Shopping in Evansville

For more than 40 years, Mercury Sports has provided the gear, facilities, and training to help athletes find their stride in baseball, softball, and other sports. Baseball instructors help players fine-tune all aspects of their game, from swing mechanics to pitching and fielding, in small-group lessons. Sluggers looking to practice on their own time can spend time facing pitches from remote-controlled or wheel-action machines in one of the center's three batting cages. Inside Mercury's retail shop, sales associates stock football helmets, shoulder pads, and chest guards from top brands such as Under Armour and Rawlings. Coaches can also order customized team jerseys and screen-printed gear to make their players appear uniform without forcing them all to get the same haircut.

At Golf Etc., a certified True Temper Performance Fitting Center, expert staffers take care of golfers on and off the course with custom club fittings, equipment repair, and high-performance gear and apparel. Using technology as part of their custom Better Golf…Faster! (BGF) system, pros analyze swings with charted and plotted data that assesses each player’s unique swing motion and diagnoses an optimal club length, weight, and type of shaft. They combine this with the FlightScope program, which uses 3-D Doppler radar to analyze ball-flight information, the same system used by weatherman to track clouds when they fly south for the winter. They integrate data correlating to ball speed, shot shape, and angle of attack into the BGF system to create a multifaceted club prescription.

To keep golfers looking as good as their swings, Golf Etc. stocks a full line of athletic gear and apparel from top golf brands such as Ping, Titleist, and Callaway. The shop also houses a Sports-O-Zone equipment sanitizer that uses ozone to rid gear of odor, bacteria, and viruses.

Mayflower Gardens’ designers pluck flowers from the shop’s own greenhouses to assemble the freshest, most vibrant bouquets possible. Their flower arrangements span the spectrum, from a dozen roses primly poking out of a vase to golden calla lilies arched like half-moons within a glass cube.

The plant emporium's fragrant bounty extends beyond arrangements to outdoor annuals and perennials. Gardeners can stroll through the greenhouse, where a canopy of hanging baskets hovers above tropical trees, azaleas, and rosebushes. The store also stocks herbs and veggies, thereby making it unnecessary to steal them from still-life painters.:m]]