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Groove Gauge Fit Club fitting & bench work · Cincinnati, OH
The people

Three People, One Bench Standard

Small shop, no rotation. Whoever takes your first measurement is the person who signs off on the finished club, and their initials go on the gauge sheet so you know who to ask if something reads wrong later.

DKBench 1

Dean Kovach

Owner · Fitter and builder

Dean spent nine years as the repair bench at a green-grass club east of the city before opening this shop in 2015. That backlog is where the shop's whole approach came from — enough clubs came across his bench out of spec that measuring first stopped being optional.

He handles most iron and wedge work, does all the frequency mapping, and is the one who will tell you plainly when a set is fine and the problem is somewhere else. He plays to a four and misses left when he gets quick, which he mentions often enough that it is clearly on his mind.

SOBench 2

Simone Ortega

Fitter · Driver and long game

Simone came out of a launch-monitor-heavy retail environment and arrived here specifically because she wanted to do the measuring that the retail window never allowed. She runs the driver and fairway wood benches, and she is the reason face tape gets used on every single long-game session rather than only when something looks odd.

Her particular interest is what happens to a specification across a season — she keeps the re-check logs and will nudge you back in for a spring verification if your sheet is more than a year old.

WTBuild

Wes Tallmadge

Club builder · Repair and assembly

Wes does the work after the decision is made: shaft pulls, tip prep, epoxy, ferrule turning, final weighting and the check pass. He also runs Wednesday calibration, which is why the gauge sheets from this shop can be trusted against each other from one season to the next.

If your build comes back a tenth of a swingweight point off what the sheet specified, Wes is the one who caught it and fixed it before you saw the club.

What Everyone Here Agrees On

Three people can disagree about plenty — and they do, loudly, about wedge grinds — but the bench rules are not up for debate.

  • Measure before you talk. No recommendation leaves the bench without a reading behind it.
  • Say the uncomfortable thing. If a golfer's expectations do not match what the numbers support, that gets said in the session, not discovered afterwards.
  • Check your own work. Every finished club gets re-gauged by someone who did not build it.
  • Write it down. An undocumented reading is a memory, and memories drift faster than lofts.

Booking a Specific Person

You can ask for a particular fitter when you book and we will honour it where the calendar allows, though it may push your appointment out a week or two. In practice the bench standard means the sheet reads the same regardless, and most golfers end up simply taking the first slot that works.

Continuity is different from preference. If you have been here before, we will automatically try to put you back with whoever produced your last sheet, because they already know what changed and why.

Meet Whoever Is on the Bench

Book a session and we will confirm which fitter you are with when we call to lock the time.

Call the bench Request bench time