I
Address, frozen
You set the mallet as you would on a four-footer at Overton. We shoot from your eye line and from the gallery. If the wings already point left in still air, we do not need ten rolls to invent a mystery.
Order of the afternoon
We sit the head before we talk about you
The mallet has a geometry that exists whether you are holding it or not. Hang and CG depth get named first. Your hands come second. Catalog stories come never.
II
Peg before hands
The head hangs on the brass hook. Face-balanced claims die here often. A mallet that toes down like a shy blade is not a scandal — it is a number. We write the angle before anyone grips it.
III
Ten and ten
Ten rolls from a square start with a mechanical stroke. Ten from your natural arc. We care about the first hop and the four-foot wander, not a hole we do not have.
IV — Light
Dusk lamp, then streetleak
The boom drops. Tungsten only. If the wings smear, we try a simpler sight — a single rail, a painted line, a dot. Then the Madison shade opens a crack. Plenty of “perfect” mallets fail that second picture. The ones that survive get to talk about CG depth.
Depth is a coin on the flange, a caliper note, and a feel on the first hop. Deep mass steadies a pushy start. Shallow mass lets a player work a ball that Midtown bermuda will punish. We would rather a boring start that holds grain than a cute curve that dies into the river side of the hole.
V — The card
You leave with numbers, not a pep talk
- Hang, written as face-balanced, slight, or still-a-blade-in-a-tuxedo
- CG depth in millimeters behind the face, plus a one-line feel note
- Length and lie as measured, not as the stamp on the hosel
- Wing language: dual rail, bumper, line, or “this head is a dusk problem”
- A sentence about indoor roll versus Overton grain, if they disagree
Insert and pistol work, if booked, happens after the sit is honest. Changing a grip to hide a hang mismatch is how people buy the same miss twice. See pistol grips and face inserts if that is the plate you came for.