You’Re A Great Golfer? Get Virtual Virtual Golf Offers All The Swings - Mood And Otherwise - Without Losing Any Balls

Sat., Aug. 22, 1998

By Jim Kershner jimkershner@comcast.net

The day was glorious at St. Andrews (The Old Course). The temperature was mid-70s. The Scottish wind was riffling through my hair.

Or maybe the air-conditioning was blowing on my noggin. Please, allow me my illusions.

I was in a booth at Virtual Golf at 6512 E. Sprague, only pretending to be striding down the links at St. Andrews. Pretending is cheaper, easier and far more practical than actually being there, since for starters, they would never let a hacker like me anywhere near The Old Course.

Virtual Golf is Spokane’s golf fantasyland, where you can play St. Andrews, Pebble Beach, Mauna Lai, Doral’s Blue Monster, Spyglass Hill, Firestone and others without leaving your booth.

Here’s how it works:

A big floor-to-ceiling screen shows a photographed view from the first tee box. You tee up a real golf ball on the artificial turf pad, pull out your own club and take a mighty whack. The ball thumps against the screen and bounces harmlessly back. Three overhead infrared cameras have calculated the ball’s speed, direction, loft and spin. As an image of your ball goes sailing down the course, the computer crunches the numbers and tells you the result: “213 yards, in the fairway, three yards left of center, 225 yards to the green,” for example.

Then the photo changes to reflect your new location. You place the ball on the artificial turf mat and see if you can whack a three-wood 225 yards and straight. If so, the screen tells you you’re on the green and how far from the hole you are. Then the booth lights up and becomes a putting green. You place the ball at the appropriate spot on the green, putt out and record the number of putts. Just like that, you’ve made a bogey on No. 1 at St. Andrews.

Repeat through No. 18, and it’s time for a cooling beverage in the Virtual Golf “clubhouse.” (Yes, they do have one.)

Plenty of golfers have discovered Virtual Golf since it opened in Spokane in 1994. With its eight separate booths, it can accommodate dozens of golfers at a time (a foursome can play each booth). It can get lonely during the summer - my son and I were all alone there one August evening - but when the weather turns brisk, Virtual Golf gets hot.

“In the winter, you need a tee time at least a week in advance,” said Leo Ohanesian, a co-owner along with his wife, Joyce, and John Barron. “Some people call ahead a month in advance.”

Virtual Golf is especially popular with groups, who come in for company outings, bachelor parties and birthday parties. It’s also good for beginners, since they can get some experience without slowing anybody up.

For a middle-of-the-road hacker like me, Virtual Golf strikes a good balance between reality and fantasy. My shots went just about as far as they do in real life - club selection was virtually identical to that on a real course.

Yet who wants too much realism? Virtual Golf had a comforting tendency to straighten my game - no wild slices, no crazy bounces. Also, the rough isn’t rough - it’s just a slightly deeper strip of artificial turf - nor is the sand sandy. The “sand trap” is just another bit of artificial turf, easier to master than real sand.

But the putting green - that’s where Virtual Golf can truly make you look like a low-handicapper. No putt is longer than about 20 or 30 feet, and the greens are almost flat. And - talk about a fantasyland! - the computer doesn’t allow anything over a three-putt.

As a result, I managed to shoot a 78 on the Old Course at St. Andrews, which is at least 10 or 20 shots below what I could probably achieve in real life. With the real Scottish wind blowing, I’m sure I would have blasted at least one mighty drive out of bounds and into a herd of sheep.

The only area in which I craved more realism was on the big screen, where the course images are blown up so big they look dim and fuzzy. I gave up trying to see where I was aiming, and just tried to hit everything straight.

Fortunately, the price is not too realistic. Air fare, hotels, green fees - I’d be out thousands of pounds at St. Andrews in real life.

IF YOU GO It takes $10 to play 18 holes of Virtual Golf in the summer. In non-summer months, when the owners advise making tee times, the price jumps to $20.

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