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Bench-measured club geometry · Salt Lake City, UT lie@lielabgolf.online
Lie Lab Golf Fitting bench since 2009 Book Bench Time
The premise

A club that sits wrong at address is being asked to fix itself mid-swing.

Set an iron on a flat board and look at it from behind. If the toe is off the ground, the leading edge is aimed left of where the face points. If the heel is off, it aims right. That misalignment does not wait for impact — it is present before the club ever moves, and every golfer who lives with it builds a compensation to cover it. Usually a good one. Usually one that only works when the timing is sharp.

We opened this shop in 2009 because the fitting industry had drifted toward the loudest variable in the room. Ball speed reads well on a screen. Lie angle does not. But lie angle is the one that decides where a straight swing sends the ball, and it is the one that changes quietly as a player ages, grows, gains weight, loses flexibility, or simply switches to thicker grips.

So that is the order of operations here. Ground contact first. Length second. Weight and flex third. The launch numbers come last, and their only job is to confirm what the sole tape already showed us.

Read the longer version of how the shop got here →

What comes off the bench
Static measurements taken
9
Lie board strikes per club
6 minimum
Loft and lie tolerance
± 0.5°
Length tolerance
± 1/16 in
Swingweight tolerance
± 1 point
Build sheet copies
Printed + on file

Every figure above is measured in front of you. Nothing is inferred from a fitting chart or a manufacturer's stock spec table.

We do not stock finished clubs

There is no wall of retail boxes here to move. Heads, shafts, grips and ferrules come off the component shelf and get built to your sheet, which is the only reason we can afford to tell you when your current set is already correct.

A session, start to finish

Full detail on On the Bench

  1. Body measurements before a club is touched

    Height, wrist-to-floor, glove span, forearm length and your natural address posture, recorded on paper. These five numbers set the search window for length and lie. Everything after this is narrowing that window, not opening a new one.

  2. Your own clubs on the board first

    Sole tape goes on the clubs already in your bag and you hit them off the lie board. We want to know what you have been compensating for before we change anything. Roughly one visit in six ends with a bending session and nothing purchased.

  3. Head and shaft trials against a fixed geometry

    Once length and lie are locked, components are swapped one variable at a time. Holding geometry constant is what makes the comparison honest — change two things at once and the data tells you nothing you can act on.

  4. The build sheet, then the build

    You leave with a printed sheet listing every specification down to grip tape wraps. If we build it, the finished clubs go back on the board before you collect them. If you take the sheet elsewhere, that is fine — it is yours.

Local conditions

Fitting for the Wasatch Front is not fitting for sea level.

The valley floor sits above four thousand feet and the benchland courses climb from there. Thin, dry air moves the ball farther and spins it less, which quietly shifts where a set's gaps land. It also hardens the turf from July onward, so a sole that worked in May starts digging by August.

And almost nothing along the bench is flat. Sidehill lies are the normal case here, not the exception, which changes how a static lie spec behaves in play. We build for that on purpose.

  • Valley elevationRoughly 4,200 ft at the shop, higher at most courses east of I-15
  • Carry shiftCommonly 6 to 9 percent longer than a sea-level yardage card
  • Summer turfFirm and thin by midsummer; effective bounce plays higher
  • Shoulder seasonSoft, cold ground in March and October rewards a wider sole
  • TerrainPersistent sidehill lies on benchland layouts

Players who came back with numbers

All comments →

I had been aiming twenty feet right of the flag with my 8-iron for years and calling it a fade. Two degrees flat and the compensation just stopped being necessary. Nobody had ever put my own clubs on a board before.

Dale Whitcomb Bountiful · 12 handicap Irons bent 2° flat, +1/4 in

My daughter is eleven and outgrowing sets faster than we can buy them. They measured her, told us which two clubs to extend and which one to leave alone, and charged us less than a new junior box would have cost.

Renata Alcocer West Jordan · parent Two extensions, one regrip

Sixty-eight years old and I was convinced I needed more speed. Turned out I needed a half inch shorter and a flatter lie so I could actually reach the ground. Center strikes went up immediately and so did my distance.

Gordon Reeve Sandy · 19 handicap Set shortened 1/2 in, 1° flat

Next step

Bring the clubs you already own. We start there.

Nothing gets ordered until the sole tape, the lie board and your own eyes agree. Bench time runs Tuesday through Saturday at the West Temple shop, and every session ends with a printed build sheet you keep whether or not you buy a single component from us.