Van's Golf Shops

An extremely positive experience with an employee named Andrew. Yesterday I decided to take a look at a new set of irons because I was swinging a beat set of Taylormade Burner 2.0’s. As someone who’s not a real good golfer, but interested in getting better and learning more, I stopped in at Van’s and connected with Andrew. It was 30 minutes to close, but that meant nothing to Andrew. He was more than happy to grab a set of clubs I was looking at and brought me into the simulator. The 30 minutes I spent practicing with a couple of sets I was looking at was the most valuable golf tips that I’ve received in the 2.5 years I’ve been golfing. Needless to say, thank you Andrew for the tips, the clubs, and the knowledge. Will guide anyone curious to you, my friend

I have shopped at this golf store for the past 25 years. I like supporting the smaller local stores over the mega merchants and have many good experiences buying here. In fact I visited this store twice in the past month and had two entirely different experiences About three weeks ago I went in looking for a new golf bag. A very helpful young man showed me several from Ping, Srixon, Sun Mountain, and others. He then showed me a Vessel bag which cost about double, but it was so cool I took it home with me and love it. Thank you for that. Since I had a such good experience with the bag purchase I went back last Thursday to purchase a new driver. I had hit my friend’s new Taylor Made Stealth 2 on the course the day before and liked it so much I was prepared to spend $700 for one of my very own. I arrived at Vans about 30 minutes before closing last Thursday and all the workers were huddled behind the counter. I asked for assistance selecting a new driver. The white-haired older gentleman I asked for help didn’t respond for a moment and appeared to be looking over me. I turned to try to figure out what he was looking at and realized he was looking at the clock behind me. So I said, “if you don’t have time tonight I can come back later”. The guy seemed to realize that 30 minutes should be plenty of time, so he agreed to assist me. He lacked any apparent enthusiasm and it seemed he would have preferred to continue standing behind the counter chatting with his coworkers. He instructed me to hit 5 shots with my own driver. On my first swing, I began to realize that this would be a complete waste of time. The balls in the hitting bay were worn Callaway range balls which is fine at the range but when you are being fit for a new driver which costs $500-800 you would think the sore could muster up a sleeve of something that hasn’t been hit so much the dimples are worn smooth. It gets worse….. The projector in the hitting bay went into service sometime during the Bush administration (Senior, not “W”) as the image was so DARK it was useless. My goodness, a new BRIGHT projector can be bought for about $800. Or if it’s just a bulb maybe $75. New drivers cost manufactures about $100 to produce and a retailer makes about $200 in profit for every new driver they sell. The rest goes to the manufacture and the tour players they sponsor. My expectations were that the “fitter” would help me try out a few different driver heads, a few different shafts, maybe change a few settings on the club in effort to achieve optimal launch angle, spin rate and accuracy. This guy did not of that. ZERO. He had me try the same driver with two different shafts and then told me “that one” was the one for me. MINIMAL EFFORT. The next day I visited Second Swing down on Indian Bend where I received very helpful assistance and left with the newest offerings from Ping. Come Vans, get your act together. ***addition*** The management (Pete) reached out to me and offered me a $50 gift certificate. I feel this was EXTREMELELY GENEROUS of them. I also want to note that they replaced the projectors in the hitting bays with new ones and have fully sorted out my issues. I am changing my rating from 3 stars to 5.

The customer care is great, but their fitting and build work is poor. I asked for a 45 inch driver to be built and set at 10.5 standard loft setting. They cut down the driver to 44.5 inches and placed the driver at 10.5 loft at the Draw bias setting. If buying clubs from them, I would highly recommend going elsewhere for a retrofitting and build.