Golf lessons in the digital age

With the crack of the club, Larry Kison watched as his golf ball plunged into a patch of tall grass just beyond the tee box. That was typical, the 73-year-old Moses Lake resident and avid golfer said, whenever he tees off with a driver.

Watching from a few feet away, instructor Randy Henry offered a few pointers before placing another black-marked ball on the tee and telling him to try again. Kison stepped up to the tee, swung through the ball and unleashed a drive that easily soared over its predecessor and the swaying palm trees lining the grass-covered fairway, landing a few hundred yards short of the ocean that stretched into the horizon.

But Kison and Henry weren’t anywhere near the beach – or even out on the greens, for that matter. The two were inside the new Randy Henry’s Dynamic Golf center in the plaza shops in downtown Coeur d’Alene, where the only hints of the tropics are the digital golf courses projected onto the giant, 180-degree panoramic screen that wraps around the improvised tee box.

The center, which opened last summer, takes golf instruction into the digital age. Its biggest draw is the simulated golf experience, which uses technology created by the Ohio-based aboutGolf. The center’s four-person staff, including Henry, a former instructor on the PGA, LPGA and Champions tours, and LPGA member Maria Kostina, offers lessons that analyze individual swings and putting strokes, and matches player styles with their ideal clubs and balls using the computer program. The instructors offer outside lessons as well.

“They’ve had simulators for 25 years, but they are not as accurate as what we have here. It covers the whole swing – putting, ball-fitting, club-fitting, anything you can think of,” said Russian-born Kostina, as she set up the shop’s other golf simulator, the putting program. “Nobody has that kind of a combination between accuracy of the simulator, simulation of the shot, along with state-of-the-art teaching and all this extra stuff, like weight transfer using sensors underneath the golfer and the 3D cameras. There are similar concepts out there, but the combination of how accurate the simulation is and how good the teaching is, there isn’t really a comparison.”

Using high-speed cameras and a golf ball coated with 3-D capturing markers, the simulations precisely measure rotation, lift, club motion and a wealth of other attributes. If it slices, hooks or shanks outside, it’ll do the same indoors. The equipment calculates the swing and weight shifts of the golfer on the fly and can be played back instantly and in slow-motion by the staff, even adding clips of professionals in a side-by-side comparison.

With 38 different courses to choose from, including world-renowned links such as Pebble Beach and St. Andrews, and fantasy courses set on top of the New York City skyline, golfers can practice their game without setting foot on the greens.

Henry is a Spokane native who lives in Hayden and co-founded the Henry-Griffitts custom club fitting. He has been a primary consultant to aboutGolf, which purchased the North Idaho-based Henry Griffiths golf products, in the development of the PGA TOUR Simulators to help iron out the kinks and provide user feedback. The technology, which the center’s staff said is gradually taking hold in stores across the country, allows golfers of all abilities a new venue to develop their swing or to just enjoy a round of virtual golf at their favorite course.

“The whole idea of using the technology – and that’s why this is so unique – is to simplify, not to make it more complicated,” Kostina explained. “It allows a teacher to quickly go down the line and see, OK, this is inconsistent. From there, it leads you to: how do I approach that? Or how do I make that more consistent? It eliminates this whole idea of how things should look and what it should do. We don’t want this person to putt just like Tiger Woods, we just want to make sure they are consistent and they enjoy the game.”

Even though Kison, a member of Inland Empire Seniors Association golf league, was only in the center for a half hour, he said he was impressed with what he saw and learned.

“I like golf and that’s why I stopped. I usually play three times a week,” he said, after signing up for an hour-long session.

About the simulated experience, Kison added, “That’s something else. I’ve never really done this before. I’ve been changing golf clubs and spending money on new golf clubs and it turns out it’s not the golf clubs.”

Owner Randy Henry said aboutGolf can make a difference in just a few swings. “In about two minutes, if you saw the before and after of Larry, all of a sudden there’s an amazing difference. We have a lot of different ways to do things. We don’t believe in one swing, there’s a lot of different ways to make it work.”