Nine People Describing What Actually Happened at the Bench
We ask for these at the second visit rather than while somebody is standing at the counter with a new set in their hands. That timing produces less enthusiasm and more accuracy, which is the trade we wanted.
Half of the notes below describe a visit where nothing was sold. That is not a filter we applied. It is roughly the ratio.
I came in for a driver and left with a bend on four irons and a bill under a hundred dollars. Nolen walked me through the readings that showed my driver was already doing what it could. I have spent more than that on a single round.
The thing nobody warns you about is how slowly grips die. Mine were four summers old and I would have told you they were fine. Two rounds after the regrip my hands stopped aching on the back nine and I have no idea how long I had been living with that.
Sylvie told me not to build anything until I finished the swing work I was doing with my coach. That was a six month delay and it cost her the order. When I came back the numbers were completely different from where they had been, so she was right, and I noticed that she had been right.
I am not a good golfer and I was braced for the usual thing where the fitter is polite but bored. Imogen spent forty minutes on my wedges because that is where my strokes were going. Nobody has ever done that for a twenty handicap before.
Honest note: my first recheck showed almost nothing had moved and I felt slightly silly for booking it. They lengthened my window to two years on the spot instead of pretending the visit had found something. That is when the whole arrangement started making sense to me.
I play a lot of mat practice in the winter and my scoring irons were going left by spring. Turned out to be lie angle, not me. It has now happened twice and both times the fix was a fifteen minute visit rather than a new set.
Ansel pulled a shaft I was sure was scrap and reused it. He also refused to reuse a different one on the same day and explained exactly why, which is the part that made me trust the first decision.
My son grew four inches in a year. Instead of selling me a junior set that would be wrong by August, they built something with room to be adjusted and told me to bring him back in the spring. We are on the third adjustment now and still on the original heads.
The one criticism I will make is that they are slow to answer email on a Sunday, which is fair enough given the bays are shut. Phone during the week and somebody picks up in about four rings.
How these were collected
No incentives, no editing beyond punctuation
Nobody here has ever been offered a discount, a free regrip, or an entry into anything in exchange for writing something. We email a single request after a golfer's second visit asking what they would say to somebody deciding whether to come, and we publish what comes back. Spelling gets corrected. Nothing else does.
That is also why the last note on this page contains a complaint. Removing it would have made the page more flattering and less useful, and anybody reading nine consecutive unbroken raves has already stopped believing the tenth.
What we do not publish
- Full names of juniors. Parents are named, players under eighteen are not.
- Anything containing another business. Several notes arrive comparing us to a shop across town. Those go in the file and stay off the site.
- Numbers from a private sheet. If a golfer quotes their own carry figures we ask before publishing, and most say no.
The pattern in the feedback, since we have read all of it
The thing golfers mention most is not a distance gain. It is being told what does not need doing. That shows up in some form in about two thirds of the notes we receive, which we take as evidence that the industry has trained people to expect a sale and that meeting the low expectation is oddly memorable.
The second most common theme is the recheck reminder, usually described with mild surprise that anybody followed up at all. The third is Ansel refusing to do something, which happens often enough to be a running joke at the desk.
Ask one of them, not us
If you want to speak to a current client before booking, say so on the phone. Several have offered and we will connect you with somebody whose situation looks like yours.