I visited 30 countries while I was in my 20s.
11.01.2024 - 15:49 / forbes.com
During the week between Christmas and New Years, I played eighteen holes “at” the famed Ocean Course at Mexico’s Cabo del Sol. The next day I teed it up at Loch Lomond in Scotland, and two days later snuck in another quick 18—after dark—at Canada’s classic Banff Springs. Each round averaged just over two hours, I never lost a single ball, and I did it all without a passport or plane tickets. No greens fees. No rain. BYOB. I didn’t even have to wear a collared shirt.
Over the past several years I have written extensively on home golf simulators, and how the technology has gotten better and better—and cheaper and cheaper. These sets ups used to be off limits to most recreational players, reserved for mansions and PGA Tour pros, many of whom use home simulators for practice. But while the custom installations Tiger Woods and Jon Rahm have can still run north of fifty grand, it’s completely viable to put a quality simulator in your basement, garage or home theater room for well under ten thousand dollars, and if you want to skimp, half that.
I’m old enough to remember when cell phones were so pricey they were found only in limos (hardwired!) and “new generation” televisions with—wait for it—flat screens were luxuries far beyond the reach of most consumers. In cars, tech like anti-lock brakes and airbags used to be an option you had to pay extra for, and even once they were available most people didn’t have these due to the cost (and earlier, it was the same for air conditioning)!
Today, we take it for granted that phones, huge TVs, car safety advances and all sorts of technology once limited to the rich are so affordable as to be ubiquitous. In each case, technology kept getting better and prices kept dropping. The same thing has happened with golf simulators, which is why I just went in with one of my friends, neighbors, golf partners—and PGA teaching professional—Peter Harris, to get a home simulator.
Frankly, I’m just happy to be able to keep playing golf through the long cold Vermont winters, whereas Harris is taking the practice much more seriously. He’s already working on “wedge matrix” distance control drills, doing a program to increase his driver clubhead speed, and practicing regularly on the virtual driving range—which gives you far more information (clubhead speed, side spin, back spin, launch angle, carry distance, face angle at impact, etc.) than hitting balls outside at the “real” range. He sees it as a valuable way to not just maintain in the off season, but to improve, and will also use the simulator for private lessons. It’s also great for dialing in the real distance you hit each club, something many amateurs routinely overestimate, and comparing clubs, like a shiny new driver to the
I visited 30 countries while I was in my 20s.
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