The Same Seven Steps, Every Single Time
Protocol exists so that two different fitters produce the same reading from the same club. Here is ours, in the order it runs, with nothing left out.
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Intake conversation
Ten minutes at the desk before anything gets touched. What you play, how often, what the miss looks like, and crucially what you have already tried. This is also where we find out whether you came in wanting a purchase or wanting an answer, because those are different sessions.
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Cold gauge readings
Your clubs go on the plate exactly as they arrived — unwarmed, ungripped, unwiped. We read loft, lie, length, swingweight, total mass and grip build-up on every club you brought. Nothing is adjusted at this stage; the point is a truthful record of what you have been playing.
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Tolerance comparison
Each reading is set against the published band for that club type and, where you have a prior sheet, against your own archived numbers. Anything outside the band gets flagged. This is usually the point where a golfer discovers their 6-iron and 7-iron have effectively become the same club.
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Baseline hitting or rolling
Now you swing, with your own equipment, so we have dynamic data that corresponds to the static readings. Strike location comes first via impact tape or face spray; ball data is secondary until we know where on the face contact is happening. Putter sessions substitute the roll room and the laser gate here.
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Controlled variable testing
One change at a time, re-measured after each. Change two things at once and you learn nothing about either. This is the slowest part of the session and the part people most often want to skip; we do not skip it, because a comparison with two moving variables is not a comparison.
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Spec sheet written and signed
Every measured value, every tolerance band, every flagged deviation and every recommended change, on one page. It is written in front of you and signed by whichever fitter ran the session. If the recommendation is "change nothing", the sheet says that in writing too.
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Ledger entry and re-check date
The original goes into the bureau ledger under your name with a suggested re-check date, typically twelve or twenty-four months out depending on how much you play. You leave with a copy. Nothing about the entry expires and nothing gets deleted.
Static Before Dynamic, Always
A great many fitting sessions elsewhere begin with the golfer hitting balls into a monitor. That produces data immediately, which feels productive, and it is close to useless without knowing what the club being swung actually measures.
If your 7-iron is a degree and a half flat and three-eighths of an inch short of stated, every number the monitor gives you describes that club rather than your swing. Correct the club first and a surprising proportion of the "swing problems" resolve on their own.
So the plate comes before the bay, without exception, in every session type we run.
Protocol Is Also About Omissions
No blind demo swapping
Handing a golfer six drivers in sequence and asking which felt best is a preference survey, not a fitting. Every change we test is a single documented variable against a recorded baseline.
No flattering surfaces
The roll room sits at stimp ten and a half, not thirteen, and the bay uses live turf rather than a forgiving mat. Equipment that only performs on ideal surfaces has told you nothing useful.
No verbal-only outcomes
Nobody leaves with a recommendation that exists solely as something a fitter said out loud. If it is not written on the sheet with a number attached, it did not happen.
Seventy Minutes and an Honest Sheet
Bring the bag as it sits. Worst case you find out your clubs are fine and you have a document that says so.