Session Matrix › Driver
Ninety minutes, $175, and the first twenty of them spent finding out which part of the face your ball is leaving from. Nothing downstream means anything until that is known.
The first twenty minutes
We spray the face and hit a dozen. Where the marks cluster decides the whole session. A golfer whose strikes sit half an inch toward the heel is fighting gear effect on every swing, and no combination of loft and shaft will out-engineer that as cheaply as moving the strike or changing head size.
Strike location also determines whether the carry numbers we are about to take mean anything. A centred strike and a high-toe strike on the same head with the same swing produce a spin difference of several hundred rpm. Average those together without knowing the split and the resulting recommendation is built on a number that describes neither shot.
So the map comes first, it goes on the sheet, and it gets re-taken at the end so you can see whether the club we recommended actually tightened the pattern.
Order of operations
Almost always the cheapest fix and almost always tested last elsewhere. An inch off a stock 45.75-inch build tightens the strike pattern for most golfers at a cost of two or three yards of theoretical distance they were not achieving anyway.
Once the strike is centred we compare head shapes at fixed loft, then loft within the winning head. Static loft is a poor proxy for delivered loft, so we read what the ball does rather than what the sole says.
Weight moves tempo and strike; bend profile moves launch and feel. Testing them in that order keeps the comparison honest. Flex letters are ignored entirely in favour of measured frequency.
Grip weight and size change delivered feel enough to undo a good shaft decision. We set them last and re-check the strike map afterwards to make sure nothing drifted.
The Louisville part
Early rounds here are played in still, heavy river-valley air. By two in the afternoon in July there is usually a crosswind and the air has thinned. A driver spun up to 2,900 rpm behaves acceptably at eight in the morning and balloons badly into a four o clock breeze.
We ask which of those two you play more often and fit to it, then write the other on the sheet as a note. If you genuinely split your golf between both, the recommendation shifts toward a lower spin head with slightly more loft rather than the reverse, because that combination degrades more gracefully in wind.
Worth knowing
The figure most golfers quote is their best drive of the last month. A trimmed average over eighteen swings usually lands eight to fifteen yards below it. That gap is not a criticism; it is just the difference between a highlight and a distribution.
Taking an inch off the shaft costs a small amount of clubhead speed and frequently returns more than that in centred contact. We test it on nearly every fitting because it is free to try and cheap to implement.
Two shafts both marked stiff can measure thirty cycles apart. We read frequency on every candidate and record it, which is why your sheet lists a number rather than a letter.
Weekday afternoons open up first. Saturday slots in April and May usually fill about three weeks out, so call earlier than feels necessary.