Is It Worth It?

This year for the first time I have had some pangs of guilt related to leaving for Thanksgiving – because I had to slow down some club builds for good clients. All in all guess this is a good thing, because it means my business is building as I have planned – but I hate saying to people that I cannot their clubs built “right away.”

Thinking of this reminded me of one of the really great clubfitters and clubmakers I know tells his clients – that they need to expect it will take at least two weeks to get their clubs built. Truthfully it usually takes me at least this long to build a set of clubs, and here are the typical things that happen when I do a build….

1. After the fitting I order the components – heads, shafts, sometimes grips and ferrules – and it usually takes at least 3 business days to get them from suppliers.

2. As a result of doing a fitting – say for irons – I identify a good match to the right shaft flex and club MOI/Swingweight for the customer.

3. When I get the shafts for the club build, I use a “zone profiling” procedure I learned from Keith Chatham (an AGCP Master). At this time I do a first test of shaft “FLO” – the shaft orientation where the shaft will oscillate in one single plane. When I have the shafts zone profiled, I know which of the shafts would best go in the longer irons and which would best go into the shorter irons.

4. Then I often build at least a test 6 iron – and sometimes also a test 9 iron – for the customer to test. This testing usually involves some final adjustments as needed to the club MOI/SW based on feel and performance.

5. Once I find the final MOI/SW and shaft flex from this testing, I am ready to start building the set to the best MOI/SW and shaft flex. This requires identifying what the right amount of additional headweight to add to the club – or in some cases how much weight to take out of the clubhead – so that the set can be matched for MOI/SW and flex. I do this using a neat trick I learned from Dana Upshaw (another AGCP Master) – club blueprinting. Using one sacrificial shaft I can identify the correct amount of headweight to add/subtract for each club to MOI match the set (I MOI match all sets now). This procedure usually takes a couple of hours to do, but it is a critical one to allow me to build a truly matched set.

6. Once I have identified all of the appropriate headweights, I can then builid the set. I tip each shaft so that it has the right final flex, then cut each shaft to length, then do final shaft FLO and orientation with the clubhead, and then epoxy all of the heads and shafts. I use 24 hour epoxy for most builds, though there are some excellent epoxies that will cure faster.

7. Then – after 24 hours – I sand and polish all ferrules, install grips, and do a final check of the MOI/SW for all clubs to ensure that I build them as I had planned.

So yes…………..it does take time to build truly matched set of clubs. Time well spent!

Tony