aboutGolf will once again be at the PGA merchandise show in Orlando Jan 26th-29th. Visit us at booth 3243 or call us to arrange a demonstration of our products.

aboutGolf Europe are pleased to announce new and improved prices for 2011. This makes owning an aboutGolf Simulator more affordable than ever before. Prices for the aboutGolf Simulator in Europe now start at £24,ooo for the aboutGolf Classic model.

aboutGolf Europe are also offering current users special upgrade packages to allow them to enjoy all the very latest technology updates for their Simulator.

Please contact us for more details via email info@aboutgolfeurope.com

MAUMEE, Ohio — aboutGolf is proud to announce the addition of Jean Jacques Rivet as a new partner in Europe.

Rivet is well known in Europe as a Biomechanist working on swing optimization for several professional golfers and with their coaches (PGA Tour, LPGA and European Tours), including such names as former Masters champion Trevor Immelman and Suzanne Pettersen. Rivet also has an association with renowned golf teacher David Leadbetter and is a consultant to the European Tour.

 Not only is Rivet a sportsman, having competed in a variety of sports including golf, he has a degree in engineering and has a great knowledge of biomechanics and body motion. His company, BiomecaSwing, helps golfers attain a new level of game performance by applying a proven scientific approach.

“Rivet’s knowledge of biomechanics and body motion perfectly complements the efforts of aboutGolf,” said Chuck Faust, President & COO of aboutGolf. “Adding him to our list of partners further enables our ability to create golf technology products that will transform and greatly impact the game.”

 Rivet will serve as a consultant to aboutGolf (www.aboutgolf.com.) in product development, specifically the performance products, including aG Balance, aG Flix and the future TechCentric suite of products. He’ll join aboutGolf’s other partners, including the University of Michigan, John McPhee at the University of Waterloo and Dr. Martin Brouillette at the University of Sherbrooke.

 Rivet’s knowledge will help develop fully integrated performance products that will improve golf games across the world by considering the impact of biomechanics, body motion, and balance and swing mechanics.

 “aboutGolf’s dedication to innovative technology is impressive and I am confident that together, we will revolutionize the way we teach and learn the game of golf and coach future generations,” said Rivet. “Making this type of body motion analysis more accessible and more accurate is thrilling.”

 Rivet co-founded Team Fanatic, a funboarding organization that went on to win numerous awards in the Professional Boardsailing Association during the 1990s. In 1989, Rivet set a world record in the boardsailing speed category on his slalom production board.

 Rivet, however, suffered a serious accident, ending that part of his sports career. During his hospitalization and treatments, he developed, with the help of the Biomechanical Department of Physiotherapy School at the University of Montpellier, applied biomechanical concepts that accelerate an athlete’s return to a sport after injury.  He adapts these concepts to the improvement of performance in various sports, notably in golf, which laid the foundation for the birth of Biomecaswing.

 On Nov 5, Rivet is opening a Golf Performance enhancement center at the TerreBlanche Golf Club in France that will feature an aboutGolf Simulator and other aboutGolf performance products.

 To learn more about Rivet, go to: http://biomecaswing.com/GB/presentation-jean-jacques-rivet.html. 

aboutGolf is a 20-year-old Maumee, Ohio-based company that has been dedicated to golf for its entire history. aboutGolf is the world leader in indoor golf simulator technology, producing PGA TOUR Simulators, aboutGolf Performance Products and Henry-Griffitts Custom Fitting. Historically, aboutGolf also produced Microsoft Golf, Greg Norman Ultimate Challenge Golf and World Tours, which is the world’s most-widely-distributed golf simulation. aboutGolf® is a registered trademark of aboutGolf Limited, Maumee, Ohio.

aboutGolf PGA Tour Simulator

Okay, now this is fun and I’ve always wanted one of these. It sort of falls under the category of big boys and their toys. And while this item tends to be on the periphery of the world of golf, we feel it is our duty to pass the information along. And I’m sure someone else wants one of these also.

So, let’s examine (with a few pertinent observations) the newest aboutGolf PGA TOUR Compact SimSurround – the 15-foot version.

aboutGolf is the world leader in indoor golf simulator technology and has pioneered the three-screen simulator which allows the player a greater potential for a real world experience. Meaning that very little additional atmosphere is required to give you the total realization. For instance, if you choose to play St. Andrews, all you need is an oversized, high speed fan blowing right into your face (add an artificial downpour if you so desire). Or, if you play a course in the desert, add a couple of high intensity heat lamps for special effects.

The newest model is the 15-foot wide version that is tagged as ideal for residences and indoor golf centers. The total dimensions of this newest golf toy are 15 feet wide by 20 feet long by 10 feet, 6 inches high. Now I don’t care if the local indoor golf center has one of these, but if I lived in northern Minnesota in the winter I would surely want one in my basement. I would emerge from the depths of frozen hell in the late springtime with my game ready for the dollar nassau.

