Session Matrix › Irons
Iron fitting, and the audit that usually changes the answer
Ninety minutes, $175. About a third of these sessions end with the golfer keeping their set and paying us under a hundred dollars to put it back where it started.
Before a demo head appears
Every iron you own, on the gauge
This is the stage that separates an iron fitting from an iron sale, and it takes about twenty minutes of the ninety.
Loft, head by head
Cast heads drift less than forged, but four seasons of real divots moves both. We look for drift and for the more damaging problem, which is uneven drift — a set where the 7-iron went two degrees strong and the 8-iron did not has a hole in it that no shaft change will close.
Lie, head by head
Same gauge, same pass. Lie drift is smaller in degrees and larger in consequence, because it shows up as directional miss rather than distance loss and golfers habitually blame their swing for it.
Frequency, shaft by shaft
Cycles per minute on every shaft in the set. Factory sets vary more than their labels suggest, and a single soft shaft in the middle of an otherwise consistent progression explains an enormous number of “that one club I cannot hit” complaints.
What the audit typically finds
The set is rarely uniformly wrong
If a whole set drifts evenly the golfer usually adapts without noticing; their yardages shift by a few metres across the board and they recalibrate. The damaging pattern is uneven drift, where one or two heads move and the rest do not.
That produces the specific complaint that brings most people in: a yardage that has quietly disappeared, or one club that has become unhittable. It reads like a swing fault and it is almost always a specification fault, and it is measurable in twenty minutes.
When that is what we find, the honest answer is a bend, occasionally a single reshaft, and a bill in the low three figures. We would rather write that and see you again in eleven months than sell you an entire replacement set on the strength of a problem two heads caused.
When a new set is the answer
What the testing half covers
Lie board tape, before anything else
Static lie fitting from a chart is a starting point and nothing more. We tape the sole and hit off the board until the mark repeats, then set lie from where the mark actually lands. Dynamic lie commonly differs from the static prediction by more than a degree.
Head style, at fixed shaft
Cavity, players cavity, hollow body or blade, compared with the same shaft under all of them. Offset and sole width change turf interaction and delivered loft, and they should be assessed without a second variable moving underneath.
Shaft weight, then bend profile
Steel or graphite is a weight question first and a material question second. We test weight bands before profiles because weight moves tempo, and a tempo change invalidates everything you learned about profile.
The gap ladder, built from measurement
Trimmed carry averages for each proposed head, laid out as a ladder from the longest iron to the pitching wedge. Gaps that open beyond about 14 yards or close inside about 8 get resolved with loft rather than left for you to discover in June.
Set makeup, honestly assessed
Most golfers who come in for irons should not be carrying a 4-iron, and several should not be carrying a 5. If the ladder says a hybrid closes the top gap better, that is what the sheet will recommend even though it is a cheaper sale.