Saratoga Business Journal
By Susan Elise Campbell
The indoor golf experience that gained momentum during the pandemic continues to delight residents from all around the region. Whether it’s a family out for a few hours of fun, a couple on a date, or serious golfers working to improve their handicap, audiences are being attracted to golf simulators in greater numbers as the underlying technology evolves.
Troy Miller has opened five new facilities called The Bunker since Covid temporarily closed the doors of many recreation facilities. The latest is at 307 Broadway in Saratoga Springs.
“I read an article recently that golf, for the first time, has more non-green golf interest than the traditional golf course,” said Miller. “People come to have fun and they also come to train and improve their game.”
Popularity has much to do with strides in graphics and high definition monitors that make the experience more realistic. But as the individual swings and makes contact with the ball, the simulator technology is collecting dozens of data metrics, Miller said.
“We have seen advancements with the flight tracking technology, which was first developed to afford greater detail and insight with respect to club fitting,” said Scott Hoffman, the second generation to own and operate Northway Golf Center, 1519 Crescent Road in Clifton Park. “That has been our forté.”
Northway Golf Center is one of the top 100 club fitters nationwide with every major club manufacturer in the industry, Hoffman said.
“Technology has revolutionized the industry,” he said. “It has broadened the components of performance characteristics to provide every different player type with an opportunity for betterment.”
In 1974 when Hoffman’s parents were opening the golf shop and a personal computer didn’t exist yet, “club fitting was not a thing,” he said. “Each of the manufacturers had one or two models designed to appeal to the better half or lesser half as far as player ability.”
For example, a blade style golf club was performance oriented and not very forgiving, he said. By the 1980s manufacturers determined that hollow construction, or placing the weight of the club head around the perimeter, enlarged the sweet spot so golfers could have better performance on a miss-hit.
“That’s like the difference between an aluminum baseball bat and a wooden one,” said Hoffman. “Now we have interchangeable components in one club and use golf simulators to determine the best configuration for the player.”
Today’s top-of-the-line simulator is the TRACKMAN, which draws serious golfers to both The Bunker and Northway Golf Center, along with other brands such as TOPTRACER and TOPTRACER RANGE technology.
While TRACKMAN is an indoor machine, it can be used outdoors and the data translated indoors.
“TRACKMAN is the one all the PGA pros use to warm up for the Masters,” Miller said. “It feeds back club head speed, ball speed, degree of angle, attack angle, smash factor, distance and about two dozen other metrics.”
A user can factor in wind speed and course conditions if they would like, or emulate a course in Colorado, for example, he said.
Miller said in making TRACKMAN simulators the manufacturer collected inputs from millions of golf swings and stored them to inform users.
“There is not one shot that TRACKMAN hasn’t recorded and now it has an artificial intelligence element,” he said.
“You hit a ball 20 or 30 times and the system will tell you what’s wrong with your swing,” Miller said. “It’s an unbelievable training system.”
“We have currently five teaching professionals on staff to offer instruction and a full-fledged golf academy,” Hoffman said. “There is growing demand in our region for coaching, from individual private lessons for beginners and virtual playing lessons on the simulators to several levels of group programs.”
“Launch monitors once captured only basic information such as club angle, club speed, ball speed and launch angle,” Hoffman said. “Now we see interactions with multiple technologies such as high-speed cameras and Doppler radar that combine to capture ball and club data simultaneously.”
“It actually gives more data that a golfer would expect, want, or need,” he said. “Things like your face angle variation relative to your target line at impact is quantified.”
Non-green golfers using indoor simulation can follow their shots on a high definition monitor overhead and see their data displayed. Miller said graphics are advancing all the time, and there is no longer anything artificial looking about the display.
“Kids love the HD monitors,” Miller said. “You know how kids are, they love their screen time.”
Customers at The Bunker can rent a bay by the hour that holds up to four people, Miller said. VIP and semi-private spaces are also available.
“It’s like buying a bucket of balls,” Hoffman said. “You can play as few or as many as you like.”
Indoor golf is wholesome recreation for families that bridges multiple generations, the business owners said.
“Kids play with their moms and siblings and grandparents,” Hoffman said. “The beauty of the sport of golf is that it doesn’t discriminate.”
Hoffman said the initial attraction of Northway Golf Center was the driving range when his folks started the business 50 years ago. That was the first amenity along with a single story, one-room pro shop with bare floors and one or two lines of clothing.
No one was offering golf equipment in the Capital Region then, and that aspect of the business quickly took off along with miniature golf, he said.
“The business became a venue for family entertainment,” said Hoffman. “Now with the introduction of TOPTRACER technology, it ties to the evolution of the driving range experience.”
In 2020 Northway Golf Center built a 2,400-square-foot performance center that combines driving golf balls outside with simulator technology inside. This is a heated space enclosed on three sides but open to the fresh air.
Customers can watch their drives travel a couple hundred yards onto the driving range or look up to see what was tracked and rendered on screen by the simulator, Hoffman said.
“The allure of golf is to see the ball fly,” said Hoffman. “But golfers also want the interaction of technology.”
Miller and Hoffman use different brands of simulators for different purposes and know that with any technology there is a certain shelf life. Constant, dynamic changes can make it obsolete. Nevertheless, both business owners purchase rather than lease their equipment because it makes greater economic sense in the longer run, they said.
The Bunker and Northway Golf Center invite golfers and non-golfers in the community to discover a new kind of recreation, stay a while, have a meal and some beer or wine. Log on to www.getinthebunker.golf and www.northway8golf.com for more information.