AFS Heads, Part 1: The unobvious path in finding that glass slipper

Let's indulge in a short discourse here. Imagine one day you went to a shoe store looking for a light colored pair of shoes. Knowing your size, you approach the sales person and inform her the size, the color, and brand you want. To your surprise, she politely informs you that the industry decided to deregulate the standards in shoe size, and that the only way to know the right fitting size is to actually try many sizes in the chosen color and brand. You find that news rather astounding, but you begrudgingly give in and instruct her to bring several sizes that came close in approximation. You try on a few sizes until you find size X that fit. The purchase is made and you move on with life.

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Several months later, you decide you want a semi-dark color in the same size and brand. Again, you visit the same store and luckily you get service from the same sales person who remembered the earlier purchase and the fuss that went down. Ah, you thought, not only would this be easy with simply switching out the color and keeping the other variables the same, but I get the same person who baby sat me through the earlier fiasco of deregulation brouhaha. Shockingly, the salesperson kindly informed you that the mere act of changing the color would mean you would have to repeat the trial-and-error process because you cannot carry over the lessons learnt, and thus the final size. She went on to explain that the deregulation in size standards also proliferated within a brand across the color spectrum. Sh*t, you thought. Not another crazy-zany process just for a color change. Again, with a tense neck and a healthy restraint not to unleash onto the messenger, you repeat the entire process again.  Again at the end, you make the purchase and you move on with life.

Several months past by, and you find yourself in need of a black formal shoe. You go through the same approach, getting the same salesperson, hoping- no, actually pleading silently in your head- that the size for the earlier semi-dark shoe would give a close enough approximation to the size in black formal shoe. And that this close enough approximation would minimize and trial and error this time. However, by now the sales person is hanging her head low, a pretend dejection in full self defense against your wrath, as she explains that the semi-dark shoe size is a lot closer to the first light colored shoe than to the black one.

The thought of stabbing in the dark for this black shoe as more daunting- inspite of your previous two daunting trips- makes this maddening process a woeful understatement.

As if there isn't any more pain to the injury, another wrench is thrown into the picture where you cannot try the shoes and 'test' drive the different sizes unless you pay for them. And that the store may or may not take back sizes that don't fit in exchange for a fitting one.

Can you see enough engorged veins in your neck and forehead simply reading this? And this is how we navigate the world of AFS Spey Heads, with equal confusion and confounded-ness, often leading to unbridled madness. Ever see Pro Golfers bend their putter across their bent knee after missing a 3 footer for the game winning prize? My purpose of this article is to provide a compass that would act as a shunt to bypass the inherent maze much like the deregulation shoe story above. Yup, after all, we don't want the urge to take our rods over a bent knee, huh? Or worst still, defect to the game of golf thinking meaningful respite from any frustration can be found there.