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Memphis, Tennessee · Bench open since 2011 Sat 8:00 AM – 4:00 PM · Sunday reserved for component intake [email protected]
Putter Lab Golf Club Building & Mass Fitting
Who Works the Bench

Five People, and Every Ledger Card Carries Initials

Whoever built your club signs the card. If something reads wrong six months later, you know exactly who to ask about it.

WC

Wendell Craighead

Founder & Lead Builder

Wendell opened the repair bench after eleven years running the cart barn and shop at a public course out east, where he learned club repair mostly because nobody else would do it and members kept asking. He now handles every full-set build personally and does the final cold re-measure on each one the morning after assembly.

He is the reason the tolerance card exists. His view is that a builder who will not publish a number is a builder who has not measured one.

Signs off on
Iron sets, full bag audits, tolerance disputes
Hardest to convince about
Anything sold on feel alone
NR

Naomi Rutledge

Fitting Director

Naomi runs the bay. She came out of collegiate coaching and spent four years reading launch data for a teaching academy before deciding the equipment side was where the unsolved problems were. She is the one who decides how many swings a test needs before the numbers mean anything, and she will end a session early if the data is too noisy to trust.

She also writes most of the Bench Journal, on the grounds that if she has to explain the same thing at the counter three times it may as well be written down.

Signs off on
Driver and wood sessions, launch data interpretation
House opinion
Ten good swings beat forty tired ones
TO

Terrance Ogletree

Putter Bench & Short Game

Terrance built putters privately for about a decade before joining us, and he brought a stubborn set of opinions about head mass and green speed that turned out to be right often enough that we stopped arguing. He handles the stroke capture rig, all counterweight work, and every wedge grind conversation.

If you arrive convinced your putter is fine and your stroke is the problem, he will happily prove you have it backwards.

Signs off on
Putters, wedges, counterweight installs
Standard first question
What do your home greens roll at?
BK

Bess Kaminski

Component Room & Scheduling

Bess controls the rack. Every shaft, grip, ferrule and weight that enters the building passes across her scale and into the log before it can be specified on a build. She also owns the calendar, which means she is the one who will tell you honestly whether a two-visit bag audit fits before your club championship.

She is unusually good at finding a discontinued shaft in a distributor's dead stock, which has rescued more than one favourite driver.

Signs off on
Component intake, weight logging, order timelines
Known for
Refusing to promise a date she cannot hold
RC

Ravi Chandrasekar

Bench Technician

Ravi does the physical work most people never see: pulling adapters without cooking the graphite, reaming hosels so a ferrule seats flush, mixing epoxy to weight rather than eye, and rebuilding the handful of clubs that come back out of tolerance. He trained as a machinist, which shows in how little he tolerates a gap anywhere.

He also keeps the calibration log for every instrument in the room, including the reference club the swingweight scale is checked against each week.

Signs off on
Assembly, ferrule work, instrument calibration
Pet peeve
A ferrule that spins under a thumbnail
?

The Sixth Bench

Currently Empty

We keep an unassigned bench for the apprentice programme. Two of the five people above started there, learning component logging and regrips before touching anything with epoxy in it. It stays open because we would rather train slowly than staff quickly.

If you are in the Memphis area, patient with a scale, and interested in learning the trade properly, the shop email goes straight to Bess.

Starts with
Component intake and regrips
Timeline
Roughly two years to first solo build
How a session is staffed

You Will Usually Meet Two of Us

One person runs the measurement and the bay. A second does the assembly. They are deliberately not the same person on set builds, because the builder should be checking the fitter's plan rather than confirming their own.

Session typeRuns the sessionBuilds and signs
Putter benchTerranceTerrance
Driver or fairway woodNaomiRavi
Iron setNaomiWendell
WedgesTerranceRavi
Full bag auditNaomi and WendellWendell
Regrip and rebalanceBessRavi
Booking

Ask for Someone by Name if You Like

The booking form has a notes field. If a friend sent you to one of us specifically, write the name in and Bess will build the calendar around it where she can.