It was an icy winter evening the first time I visited one of Colorado’s golf lounges, and the gals and I greeted the steep simulator learning curve with giggles. Our happy hour “tee time” meant the staff was busy shaking, pouring and serving, so we had to fend for ourselves. The simulator did not cooperate but we still had fun swinging away.
I’ve also had lessons indoors with simulators that produced screenfuls of digits, decimal points and degrees. I nod at these as my eyes glaze over. But it dawned on me that one-on-one practice sessions with a friendly, easily interpreted simulator might prove productive in the offseason, if only I approached it with a mission it could help me accomplish.
That’s how I came to visit with one of Colorado’s golf lounge pioneers at his South Broadway Country Club and take away a few simple ideas about how CGA members, handicaps high and low, can hone their games indoors this winter with Trackman.
A lesson with Kelly Huff costs $100 an hour, an hour on your own in a bay just $55, so consider these how-tos another CGA membership benefit.
Before you book your hour, consider that at a gigantic sports bar with lots of activities or a busy bar/restaurant with a simulator tucked in the corner, you might be on your own with the video screen. This can be a fun adventure while catching up with pals over beers, but for game improvement, consider picking out a few clubs for a weekday session at an indoor teaching facility, golf course clubhouse or a golf lounge that prioritizes golf.
“If I ever hear that someone threw you to the wolves and said, ‘Just go have fun in the bay,’ I’d be upset,” Kelly said. “Here, the staff will say, ‘Is it your first time here? What brings you in? Do you want to play on a course, or are you trying to work on your game?’ And maybe you’ll say that you’re going through a little swing change and want to use the system to help you. Then the staff will pull up the driving range here. They’ll ask what numbers you want to see and tell you to let them know when you’re ready to have your report emailed to you.”
Now, your eyes may bulge at the 40 or so metrics Trackman offers. You can learn all about them, in mind-boggling detail, at tuition-free TrackmanUniversity.com. Or stick to Kelly Huff’s guidance here on simplifying, one goal at a time. “You can't come in with five different goals, because then you don't really know what you're working on. Ask yourself, ‘What am I grading myself on today?’”
A favorite instructor or YouTube video has inspired you to make a swing change this winter. Know what feature of Trackman can be the most help? Kelly says it’s not the yardage number or the ball trajectory, silly, it’s the camera!
“What I notice that's typical with most amateurs is they hope that it feels better and then maybe it looks better,” Kelly said. “But what you really need to do to make a swing change is make it look better. And then it'll start to feel better. It's not going to feel good right away, so that's where you almost need a camera to kind of show you the feel versus the real. You might feel like you're doing something because you hit a good shot! Then you look at it on video and you see that's not actually what you’re trying to do.”
The Trackman camera that films you is built into the radar that follows the ball. So you can split the screen and see yourself on one side, watch yourself in slo-mo, draw pictures to check your positions, change your hair color, whatever!
Kelly especially likes what he calls the “freeze” drill here: Stop at the top of your swing, freeze and grade yourself, then if you need to make a change, make the change and then turn through and hit the ball. “The point of that drill isn't to hit it super solid but to learn what the new top of the backswing feels like, so then you can come to the camera and look at it and see this new position here that you’ve created.”
With players working on a swing change, instructors might look at the overwhelming amount of data Trackman produces. Kelly recommends amateurs unclutter their screen by keeping track only of club speed, face angle, club path, carry and, because we can’t help ourselves, total yardage.
Get Real About Your Clubs
Yes, we get a lot of roll this time of year in Colorado. But what’s the true carry of each of your clubs? SBCC’s Trackmans are set to 5280 elevation and a pleasant 70 degrees to make it easy for players to establish what Kelly calls their “personal distance spectrum.”
The process: You assign each club a tag and hit three solid shots with each. Trackman then produces a report you can carry with you on the course. It will also “caddie” and select clubs for shots during games on the simulator.
Periodic rechecks, every few months or so even in season, can account for changes in fitness, swing speed and clubs. “You might find a 25-yard gap between your 6-iron and your 4-hybrid, so you know you have to put a 5-hybrid in there,” Kelly said. “Or you see you have a 2-yard gap between a couple clubs and can drop one of them.”
If you’re going to Scotland or Bandon or Pebble Beach, you can reset the Trackman at sea level and cooler temps. For this personal distance spectrum exercise, check your ego at the door and the adjusted numbers will help your score at your destination.
Trying to hit the ball higher or lower, or bend it left or right? Here’s where more sophisticated metrics can measure your success, if you know how to use them. When checking in, tell the staff what you’re working on and ask which metrics might be instructive and how. Or study at TrackmanUniversity.com before you go.
And if your golf course isn’t among the 400 or so in the Trackman directory but you really want to figure out how to fade your tee shot around that dogleg on the 14th fairway, ask for a similar hole you can practice on. Then watch the face angle and path to measure your progress. “The face sends it and the path bends it,” Kelly said.
Interesting factoid: LPGA Tour professionals tend to hit all their clubs, from wedge to driver, exactly the same height at their apex. Anything over 90 yards, Kelly says, is plenty high. He says most of us lose efficiency hitting the ball too high.
Of course players at every level want to hit the ball farther, and swing speed is the key. Here in the golf lounge, you can leave your pride in the parking lot and fall all over yourself trying to swing harder and faster!
“The offseason is a great time to work on increasing speed,” Kelly said. “You don’t have to be concerned where the balls go, and you can kind of get a little more aggressive. Say your tempo is 80, 85 percent and in the offseason you can ramp it up to 100 and see how hard you can go after it. Of course, if you want to be fast, you have to train fast, so start swinging!”
For this goal, only one number belongs on your screen, and that’s Club Speed. Strength and flexibility training, unfortunately not offered by the simulator, is recommended to accelerate swing speed.
After you’ve tired of the repetition of blocked practice – watching the key metrics as you work on whatever goal you’ve set – it’s time to have some fun and play nine holes or drop balls randomly on a course or play one of the games loaded into Trackman.
Kelly demonstrated with Bullseye, which he set up for 10 random shots at a pin between 60 and 120 yards away. For example, Trackman ordered a shot of 108 yards. The attempt went 84 yards and ended up 39 feet from the pin, for a score of 48. A second attempt carried 103 yards and landed 14 feet from the pin for a score of 87.
“It's pretty cool,” said Kelly. “You could do a test from 50 yards to 150 yards, and it does random yardages. It might say 68 and then 143, and you start to learn where you're excelling and what you need to work on. I've seen people go from an eight handicap to a four handicap just dialing in their wedge distance control.
“It's really a big deal, and you don't have to have a personal trainer and ice your back after a wedge session because you're swinging out of your shoes.”
Anyway, you may want to save that ice. Then you can have it in your well-deserved post-simulator beverage.
If You Go: SBCC has two locations in Denver and one in Fort Collins. Learn all about them at southbroadwaycc.com. And the CGA lists at least 50 golf lounges, teaching centers and golf courses with simulators in Colorado, so do your homework comparing prices, screen size, brand of technology and hours.
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