Notes From the Bay Book

I brought in a set I had already been professionally fitted for two years earlier at a well-known place, mostly to prove a point to a friend. Half the clubs were within a couple of cycles of each other. Two of them were thirteen apart. Nobody had ever put them on a meter.

Ruben plotted the whole set on a chart while I stood there, and the shape of it explained about four years of complaining about my 8 iron. Three shafts got re-cut and one head got re-weighted. It cost less than a single new club and I have not thought about that gap since.

I walked in fully expecting to spend six hundred dollars on a new driver. Marisol talked me out of the head inside twenty minutes. Same head, different shaft, half an inch shorter, and the ball stopped leaking right on my bad swings.

I have never had anybody in this industry actively reduce the size of my order before. It is the reason I have sent four people there since.

Doing it as three separate visits felt slow at the time and was completely correct. By the end of a two-hour session my swing is not the same swing, and pretending otherwise just puts bad data on the sheet.

The spec sheet is the part I did not know I needed. I cracked a shaft in April, emailed them the document, and a replacement arrived built to the exact same numbers. No guessing, no second fitting, no arguing with anybody about what I had before.

I have been chunking sand shots for as long as I have played and had assumed it was a technique problem I was stuck with. Desmond had me hitting out of that bunker for fifteen minutes with four different soles and the difference between two of them was not subtle.

Turned out I had been playing a low bounce wedge on soft ground for six years. Nobody had ever asked me what I played on.

An hour, sixty-something dollars, and they cut an inch and a half off the putter I already owned and loved. I aimed at the hole for the first time in years instead of at some spot to the left of it that I had been unconsciously compensating for.

They could easily have sold me a new putter. They measured my current one, told me what was wrong with it, and then fixed it on the bench while I waited.

Honest review: I paid for a driver fitting and was told at the end that my current driver was already correct and my problem was strike location, which they suggested I take to a coach. Mildly annoying at the time. Entirely correct in hindsight.

Four stars only because I would have liked that possibility flagged before I paid. To be fair to them, they did offer to put the fee toward a future build, which I have since used.

I came in for one hybrid and left ordering two, which sounds like an upsell until you see the gapping chart. There was a thirty-yard hole in my bag that I had been covering by hitting a 5 wood soft, which works about one time in three.

They showed me the carry numbers and the landing angles side by side and the decision made itself. Both clubs came back matched to the frequency line of my irons, which I did not even know was a thing you could ask for.

Took my son in for the free length check in March expecting a sales pitch and got a fifteen-minute measurement and a note to come back in nine months. They trimmed two clubs for eight dollars each and sent us home.

When he does need a proper set they have already earned the business twice over.

I build a bit myself and went in slightly ready to be unimpressed. The trim chart discipline is the real thing here. They used the manufacturer's chart for the specific shaft model rather than the generic one, which is a detail I have watched three other shops get wrong.

Finished set came back inside a cycle and a half across the board. That is properly good work.