ERIE — Outside, the sky is a hazy shade of winter. But inside the 4,800-square-foot building housing Leonard’s Golf, Inc., it’s as bright as a midsummer afternoon.
Around the synthetic practice putting green, Steve Ziegler chips foam golf balls, working to perfect the touch and spin that’s made him one of Colorado’s best homegrown golfers the past decade.
“I still come in here all the time,” said Ziegler, a Stanford junior who advanced to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur this summer and who won two state titles at Legacy High School. “What I do here is work on my motion and my mechanics. I started coming here when I was 16.”
Welcome to the world of indoor golf, where hackers try out revamped swings, single-handicappers hone their games and golfers itching for a fix pack the place from November to March.
On the practice tee, a woman wields a driver and tries to fix her unsightly follow through. A digital video camera captures her every move.
At the far end of the building, a young couple steps inside a curtain to play famed Pebble Beach on a $48,000 aboutGolf PGA Tour simulator. Sound effects recreate Pacific waves crashing against the rocky shore. This is video golf taken to the highest level, and it’s a ton of fun.
But mostly, this indoor golf center about 30 miles north of Denver is about mixing golf, education and technology.
“This is a teaching center,” said Leonard Hermosillo, who opened the facility in 2004. “I really like the indoor concept because of the video concepts we use here. Most people are visual learners, at least for golf. And their learning curve is a lot shorter in here.”
Longtime teaching pro Becky Clark, a part-owner in the facility, says the indoor experience creates better golfers.
“So many golfers can’t understand what they are actually doing wrong,” she said. “They think, ‘Oh, I’m not making that move.’ But the videos show exactly what they are doing. It accelerates the learning process so much.”
The 900-square-foot, undulating putting green inside Leonard’s Golf was created and installed by Tour Play Golf of Fort Collins. According to Ziegler, the fast and true surface resembles those he finds on top-flight courses across the country.
Next to the green, a Tomi digital putting analyzer is set up. It records golfers’ putting strokes, teaching them correct speed, acceleration and rhythm.
There are three stations where golfers drive balls into a netted target 22 feet away. Monitors analyze swing path, club speed, spin and how squarely the ball comes off the clubface. Hermosillo can manipulate the video to show multiple views of a golfer’s swing and play it back on split screen, allowing the golfer to view before-and-after images.
Hermosillo concedes that practicing indoors isn’t the same as playing a real course. But he does think his facility produces better players.
“We have a lot of golfers, especially the ladies, who work here in the winter and then play in the spring or summer and end up winning their club championship,” he said. “I like to think a lot of people go home happy.”
Patrick Saunders: 303-954-1428 or psaunders@denverpost.com
