At the Turn: Once snow falls, indoor golf offers chance to hone game for spring
OTTAWA — The secret, golfer Ben Hogan famously declared, is in the dirt. But on Dave Druken’s high-tech practice range, there’s not a speck of the stuff.
In truth, Golftec’s indoor teaching facilities are more laboratory than lesson tee: sensors and video cameras capture the swing in minute detail, while screens around the room display what’s happening from every conceivable angle.
With a flip of the club, a “button box” on the ground lets students — sensor-equipped cables dangling from their shoulders and hips — review their positions frame by frame, all without even abandoning their posture at address.
No faded yardage markers. No beat-up tractors gathering range balls in the distance. No divots — no real grass, even. And perhaps most importantly, no snow, not even in the dead of the national capital’s infamous off-season.