I’ve mentioned a few times here that I ordered a SkyTrak and am in the process of finishing off a room in my garage for golf use. This topic is to chronicle my journey and note any issues or questions or suggestions I have if you decide to embark on such a project.
My garage is a 3 car garage and the 2 car portion of it is deep enough to hold two more cars, so I guess I got lucky in that sense. I’d prefer to have this setup in the basement but the ceilings aren’t tall enough. Dimensions are around 19’x13’
PVC Net
I started by building a PVC net in my garage. I used 1.5" PVC pipe, and various connectors I bought at Lowes to create this masterpiece. The net was one I’ve had for many years that my dad bought at a canvas shop because I kept hitting balls through “golf” nets (yes, ripping holes in the net after one or two swings is not a great surprise). I hung the net on the PVC with zip ties.
Optishot
After a year of hitting balls into this net, I got a great deal on an OptiShot. One great feature of the OptiShot is the ability to use foam or AlmostGolf balls instead of real ones, which made me feel a little better about hitting so close to the cars but also takes away a lot of the feel you need to have when you are hitting full swings. Of course, a natural progression to a simulator is a projector so I bought a cheap Viewsonic one. Impact screens that show an image but can also take the beating of a golf ball are expensive, and I opted to using fake balls anyway, so I modified my net and added a painter’s tarp to catch the image and the ball.
This setup worked ok, but I wanted more. So I went ahead and purchased a Flightscope Mevo for indoor/outdoor launch monitor needs. It allowed me to practice partial wedge shots in my garage and receive accurate results.
My review of the OptiShot and Mevo is here: Winter practice: simulator. You can see that I wasn’t happy with the accuracy of the Optishot so earlier this year I realized it was time to move on.
Spornia SPG-7 Net
I upgraded to this net earlier this year. It really is a nice home-use net and I like how quickly it sets up and tears down. it seems to have no problem catching drives off my 115 mph swing.
SkyTrak
I preordered my SkyTrak many months ago and it finally came recently. I am in process of learning the unit and also enclosing the section of my garage.
Enclosed Garage Part 1
I built up the new wall, door, and drywall and also cleared out the garage storage stuff. Now I need to have my free time line up with decent enough weather to get the new wall mudded, texture the ceiling, and paint the room. One thing I’ve learned, with the SkyTrak you want a paint that will allow for contrast with the golf ball. I’m leaning toward a gray.
Update coming soon…