It comes complete with PGA TOUR Software for range and course play, 29 standard courses, 3Trak ball-tracking technology and club data, as well as screen, enclosure, computer and turf. That’s right, 29 courses at your finger tips and all real (or at least fictitiously conventional) – except one. Remember the Fantasy Holes by artist Loyal H. (Bud) Chapman? Well, with the aboutGolf simulator you can actually play this course. Imagine playing the 291-yard par-4 at St Ludiwg’s Golf Club in the shadow of Neuschwanstein Castle? Now that would be fun.

Holy golf ball, Batman, there’s a real and a fantasy golf resort right is your basement.

If there is one ultimate golf toy to possess, this is it!

With Britain now only just emerging from the arctic blast that left us all remembering that fun in the snow has a shelf life of about two days, opportunities to play golf have lost. 

Here is a link to an article about Urban Golf. Who use aboutGolf Simulators at their facility in London.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/wellbeing/7977706/The-Fitness-Workshop-Golf.html

aboutGolf have been introduced to Spain and are available through www.aboutGolfeurope.com

aboutGolf Simulators has partners in Spain who can help with all aboutGolf Simulator sales in Spain please vist www.aboutGolf.es for more information.

Please look out for news on aboutGolf in Spain at www.aboutgolfeurope.com or www.twitter.com/aboutGolfeurope or www.facebook.com/aboutGolfeurope

aboutGolf Simulators can be found at one of France’s premier indoor Golf centres at Golf in Town in southern France. aboutGolf Simualtors has seen a marked increase in sales in France over recent years. With indoor Golf being a relativelynew phenomenon in France aboutGolf are proud to be the chosen Golf Simulator provider for Golf In Town. for more information visit the website

http://www.golfintown.fr/

Indoor simulators are more sophisticated than ever, but they still have their limitations

Unless you’re not.

“The mainstream golf world doesn’t grasp the idea that there are a lot of rounds of golf being played indoors,” said Bill Bales, the founder and CEO of aboutGolf, one of several companies which design and manufacture golf simulators. “They don’t count these rounds, but they’re wearing golf shoes, using their clubs and balls, having a satisfying experience playing against each other and by themselves.”

Brandon Sullivan for The Wall Street JournalA simulator at Crosswoods Indoor Golf Center in Chandler, Ariz. last week; It was 109 degrees outside.

Luke Donald is one of them. Currently ranked 10th in the Official World Golf Ranking, he lives in Chicago and put an aboutGolf simulator in his home a year ago. “I use it in the winter as a way to practice, simulate real golf and play some golf courses that we play on tour,” he says. “You can work the ball left to right and right to left and it’s very accurate.”

That’s a pretty good endorsement, and there are other signs of success: the sims are big in Korea and other parts of the Far East, for example. There is a residential market for those who, like Tour pro Mr. Donald, can afford the $50,000-60,000 price tag. But Mr. Bales and his fellow entrepreneurs also have their eye on driving ranges, golf shops, teaching pros, recreational centers, and the occasional bar and grill.

“I really think we can grow the game of golf beyond the circle of current golfers by creating this thing that is like the game outdoors, but you can do it at night, you can do it for an hour, you can do it without anyone behind you trying to hurry you along,” says Mr. Bales.

Golf simulators have been around since the early 1970s. They were amusement park novelties, tucked in the back of a retail shop or in a forgotten corner of a golf center. Today, the technology has improved vastly.

“The hardest thing to do is to convince someone who played in a sim 15 years ago to come and check it out,” said Ken Reynolds, whose company, EverGreens Golf, became an aboutGolf dealer after operating an indoor golf center. Those antediluvian machines featured grainy photos of a course projected onto a simple screen; you whacked a ball into the screen, a device measured the time it took for the ball to pass through two points, and after calculating and extrapolating, it told you your distance and transported you to your next location.

Today’s most advanced simulators put you in a true 3-D environment, as though you’ve been transported physically into an ultra-high-def video game. Stereoscopic cameras are trained on the hitting zone, where they record club speed, ball speed, launch angle and all components of spin. The flight of the ball, projected into the virtual course in the time it takes the ball to hit the screen, replicates the shot that would result in the outside world with remarkable precision.

Full-swing simulators have to serve two distinctly different purposes: entertainment and performance. The entertainment side is on display at the indoor centers that are springing up around the country. For some, golf leagues have taken the place of bowling leagues for an evening’s recreation; there are couples’ leagues, skins games, match play, all on simulations of great courses around the world. Brad Lefebvre, Chief Development Officer for the Crosswoods Indoor Golf Centers in the Phoenix area, travels with a group of friends who use the simulators to familiarize themselves with places they’re planning to play.

