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I have logged a lot of rounds on High Definition Golf simulators this winter. I have seen an up and down in my score. In a full round I have not broken 100 until today. On Niklaus North I scored 94. I figures that since this doesn't count as a real round, that a thread on simulator rounds would be better. Overall I hope these will result in a smoother transition into the real season, once it gets under way in a few months. Anyone else logging good scores on the simulators?

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I shot a 94 at Pebble Beach!  I think the rounds help because you are swinging the club.

Scott

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Yeah I really enjoy it. There are a lot of courses, that I will probably never play in real life. It's definitely going to be great starting the season with a head start.

I enjoy it, but I have great difficulty with the pitching/chipping/putting.

Colin P.

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Yeah the short game is where I loose all my points. Lately I have been getting a better feel for my chip and pitch distances. I find that my putting skills are the same on the simulator as in real life. I am always either too soft or too hard.

A guy I work with wants to go golfing on the simulator.  He has done it a few weeks ago.  I'm still debating on whether to do it or not.  I haven't hit anything in a couple of months and think it might be a waste of money.  I would probably be better suited to just hit in the driving bays.  Either way, its an hour away and we are about to get hammered with snow.  It would make better sense to stay off the roads.

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  :nike:  Covert 2.0  5i - AW,  :titleist:   56-14F,  60-07S
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I have found the with the HD simulators at least that they provide a ton of information about your swing. Pretty much the same as a launch monitor. It has helped me make better contact with the ball with all my clubs. There wiLl still be a ridiculous amount that they will never be able to replace to the real thing. We will see how my game looks this season.

I don't like indoor simulators: for some reason I change my swing when I'm indoors. (more arms, less body). I also think that my slices are less pronounced on a simulator than in real life.

Han

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I really like the indoor simulators. I would rather be out playing, but living in mid Sweden, we have quite a lot of snow during the winter. I am new to the game and for me I do believe it is valuable to get some indoor practicing done in the winter.

This past Saturday I had my worst simulator round so far. We played a really tough course and since most of the holes had the sea directly to the right and forest to the left, it did not help me alot since I am battling with a nasty slice with the driver right now...still fun though!


simulators are a lot of fun, especially since you can log a good 18 holes in about an hour's worth of time. I wouldn't get too geeked out about lower scores though... everything from uneven lies to sand traps are not accounted for even in the more sophisticated systems... and hitting off that perfect lie for every stroke is really... well... a perfect lie (see what I did there? B-) )

So for instance, I shot about 6 strokes lower than my all time best on just my 2nd round on a simulator recently, and on a championship course none-the-less.... This was hardly comforting to me in terms of forecasting how this improvement could translate to my local munis.

Enjoy it, swinging the club is always better than doing nothing, but don't get your hopes up too high.

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  • 1 month later...

I played on a Sports Coach simulator while I lived in the UK, because I don't drive and it was really rare that I would otherwise get a chance to play. For 7 years it was mostly all the golf I played. I moved to Mexico a couple of years ago and have since found ways to go back to the course, by taxi. I get about 18 holes in / week and 1 hour at the range, but the courses are way outside the city so there is no way I can get out there through traffic during the week. A few days ago I found out that there is a simulator place right near my office, run by Korean people on Korean equipment, with mostly Korean and Japanese clients. They don't even show up on the Internet when you search in English or Spanish, which is really weird for Mexico.

Anyway, I think practicing on a simulator is actually very useful: on the driving range I can't really see the shots I make because it's only 60 yards long and well, I hit a bit further than that, whereas on the simulator I can see exactly the dispersion of my shots in both length and angles, which is really useful information that I can work with to monitor progress. I am almost completely self-taught and generally have never interacted well with teachers, and the simulator gives me great feedback that I can use. Today for instance I wanted to try curing a slice problem which had recently surfaced. I had identified that my swing path was actually quite straight, with some in to out tendency, but the main issue visible on the simulator was the head not always being square at impact.

Ttrying on a minor adjustment in my grip (following advice by Greg Norman on his training video available on Youtube), I can very quickly see that the adjustment works really well. Seeing my swing on video also allows me to assess how much lag I am building on the downswing (not much) and allows me to monitor the progress I am making without asking for a radical shift in swing. I am 37, I've been playing this game for the better part of 30 years, I have a swing which is not perfect but is reasonably effective, and I am definitely not up for radical changes that could bring me back to square 1. For this the simulator is much more forgiving than a teacher and allows me to adjust without re-writing the book completely.

I also play the occasional round on the simulator, for fun mostly, not expecting it to reflect "real life". Actually I'm shooting fairly similar scores ranging from 85 to 95 yards on the simulator and on the course, but this is a fluke: on the simulator I tend to hit 97% GIRs and then do crap on the green because I just can't get the hang of how it works, whereas in real life I don't get to hit shots from the bunker or the sandtrap off a nice little green synthetic mat, so I tend to miss a few more GIRs, however I rarely put 5 times to the same hole in real life! It's fun, it's decent enough practice if for any reason (weather, traffic, kids...) you can't afford to set aside 3-5 hours to play a round of real golf during the week.

I really would not recommend most of the US simulators (HD Golf, Aboutgolf, etc), all those I have tried are much worse in terms of playability than the Sports Coach and Golfzon. Sports Coach is probably the most realistic in terms of analyzing ball flight, and it's the only one where the short game is up to task. Golfzon is probably the most playable and fun module, and there tech development team has been incredibly creative in recent months to bring more realism to the simulator. If you want to buy one for yourselves I would seriously recommend looking into these options, especially since they are actually cheaper than the market leaders. You're looking at $20k+ for a quality simulator ($50k and above if you are looking for premium models), anything below that is merely a toy.


I've played on one several times over winter, I didn't dare use my driver as I feel the booth is too small, so I tee off with a 3fairway off the mat, I don't pay much attention to the scores, it's just nice to hit balls indoors on a cold night , and it has definitly improved my long game ball striking!

Gaz Lee


A great idea for keeping the swing going in the winter but as divot dave said, you are hitting from perfect lies everytime just like at the driving range so i wouldn't take too much from it. Good for making swing changes though if you are getting good numbers from a Trackman or similar.

Oh, I forgot to mention I didn't regard Trackman as a simulator so much as a professional teaching tool, even though the simulator they make is probably also the best in the market. It's just $55k is a little outside my price range. Trackman doesn't necessarily read ball flight better than Sports Coach but it does produce more quality data to be used and if you have the 2 cameras to visualize your swing from face and behind it's a great feature as well. It's more the leisure market simulators in the US who seem to spend more money on marketing than on tech.


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