occasionally the honest answer is that you need a lesson rather than a fitting.