Hah, yeah, you're right on.
I've told this story before but it bears repeating. This was about 25
years ago or longer, so I may be mis-remembering a few things, but as
near as I recall, this is pretty accurate.
A guy came to the shop with a beautiful McGregor persimmon driver. He
wanted one of the then new UCV steel shafts installed. O.K. no problem.
He then began to tell me how it should be done.
"Take the screws out of that plate on the bottom and note which holes
they came from. Then just slip the plate off (!) and drill the shaft
out." Sure thing.
Then he tells me he wants the shaft tipped 1/4", and the finish length
44 1/8". "I want two wraps under the right hand, and one wrap under the
left, and I want a leather grip". Fine. That'll be $115.00. "WHAT?!
There's a guy down the street who will do it for half that." O.K. Take
it there, I said. "Oh no" says the guy, I want you to do it cuz you do
such good work." O.K. The price is $115.00.
So I pull the sole plate by heating it a little ( those were a bitch to
get off), cut the wraps, drilled from the tip to cut the shaft pin,
punched the remainder of the pin through, shoved a hot rod into the tip,
and pulled the head. Simple. Now I'm about to prep the shaft when the
phone rings. It's the guy.
"Hey Flan", he says. Don't tip the shaft 1/4", tip it 3/16", and make
the finish length 44 1/4", and put three wraps under the right hand and
none under the left." Suppressing a laugh, I said O.K.
I got the job done later that day and the guy came in to get it the
following morning. He asked the "real" price of the job. I told him
$140.00. "Wait a minute!" he cried. "Yesterday you said $115.00". I told
him that was the price before he called with changes to the specs :-)
He refused to pay it. So I said O.K, I'll knock off $10.00. He paid me
$130.00. I had no intention of raising the price, I just wanted to break
his cojones a little, but when he agreed to the extra fifteen bucks I
laughed like hell and told him the price was still $115.00.
Well it turned out that one of my regulars knew the guy pretty well. I
asked him if the guy was a player. "A player!? Crap, he's a vanity 19
handicapper who we pull crap on nearly every time we see him. He really
stinks at golf." My regular told me that the guy subscribes to nearly
every golf magazine in existence and has more clubs than the pro shop.
The great thing about all this was that the guy became a regular
customer who never complained about price again. And to top it all off,
he had a helluva name - Mort LaMorte (Mort the Dead)
Ain't that something?
TFlan
Laughing all the way to the bank
Carl McKinley wrote:
Tom,
They can be a clubbuilders dream, aslong as they don't try to blame
you when "their" fix doesn't work.
Carl
*/Tom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>/* wrote:
Yesterday, I worked on a set of irons for a scratch golfer. He
said he
was hitting everything "fat" with the new set he was fitted for at
the
Taylor-Made fitting center in So Cal. He "knew" what the problem was.
The clubs were 1/4" too long! I explained to him that .25" was pretty
much meaningless as a cause of hitting the ball fat. But nope, he's a
scratch player and I'm just an old, worn out clubfitter.
So, I went through the routine about swing weight changes (6
points/inch), lie angle changes (about 1 deg per 3/4 inch),
differences
in grip weights, fractions of a gram differences in amounts of
tape and
epoxy applied, and so on. He was concerned about a change in flex,
even!
None of my explanations mattered, so off we went to the workshop.
I cut the grips off but left the tape on. Original SW's were all
D-1 1/2
to D-2 1/2. Not bad at all. I checked the SW's with the grips off as
well. There was about a 10 point difference from the gripped
clubs, as I
expected. Now, the guy was right there, watching every move I made. I
carefully measured 1/4" and chopped the clubs. Using my gram-weight
scale, I measured out roughly 4 grams of lead powder, poured it
into the
shaft, tamped it down, put a slit grip on the butt and checked the
SW. I
did this for each club. Some took 4 grams (2 grams per SW point),
some
took a little more or less. I added epoxy to corks and rammed them
home,
to the top of the powder and re-weighed. Perfect - D-2 with a
split grip
and a little guessing as to the weight of the epoxy. The guy
wanted to
install the grips himself, so I weighed a dozen or so grips to get 9,
all the same weight.
We got back to the discussion of the "fat" shots. I asked what the
divots looked like; were they toe or heel weighted, or were they
centered and even? Did they point away from the target line?
According
to the guy, none of that stuff mattered. It was the 1/4" that was the
problem. I put the 7 iron on my L&L machine; 62 deg lie ("standard"),
loft 2 degrees weak. Other clubs I had worked on for this guy had
1 deg
flat lie angles. I suggested we change the lie angles to his previous
measurements. Nope . . .1/4" shorter will do the trick.
Based on previous experience with this guy, I know he'll be back in a
few days, asking for a loft and lie check. That's o.k. with me.
Another
$36.00 on top of the $50.00 for the 1/4" work and I'll be able to at
long last buy that Rolls I've wanted.
Ahhh . . . I love golfers who know what the problem is.
TFlan
Carl Mc Kinley Retired,
PCS Certified Class 'A' Clubmaker (Life Member)
GCA Accredited Clubbuilder
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
P T Barnum is the patron saint of expensive club manufacturers.
Merry Christmas
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