Who Builds
Two People, Both of Them at the Bench
There is no fitting department here and no separate build queue. The
person who takes your measurements is the person who cuts the shaft, and their name goes on the spec
card.
Owner · Club Builder
Dale Hutchens
Dale spent nine years as a repair technician and assistant in club shops around the Tampa Bay
area before opening the Cattlemen Road bays in 2006. He came into the trade sideways: a
machinist by training, hired originally to fix a broken grinding wheel, who ended up staying
because the tolerances involved in club building were tighter and more interesting than the
metalwork he had been doing.
He runs the iron and wedge sessions, does most of the loft and lie work, and is the one who
will tell you flatly when a cast set has nothing left to give. His view on turf interaction is
the reason the shop bought a pressure mat five years before anyone locally was asking for one.
- At the bench since 1997
- Runs iron, wedge and full bag sessions
- Plays to a 6 handicap, mostly at the older municipal layouts
- Has never owned a driver newer than three years old
Builder · Launch Data
Renata Salas
Renata joined in 2015 after five seasons running a launch monitor bay at a resort facility
further south. She arrived sceptical of most of what that job had taught her, having watched
hundreds of fittings conclude on a single flattering carry number, and she rebuilt the way this
shop handles data as a result. The face-location map that every driver session here produces was
her idea and her spreadsheet.
She takes the driver, fairway, hybrid and putter sessions, and she handles the shaft profiling
on the frequency analyser for every build that leaves the shop. If a shaft label and its measured
profile disagree, she is the one who finds out.
- At the bench since 2015
- Runs driver, fairway, hybrid and putter sessions
- Built the retention mapping method the shop uses
- Left-handed, which makes her unusually good at explaining the mirror image
How Sessions Are Assigned
You do not choose. Sessions go to whoever runs that club category, because that person has done
several hundred of them and has a working feel for what usually goes wrong. If you have a strong
preference — a returning customer who worked with one of them before, for example — say
so when you book and we will schedule around it.
Both of them build every kind of club. The split is about who runs the measurement side of a
session, not about who is allowed to touch which vise.
Continuity
Every session, every build and every spec card is logged against your name in the shop book. If
you were fitted here in 2014 and come back this spring, we can pull what your irons measured then,
what shafts they went out with, and what you said the miss was. That record is the reason returning
customers get shorter sessions rather than longer ones.
The book is a physical ledger and a local file. It is not shared with any manufacturer and it is
not sold to anybody, ever.
Talk to Whoever Answers
One line, two people, no phone tree. If nobody picks up it means both of us are in the bay, and
the call will be returned the same day.