The incentive question

Why We Turned Down the Rebates

Most fitting operations accept volume rebates. It is a normal, legal and widespread arrangement: sell enough of a manufacturer's product and the wholesale price improves. The trouble is that it quietly makes one recommendation more profitable than another, and no amount of personal integrity completely removes the pull of that.

We took the simpler route of refusing the arrangements. Components are bought at standard trade terms and invoiced at what they cost us, with build labour on a separate line. That makes our component margin roughly zero and our labour margin visible, which is the correct way round.

It also means a shaft nobody has heard of can sit next to one everybody has, and win, without costing anyone anything. Twice this year the winning driver shaft in a block has been a discontinued model we keep purely because its bend profile fills a gap.

Components you already own are welcome. Bring a head, a shaft, or a set you bought second-hand. We build with it at the standard labour rate and the card reads the same as any other.

Where breadth changes an outcome

Five Places a Thin Wall Costs You a Result

Breadth is not uniformly valuable. In some categories a handful of options covers almost every golfer; in others a narrow rack guarantees the wrong answer.

01

Mid-weight iron shafts

The band between 95 and 115 grams is where most amateur iron sets should live and where most stock offerings are thinnest. We hold fourteen options across that range specifically.

02

Driver bend profiles

Two shafts with the same flex letter and the same weight can behave completely differently. Profile coverage matters far more than badge coverage here.

03

Wedge sole geometry

Bounce number alone tells you very little. Leading edge height, heel relief and camber decide how a wedge behaves on the firm summer lies common around here.

04

Grip sizing

Core size, tape wraps and material together produce far more variation than the four labels on a manufacturer's chart suggest. We size by hand measurement and wrap count.

05

Left-handed stock

A left-handed golfer with three options on the wall is not being fitted, they are being allocated. Our testers run parallel in both hands.

06

Putter neck and hang

Face-balanced through strong toe hang in enough steps that stroke arc can actually be matched rather than approximated.

On the wall

Current Categories in Test Length

Specific models change through the year as lines are discontinued and replaced. The categories below are what we commit to keeping covered.

DR Adjustable drivers 8 to 12 degrees, movable weighting

FW Fairway woods 13 to 21 degrees, three sole depths

HY Hybrids and driving irons 17 to 26 degrees, both families

IR Iron heads Players, players distance, game improvement

WD Wedges 46 to 62 degrees, six grinds

PT Putters Blade, mid-mallet, mallet, four neck styles

SF Shafts Steel and graphite, 40 to 130 g

GR Grips Rubber, cord, hybrid, four core sizes

Selection

How Something Earns a Place

New components come in as single test samples first and get measured before they go on the wall. Shafts are profiled in three zones and weighed; heads are checked for loft, lie and face angle against what is stamped on them. Roughly one in five arrives outside the tolerance its own specification claims, and those go back.

What survives that check then has to fill a gap. If we already hold something with an equivalent weight and profile, the new arrival does not go up regardless of how well it is marketed. Duplicate coverage adds testing time to every block without adding an answer.

The result is a wall that is smaller than some and considerably better spread than most. Eighty four shafts sounds like a lot until you realise they are chosen to cover a ninety gram range in steps small enough to matter.

What the specifications actually mean →

Stocked for Coverage, Not for Margin