So I know everyone (I think) knows about T.J kolesnik pro mod, Dave Mateo, Nic Stodd, Turner Thorne, etc... but I noticed that some pros who are much deserving of one (Haley Bishoff as an example) do not have one... your thoughts??
I'm guessing a lot of it comes down to marketability. Someone could be a really good kendama master but if a company doesn't think their image or "vibe" will mesh well with the kendama community they are likely to shy away from producing a pro mod. Kinda like music, some of the best musicians in the world aren't famous, not because their music isn't beautiful, but because music companies find it hard to market their image to the public.
I personally call this kinda thing the "It Factor." Someone either has "it" or they don't. It's hard to quantify in a verbal sense and has a lot to do with intuition and a gut feeling on the end of the marketing professionals.
For me that's really hard to say because I only started watching edits about six months ago and still only have a limited grasp on how hard certain tricks really are. Ask me this question in a year and my opinion will probably be set.
Daniel Robinson, Kris Bosch, and Jake Fischer. They were in the works before KenCO shut down. I even got to check out the protos at the shop
Haley's technically not a pro for KUSA, she's still on the Tribute team. So that's kind of a factor as to why she doesn't have a pro model. But I know what you mean, there's people who probably deserve one but don't have one