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CHRISTINA K. COSDONFor golfers, this shop might be the right fit
LARGO - Need a spine alignment on that favorite golf club, some frequency matching or maybe an adjustment to the angle or lie of a club face?
These are some of the on-site golf club services that Jeff Parrott provides at Golf Provisions, a sales and service business he and his wife, Betts, recently bought and expanded.
Parrott has worked in the golf industry for about 30 years in Pinellas County.
He was 19 and studying medicine at the University of North Dakota when he packed up in the middle of a snowstorm and drove to Florida.
"I was passing out Halloween candy to trick or treaters at the apartment I shared off-campus with my brother," Parrott recalled. "It started snowing, and I thought there's no way I'm going to deal with another brutal winter in North Dakota. I had a little money tucked aside, a perfectly good vehicle, so I packed up and headed south."
He drove to Clearwater, as far as his money would take him, rented an apartment above a golf shop and enrolled in some courses at St. Petersburg College. In between studies, he began hanging around the golf shop.
"Pretty soon I was working at the shop, and 30 years later I'm still working in a golf shop," he said. "I went from medicine to business."
Over the years, he has owned golf repair shops and worked for other businesses in retail and wholesale. For the past 14 years, he worked for Chicago Golf in Largo and became an officer of the company.
Several months ago, Parrott learned that the 10-year-old Golf Provisions was for sale.
"I liked the way the shop was run and the customers the owner dealt with," Parrott said. "I jumped out of the pan and into the fire of being self-employed again."
He bought the business for less than $100,000, he said, and did some remodeling and renovating before reopening July 1. He has tripled the inventory, he said, and expects to add more as the season gets under way.
The Parrotts, who recently celebrated their 20th anniversary, are working side by side in the business.
Betts Parrott has worked two decades in the golf business and is a "capable club fitter," her husband said. She worked the past 10 years at Chicago Golf.
"Like any sport, it's quite involved and has its own terminology," Parrott said. "And when you own a business, you start eating and sleeping it." The Parrotts not only talk business at home, "we talk in sku codes," he said, laughing.
From the beginning, analyzing and matching golf clubs to players, as well as repairing and adjusting equipment, has intrigued Parrott. "You have to know your equipment," he said.
"There have been so many innovations in the last 10 years. You have to keep watching the industry for new innovations and technologies."
Parrott said he enjoys the challenge of matching equipment to players, making a club fit an individual or fine tune a club. "Every player is different - senior players don't swing as hard as the young flat bellies," he said. Custom fitting and repairing are his forte, he said.
The shop's prices range from a set of clubs for a junior player at $75 to $600 for a set with "the state- of-the-art bells and whistles," Parrott said. He doesn't sell the high-end expensive brand names, he said. "We sell the same technology in the heads," he said, "and a better technology in the shaft."
Parrott said he has never regretted leaving North Dakota. His parents and brother eventually followed him to Florida.
"The golf season in North Dakota," he said, "is usually a Tuesday."