Elite competitors at any level become hypersensitive to gear in ways most of us ordinary folks are not. Legend has it that Ted Williams returned a batch of custom bats to the Louisville Slugger factory because “the grips didn’t feel right.” They turned out to be a mere .05 of an inch, off of Ted’s spec. Another time he picked up six of a teammate’s identical bats and picked the one that has half an ounce heavier than the rest.
Target shooters are the same way. They’ll tell you it takes them thousands of rounds to learn a new gun. I once met Greg Wolf, world FITASC champion, whose Beretta 687 had over 500,000 rounds through it. The head of the stock was badly cracked. Pieces were missing so you could see the locks of the gun, and other chunks of stock head were held in place by wraps of black and orange electrician’s tape. The action had been rebuilt twice. I asked him why he was still shooting it.
“Beretta wants to send me another one, but I don’t want to take the time to learn new gun,” he said. Bear in mind, he was talking about not wanting to replace that one with another one of the exact same model.
Therefore, with a great deal of interest, I read a story in a recent…
