Your best bet is to find a local pro shop and give them your business. If the shop is reputable, they will take care of any and all problems that might come up.
"Doing a better job than your local pro shop" is a great goal but remember they are not seeing your hand, all they are doing is replicating a ball from your spec sheet or copying the specs from an older ball. They have no clue if your specs are correct, they just know what you tell them that its a perfect fit.
If there is no reputable shop in your area and you do not want to take a road trip, then try online. Just remember, all they are doing is replicating a grip, they are not verifying that your grip is correct.
True, but my problem is goes back to how awkward one feels when they order equipment at that shop, though the owners of the shop have changed companies and now represent a company whose equipment you no longer use, and try to get you into the equipment from the company they represent. That makes the buyer feel very much out of sorts when they throw equipment from the company the owner used to represent.
Example: Owner switches from Company A to company B in the summer, after being with Company A for nearly 20 years. They fill their entire pro shop with equipment from Company B; they study up on all products from them, stock and preferred layouts, performance, the whole lot. Customer comes in, who throws equipment from Company A, and is looking at adding the latest ball from Company A to their lineup. Owner isn't going to know much on Company A's new gear, because they aren't using it anymore, don't represent them anymore, and who knows? There could be bad blood between Owner and Company A.
However, Owner has been drilling balls for Customer for 4 years. Should Customer:
- Tell Owner to be professional, order the equipment, and lay it out, even though they know nothing about the ball,
- Find another pro shop, who now has to take fittings all over again to get the right fit for you, compared to other balls you have (hoping they aren't in the same boat as Owner,
- stick with Owner, even though you know that equipment from their new company doesn't fit in your game, or
- look somewhere online, where the pro shop there may or may not have such all-or-nothing allegiances (read: not a ball rep for any company, or has multiple companies' gear at their shop).
That's the situation I am in at this moment. I am lucky to be able to head back to somewhere like Vegas, where the pro shop I used there is still in business, but that doesn't help when I live 600 miles from that shop.
So that puts me back to my original question. If they get the fit right, and say, the thumb feels a bit too tight, it looks awkward to go to another shop to ask them to sand out the thumb, as they did not work on that ball whatsoever, and you're looking at days for it to be shipped out, worked on, and shipped back to you. I was wondering if the latter has ever occurred before to someone who's had gear ordered and drilled online, and if so, how often, and what they did to resolve it.
BL.
