Rosalind Vieira
Here since 2013 · Bay 1 and the build benchRosalind spent nine years calibrating instrumentation at a desert test facility before she ever put a golf club on a scale. Thermocouples, pressure transducers, load cells: equipment whose entire value depended on somebody being able to state what it had last been checked against and when.
She moved to the Coachella Valley in 2011 with a set of irons that had behaved perfectly in Oregon and stopped making sense within a month. Two fitters handed her printouts of distances with no conditions recorded on them, and the whole method this studio runs on came out of finding that unacceptable.
She runs the Monday reference check personally, builds every club that leaves the bench, and is the person who will tell you, without much diplomacy, that your problem is a lesson rather than a shaft.
Plays to a nine, mostly at municipal courses, and has been using the same five iron since 2017 because the sheet keeps saying there is no reason to change it.
Perpetua Iyer
Here since 2018 · Irons, wedges and short gamePerpetua came from twelve years of teaching, which shows up in the sessions she runs. She is markedly better than the rest of us at separating a strike problem from an equipment problem, and she is willing to say when the honest answer is the former.
She handles most of the wedge work here, largely because she was the one who insisted the studio start testing on two turf surfaces rather than one. Her argument was that a valley player in August and the same player in February are effectively playing different games, and the readings backed her up so comprehensively that it became house practice.
If your session ends with three names of instructors written on the bottom of the sheet, it was almost certainly Perpetua who wrote them. None of them pay us anything.
Left-handed, which she says makes her more patient than average with players whose equipment options are limited.
Halvard Nystrom
Here since 2021 · Assembly, reshafting, auditsHalvard does the work that nobody photographs. Pulling heads, cleaning hosels, seating ferrules properly, weighing everything twice, and leaving epoxy to cure overnight when a quicker cure would technically hold.
He came to the studio from a bicycle shop, which turned out to be far better preparation than anyone expected. Both trades run on torque, tolerance, and customers who describe problems in feelings rather than measurements.
He is responsible for the build record that comes with every finished club: as-specified figures in one column, as-built figures beside them. His view is that a build without a record is just an assertion, and he has rebuilt his own work more than once rather than let a club go out a point of swingweight off.
Owns exactly seven golf clubs and describes his handicap as a private matter.
Simone Ardito
Here since 2016 · Scheduling and the filing systemSimone runs the calendar, answers the phone, and maintains the five years of session sheets that make a return visit worth more than a first one. When somebody rings after a six-year absence and asks whether we still have their numbers, she is the reason the answer is usually yes.
She is also the first filter on a booking. A good share of the calls that come in end with her explaining that the caller wants bench work rather than a session, which saves them money and saves us a bay. She has never once been asked to upsell anybody and would be poor at it.
Calls that arrive during a session go to voicemail and get returned in one block each afternoon, generally between two and three. That is deliberate. Nobody in a bay should be answering a phone while a player is mid-block.
Does not play golf and considers this an advantage when listening to people describe their problems.
Salary, and Nothing That Moves With a Sale
Everyone here is on a fixed salary. There is no commission, no per-club bonus, no monthly target and no internal leaderboard of who specified the most orders.
This is worth stating plainly because it is unusual and because it is the mechanism behind most of what the rest of this website claims. A fitter whose pay is unaffected by whether you order anything can tell you to keep your irons. A fitter on commission can tell you the same thing, but you have no way of knowing whether they will.
It also means nobody here competes for the bookings that tend to end in larger orders. The calendar is assigned by who is best suited to the work and who is in the building, which is how it should be and is surprisingly rare.
Keeping Current
The studio closes for four days each summer, usually in the first week of August when the valley is at its least hospitable, and the whole staff spends them on bench work rather than on sessions.
- Every gauge in the building is checked against its reference
- The radar units get a full recommissioning, not a spot check
- New shafts profiled and added to the rack file
- The previous year's sheets audited for anything we got wrong
That last item is the useful one. Looking back at twelve months of recommendations with the benefit of hindsight is uncomfortable and has changed how we fit at least three times.
Four people and not one of them tried to sell me anything. I kept waiting for the pitch and it simply never arrived.
Ask for whoever suits the work
Request a particular fitter when you book and Simone will make it happen, though it may cost you a week of waiting in the winter season.