Serious Golf Simulators
You know the golf simulator drill: place your golf ball on a modified tee, smack it into the screen and watch as a computer imagines its flight. But traditional simulators have one big limitation. While real golf courses are far from even, most simulators have you hit off a flat surface, even after the ball is tracked as having landed on a slope. Platform Golf brings a far more realistic hitting surface to the simulator world and provides a revolutionary way to become a better golfer.
That’s because in Platform Golf the floor moves. Hit your ball into the screen and the platform will automatically adjust to the slope that you would find were you actually playing. It finds the proper angle, reflecting that balls beneath your feet tend to fade, while balls above your feet will tend to draw.
But Platform Golf truly shines on the green. On a typical simulator, practicing putting—the key to low scores—can be all but useless. You hit on a flat surface, but flat putts are a rarity.
“Forty-two percent of shots in golf are putts,” says Thomas Hackett, founder and chief executive officer of the manufacturer. “If you’re hitting everything from a flat lie, you can really call that simulation in name only.”
When you putt with Platform Golf’s advanced models, it sets up the green with the proper undulations, and then projects a circle where the putt should drop. You grab your putter and take a look: this one will move fast, as it’s going downhill, and you see a bit of left-to-right break. Aim to the left, tap it gingerly, and watch your putt roll. Hit it just right and you might be rewarded with a birdie.
Platform Golf offers a range of sizes and styles. The starter product (no putting surface) begins at $14,999. The TrueSlope product, which combines the full swing and the putting platform, starts at $25,495. The largest platform is 22 feet long. Each can be customized to your space, and the company will even upgrade an existing simulator with this new technology and hardware. “We handle the entire retrofit,” says Hackett.
