Driver
Head mass, shaft profile, and length are worked against your strike census rather than against a peak-speed leaderboard. The goal is a narrower spread, not a louder single number.
Driver bench →Madison, Wisconsin · Opened 2009
Clubhead speed is the easy half. The half nobody weighs is how much of that energy is still travelling forward after the face has done its work — and that half is decided by geometry we can actually change on a bench.
Retention ReadoutSession 4712
Centre-Strike Ball Speed151.4 mph
Average Across 14 Swings146.9 mph
Worst Strike In The Set139.2 mph
The House Method
A fitting can wander for two hours if nobody decides what it is actually trying to settle. Ours does not wander. Every session on Monona Drive works through the same three questions, and each one has to close before the next one opens.
The order is deliberate. Retention is first because it governs how much of everything else matters. Progression is second because what your eye reports at address changes how you deliver the club, which changes retention. Turf behaviour is last because it only becomes measurable once the first two have stopped moving.
By the time you walk out, the answers are written on a bench card with your name on it, and that card is what we build from — not a memory of a good swing from ninety minutes earlier.
We take a strike census before we take an opinion. Fourteen swings, impact tape on every one, and a note of where ball speed sat relative to your best contact of the day. That gap is the number a fitting can actually shrink.
Face progression, hosel depth, and offset decide what your eye reports when you settle in. Golfers correct for what they see, whether or not they intend to. We measure the picture before we argue with the swing.
Sole width, camber, and bounce set the range of turf a club will forgive. In a state where fairways run wet in May and firm in August, that range is a spec, not a preference.
Six Benches
Different clubs fail in different places. A driver loses retention off the toe; a wedge loses it in the third inch of turf. We do not run one generic appointment and rename it — each bench has its own protocol, its own instruments, and its own bench card.
Head mass, shaft profile, and length are worked against your strike census rather than against a peak-speed leaderboard. The goal is a narrower spread, not a louder single number.
Driver bench →Progression and offset are read across the whole set, then lie and length are set so the picture at address stays consistent from the 5 through the pitching wedge.
Iron bench →The club most often asked to work off a lie it was never shaped for. Sole width and leading-edge height do more here than loft ever will.
Fairway wood bench →We treat the hybrid as a turf tool first and a distance tool second, which usually settles the long-iron argument without anyone having to win it.
Hybrid bench →Grind and bounce chosen against the courses you actually play, checked on both a firm mat edge and a soft strip so the turf window is measured rather than guessed.
Wedge bench →Length, lie, and hosel style set against where your eye actually lines the ball, with head mass matched to the green speeds you meet most weeks.
Putter bench →The Ledger
Nothing leaves this room on a handshake. Every club we assemble is logged, and the log is yours — printed on the day and kept on file here so a spec can be repeated three seasons later without anyone guessing.
Component Roster
There is no manufacturer agreement on the wall and no monthly unit target in a drawer. The roster exists so a bench card can be filled honestly, which occasionally means telling a golfer the head they arrived with was already the right one.
From The Notes File
We ask for the follow-up note a year out, not on the day. A club that felt good in the bay is not evidence; a club that still holds its spread the following September is.
I came in wanting more distance and left with a driver that is a half mph slower and eleven yards tighter. The spread number was the thing I had never seen anyone measure before.
Dale R.Fitzgerald, WI · 9 handicap
My old wedges were fine in August and useless in May. They explained the turf window in two minutes and the new grinds have not stuck once this spring.
Marguerite O.Middleton, WI · 17 handicap
There are two benches and one of us on each. That caps the calendar at roughly nine sessions a week, which is the reason we can hand you a finished card the same afternoon instead of a follow-up email in a fortnight.