“I can bring a client in and we can play in two hours,” says Mr. Lefebvre. His leagues attract golfers looking to avoid the blistering summer heat and occasional winter rains. “It’s the first time in my business life I pray for bad weather.”

But it’s the performance side where things have changed the most. The old simulators were notorious for simplifying ball flight. The swing that gave you a big drive down the fairway indoors might produce a duck-hook on the course; the machines were useless for serious practice. Today, they provide all the feedback a golfer can handle, with angles and velocities for every shot.

Retailers have found them useful for club-fitting. More than 85% of all clubs are purchased at off-site retail outlets, in a process Mr. Bales calls “FMWAI,” pronounced fim-way. It stands for Five Minutes With An Idiot. An accurate simulator will provide the necessary data for an accurate fitting, even when operated by a temporary employee at a chain store.

There’s also teaching. “We had one kid who didn’t hit the ball high enough to get out of chutes and over trees,” says Dave Hollinger, men’s golf coach at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. “He worked all winter on getting his ball flight right, and he reached the round of 16 at the U.S. Amateur Public Links championship, and finished seventh at the Canadian Amateur.”

Then there’s self-instruction, perhaps the biggest market of all. Only 10% of golfers take lessons, and if most golfers practice at all they must work on their own.

What do simulators do best? On full shots, they deliver a good measure of realism and accuracy. But roughly half the shots in a round of golf are played from within 50 yards of the hole, and it’s here that the indoor game requires some large mental adjustments.

On touch shots like pitches and chips, golfers generally pick out a target visually and play the ball to that point. On a simulator, you have to play from information instead of what you see. If you’re 30 yards from the green, you have to develop the feeling of hitting the ball 30 yards; it becomes a question of muscle memory rather than hand-eye coordination and judgment.

The putting elements have improved, but they call for a similar adjustment; you have to learn how softly to stroke an eight-foot putt towards a hole on a screen 25 feet away. The good thing is, we can all use more time practicing eight-foot putts, but it’s difficult to hold onto that feeling when you go back outside and face a whole different set of sensory inputs.

No simulator can prepare a player for the variety of lies and ground conditions he’ll find on the course. Every lie on an artificial mat is level; uphill, downhill, and sidehill lies require knowledge and practice you can’t get indoors. Some simulators deduct distance for a shot out of thick rough, but that does little to help you learn how to hit it. The same goes for hitting from the sand.

Mr. Bales acknowledges these shortcomings, while enthusing about “trajectory physics” and “aero coefficients.” On the company’s test range, he is seeking “sub-millimeter accuracy in pinpointing the position of a ball in space. When we have all that data, then we’ll have the Holy Grail of simulator accuracy.”

 

When the International Olympic Committee recently green-lighted golf as a sport for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janiero, it was a cause for celebration in the golf industry. Or at least some segments of the golf industry.

Club manufacturers, equipment suppliers and service providers associated with the development side of the business immediately praised the opportunity. They said the decision will open new markets for golf in countries where the population wouldn’t know a 5-iron from a flyswatter. 

Bill Bales, chief executive officer of aboutGolf, an indoor golf simulator company, was so excited that he hailed Oct. 9, 2009 as “golf’s greatest day in its 500-year history.”

While that may be a bit over the top, Bales does have a point when it said that the decision “means the likes of China, Russia, Germany, Korea, Japan and others are going to invest more dough than is used to make a Man Versus Food pizza to create and expand organized programs to produce golfers.”

Bales, writing on his own blog, enthuses about a potential Olympics-fueled golden era for golf:

“The return of golf to the Olympics represents a shift of monumental proportions within the golf culture. In modern terms, it’s a paradigm shift, an inflection point. In anthropological terms, it’s on par with the industrial revolution.

“But such an event begets disruptive change (like with paradigm shifts, inflection points, and cultural revolutions). The game is going to change. The business is going to expand. Golf culture is going to hyper-evolve.

“Why such big effects on golf, when it wasn’t such a big deal with other Olympic sports?

“The Olympic movement is going to make golf ‘hip,’ which will make the game a bit less formal. Participants will place more emphasis on performance, and less on decorum. Spectators at events will get more rowdy (we’ve already had a taste of it at the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup – ‘Ole, Ole Ole Ole’). The staid game we’ve known all our lives is going to get a little crazy.

“Don’t rule out that professionals on the PGA Tour one day will be members of teams, like NASCAR (Team Nike), wearing uniforms with large numbers on their backs. Countries getting into golf in a big way for the first time will contribute new cultural nuances surrounding the game and some will find their way into the mainstream.

“The modern Olympic movement is going to help transform the game of golf into a sport for every man. It’s going to get a bit rude, crude, and unattractive, and it’s going to be a beautiful thing.

“I can’t wait.”