Photos by JUSTIN COOK The Roanoke Times

Michael McGinty laughs with a customer as Ji Theriot practices his swing at Pro-Fit Custom Clubs & Repair.

All of the area's top junior golfers have their own personal swing doctors. Some have sports psychologists, too.

That covers the swing and the head. Well, what about the sticks?

There's where Michael McGinty comes into play. He's the club medic. He performs surgery in his downtown Christiansburg shop called Pro-Fit Custom Clubs & Repair.

He's becoming an increasingly busy man, too, since opening up shop on Main Street two years ago.

"He knows all his stuff," said Jake Mondy, a promising 15-year-old sophomore on Blacksburg High's talent-filled golf team. "There's never a question that he doesn't know the answer to.

"I love the new custom set he built for me. They're built perfectly for my swing speed."

As one of only 28 certified master clubmakers in the country, the 58-year-old McGinty certainly knows the tools of his trade.

Step up on his artificial-turf mat and whack a ball into the net, and a few seconds later he can tell you everything that's right or wrong. His X-rays come courtesy of a $4,200 camera that photographs the ball coming off the clubhead at lightning fast shutter speed. Once the images are converted through special software to his laptop computer, McGinty knows swing path and speed, launch angle, and what degree a shot is pulled or hooked or pushed or sliced.

"The good players are fine-tuning all the time," said McGinty, a scratch golfer who finished third in the senior division of last weekend's Allegheny Amateur at Blacksburg Country Club.

"All this information in making sure that I'm prescribing not only the right [club] head, but also the right shaft. The shaft is the engine to a golf club. The shaft does two things -- one, it loads on the backswing, and, two, it unloads at impact. And this is all geared at clubhead speeds."

The average hacker who shoots 90 usually has a swing speed from 70 mph to the low 80s, McGinty said. A kid like Mondy will be somewhere in the mid-90s. The average speed for players on the PGA Tour is 112 to 113 mph. Of course, then there is some guy named Tiger, who moves the club at 128 mph.

"Exactly, but then you take my long-drive player James Price of here in Blacksburg and he'll be upwards of 150 mph. I built his clubs."

A set of custom-made irons built by McGinty can run from $550 to $1,200, depending on what head and shaft is used.

"Unfortunately, the better you are as a golfer the more money it's going to cost you because it's going to require better shafts, better heads," McGinty noted.

The biggest mistake made by many golfers is they're not properly fitted before they buy a set of clubs, McGinty said. He charges $50 for a fitting, a session that can last from 60 to 90 minutes and includes no sales pitches to buy his products.

"The first thing I do is take the statistical measurements, which is [a player's] height, arm length to the floor," he said. "People have two growth spurts. One is from the feet to the waist, then another growth spurt from the waist up, so therefore either one of those can get kind out of kilter. It's in your younger years ... once you get to usually 18 then everything settles down and you are what you are.

"If you're not fitted, length, flex, every shaft is going to have bend points that either will be high, medium or low, and you've got tip firmness from firm to medium to soft. You order the shaft from the way it's going to fit the individual, and then it can be customized a little bit more."

Proper fitting is particularly critical for younger players, who as they grow will often have to make adjustments in their equipment. Blacksburg's Courtney Ellenbogen, ranked 12th among the nation's juniors girls, had a problem last month before attempting to qualify for the Michelob Ultra Classic LPGA Tour event in Williamsburg.

"Courtney had just gotten a new set of clubs and what I detected was two things -- one, the clubs were a little bit too long for her, and secondly, the lie was not correct," McGinty said.

Must have worked. Ellenbogen was the medalist in the special Monday qualifier at Kingsmill.

"These kids are in here all the time, though," said McGinty, who estimated he has about 50 regular junior clients. "They will wear out a set. That happens when you're hitting golf balls for hours every day!"

McGinty has been tinkering with golf clubs since he was he was a teenager. He learned the trade from the head pro at Covington (La.) Country Club. He came to Christiansburg in 1986 via a transfer from his employer, Chase Manhattan Bank.

Now he's retired from the full-time outside job. He's not getting rich from this golf gig, but he loves being a club doctor.

"I enjoy that people believe in me," he said. "With these kids, I get a real treat. I get to go out and see the best of the best as they are coming along."

There's more to this job, too. He can play golf whenever he wants to.

Fix, build or swing 'em. You can't beat that with a stick, right?

"Plus, this right here keeps me out of a lot of 'honey-do' projects if I were at home," said McGinty, laughing. "I like that part of the deal, too."