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Written between sessions, not by a marketing departmentBench Journal
Mostly about the players standard specification charts describe badly: juniors mid-growth, women fitted out of averaged sets, and anybody whose body has changed since the last time somebody measured it. No product reviews and no launch coverage.
Wrist-to-Floor Beats a Height Chart Every Time
Two players standing the same height can need club lengths an inch apart. Here is the tape measure that tells you which one you are.
Read the entry →What Actually Happens When You Cut Down a Parent's Irons
Shortening an adult iron changes four specifications at once, and only one of them is length. A bench-level look at the trade.
Read the entry →Where the "Minus One Inch" Convention Came From
A stock womens set is built to an averaged body that almost nobody has. The sole tape usually disagrees within six swings.
Read the entry →Your Address Posture at Sixty-Five Is Not the One You Had at Forty
Posture moves slowly enough that nobody notices, and the clubs do not move with it. What the board shows when a player has quietly stood up.
Read the entry →The Point Where a Junior Club Runs Out of Adjustment
Extending a growing player's clubs works until it does not. The four limits that decide when a chassis has to be replaced rather than stretched.
Read the entry →Why Stock Womens Sets Tend to Arrive Upright
The lie angles in a boxed womens set are derived from a length assumption, not from a measurement of anybody. That has a predictable effect on aim.
Read the entry →The charts work fine for the middle of the distribution
Manufacturer fitting charts are built from averages, and averages are perfectly serviceable for players who happen to sit near the middle of one. The trouble starts at the edges, where an averaged recommendation is not slightly off but categorically wrong, and where the player has usually been told for years that the problem is their swing.
A twelve-year-old halfway through a growth spurt is at an edge. So is a woman of five foot ten holding a set built on the assumption that women are five foot four. So is a seventy-year-old whose spine angle has changed by six degrees since anybody last looked. These are the sessions that fill our diary, so these are the notes that get written.
Everything here comes off the bench rather than out of a press release. Where we quote a figure, it was measured in this shop.
- Entries published
- 6
- Written by
- The bench, in turn
- Sponsored content
- None, ever
- Product reviews
- Not published
- Figures quoted
- Measured here
If something in an entry contradicts what you were told in the shop, the shop is right and the entry needs correcting. Tell us.
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If a question came up in your session that you think other people are also carrying around, send it to [email protected]. Several of these entries started that way.