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2140 Fair Oaks Boulevard, Suite 4, Sacramento CA Bench hours Tuesday through Saturday (916) 555-0184
Bunker Lab Golf Fitting bench and service desk · since 2011
Procedure

Ninety Minutes, Broken Into Five Blocks You Can Follow Along With

There is nothing proprietary about how we run a session and nothing happens behind a curtain. Here is the whole sequence, in order, with what we are looking for at each point and what would make us stop.

Before you arrive

The three-question intake

When you book, we ask three things and nothing else. How many rounds do you play in a year. Where do you practise — grass, mat, or both. What is the shot you are tired of. That is enough to size the appointment and to set the right recheck window later. We do not ask for a handicap, because it tells us less than the practice-surface answer does.

Bring your bag as it stands. The club you never hit is often the most informative one in the set, and a gap that has opened up is only visible when the whole thing is on the bench.

The session, block by block

  1. Block one — gauging, about twenty minutes

    Every iron and wedge goes on the loft and lie machine and the scale. We read loft, lie, length, swing weight, and grip condition, and note the shaft label and any evidence of prior work — a pulled shaft leaves marks, a previously bent head sometimes does too. Nothing is hit yet. This block produces the left-hand column of your sheet: what you own, as it is today.

  2. Block two — delivery capture, about twenty-five minutes

    You warm up at your own pace, then hit with your existing clubs while we record. Lie board tape for sole contact, monitor data for the flight numbers, and a note on where in the session your pattern settled, because the first eight swings are never representative and we discard them.

    We are looking for the disagreement between block one and block two. A club built at two degrees upright that delivers a heel-side mark is telling you something different from one built flat that also delivers heel-side.

  3. Block three — one variable at a time, about thirty minutes

    Now we change things. Length, then lie, then shaft, then head — never two at once, and we return to your control club between changes to confirm the baseline has not moved because you are tiring. If a change produces a difference smaller than your own shot-to-shot spread, we call it a wash out loud rather than letting the screen imply it worked.

  4. Block four — the honest read, about ten minutes

    We sit down and go through the numbers. You will see the readings that did not support a change as well as the ones that did. This is where we say whether the answer is a build, a bend, a regrip, or nothing.

  5. Block five — the file, about five minutes

    Nolen prints the sheet: current specs, delivery notes, what we tested, what we recommend, and the date the recheck window opens. You take a copy, we keep a copy, and if you want it emailed to a coach we will send it that week.

Things that stop a session

When we will not build

  • Your pattern is not stable. If your dispersion is still widening at the forty-minute mark rather than tightening, we are measuring noise. We finish the baseline and postpone the build.
  • You are mid-lesson-plan. Six weeks into a swing change, your delivery will not be the same in three months. We say so.
  • Something hurts. Fitting around a painful wrist or back produces equipment that is correct for an injured golfer and wrong for a healthy one. We would rather wait.
  • The gain is inside the margin. If the best option is two yards on a spread of fourteen, that is not a result, and we will not write it up as one.

None of these cost you a rebooking fee. The baseline is still yours.

After the session

The recheck window

This is the part that makes us different from a one-visit fitting. Your window is calculated from the intake answers, not from a generic annual reminder.

Indicative recheck windows we set
Play patternBend checkGrip review
Under 20 rounds a year, grass practice24 months18 months
20 to 50 rounds, mixed practice14 months12 months
50 to 90 rounds, heavy mat practice9 months7 months
Over 90 rounds, competitive schedule6 months4 months

These are starting points. If your first recheck shows almost no movement, we lengthen the window. If it shows a lot, we shorten it. After two cycles the interval is yours rather than a category average, which is the whole point.

Book the baseline and decide afterwards

Nothing in this sequence requires you to commit to a purchase. The sheet is the product.

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