Mark the hop
Three agreeing hops, then we talk heads
The method is slow on purpose. A hero bounce is trash. We keep the cluster that repeats, photograph the first kiss, and count the crawl against the painted ticks.
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Ball you actually pocket
Not the barrel. A urethane you play in Cass County behaves differently on hop than a range rock. If you forgot yours, we have a small tray of the models this valley actually buys — not a catalog of twenty.
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Fresh tick strip
We stick a new strip on the land zone. The first scuff tells us the ball is down. We do not fit that scuff. We only refuse a swing that never truly landed.
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Hop height against the wall tape
The side wall has hop ticks in inches. Boe calls the peak of the first bounce out loud. Tess writes it. If they disagree by more than an inch, we do it again. Arguments are cheaper than a wrong loft.
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Walk in feet, not adjectives
“It ran a little” is not a number. The floor ticks are one foot apart after the hop zone. We count until the ball stops or until it kisses the back rail, which is a fail we log as “walked off.”
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Gust at the window
Prairie wind after the land is not the weather app. Ingrid keeps a small ribbon in the Broadway window. If it is pulling, we write “shear” on the sheet so a still day later does not look like a miracle.
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Three in a cluster
One pretty hop is luck. Three hops inside a tight window of height and walk — that is a head we will leave on the wall. If the cluster wanders, we change loft, face, or ball before we change the story.
What we throw away
The first swing after a change, and any hop you posed for
Golfers pose. They also tense after a loft click. Those hops go in the bin. The sheet only keeps the cluster that looked bored. Bored hops are honest hops.
You leave with a printed walk sheet. Hop height, walk feet, crust note (thaw, bake, or shear), and the pairs that shortened the crawl. If nothing shortened it, the sheet says that too. A blank win column is still a result.