We’ve all been in this scenario before, you have a golf date with your buddies at your favorite golf course and the weather looks great in the morning.  Then you see heavy clouds move in and before you know it before you can even get out of the driveway, a thunderstorm rolls in.  When Mother Nature ruins your Saturday, what options do you have besides canceling the date for the following weekend?  Can you get all of your friends free the following Saturday?  You can see how detrimental a rainout can be to your plans.  Instead, you can invite your golfing friends over to your place because you have a home golf simulator!

These simulators are very similar to the ones that you see from time to time in local bars or arcades.  The premise is simple, the system is set up with a mat and a tee in front of a large screen.  This screen not only displays where you are on the course, but the screen is outfitted with tiny internal sensors to pinpoint exactly where the ball hits on the screen.  The screen’s sensors can also determine how hard you’ve hit the ball and most simulators capture telemetry data from the tee.  This data can tell the system how fast the ball came off of the tee and if you’ve hooked or sliced your shot.

You can actually use this data to improve your golf game as you can adjust your swing and make notes as to why your tee shots keep ending up in the drink on that Par 5.  The changes to your mechanics with the home system can then be tested out on the real course when the weather is agreeable.   

Another great facet of the home system is that you can download and store different courses to challenge yourself.  You can golf the beautiful Pebble Beach course one day and then tackle the famous 17th hole at Sawgrass the next day!  The beauty of being connected online with the internet is that the courses are downloadable or streamed for easy retrieval.  This easy access was not available on those machines you saw at the arcades 20 years ago, those machines had to get course updates the old-fashioned way with disc updates provided by the Manufacturer.

It may not represent everything from the real thing (where’s the breeze and that smell of freshly mowed grass?) but it’s a very close approximation of getting 18 holes in with the luxury of being able to stay at home.  The beauty of this system is that you don’t need to buy anything new to add to your equipment.  You can use the same golf balls and the same clubs that you have now to get the complete home golfing experience!