If you’ve done any construction projects around the house recently, you know that finding a contractor who will show up and finish the job on time and on budget is challenging, to say the least.
Real story quick … My brother is in the process of building a house. The roofer he hired took his deposit for materials and then didn’t show up. In the process of following the boy down, he ended up talking to the mother of the roof.
Don’t get me started on my sprinkler.
My guess is that it’s tough out there and good help is hard to find. So if you’re taking on an indoor golf project, whether that’s installing four simulators in your new center, building the signature piece inside your ultimate golfer’s den, or just finding the right items for your installation DIY, it goes without saying. that you want to work with someone reliable, trustworthy and efficient.
At an absolute minimum, you shouldn’t need to talk to anyone’s mother (except your own).
The first headquarters of MGS
A decade ago, when we were planning the first MyGolfSpy headquarters—a two-bay testing facility with a medium green and a few small offices—we thought we had the hard part figured out. We had recently upgraded to Foresight GC Quad launch monitorswe knew how to do a club test and collect data. The other stuff … mats, screens, projectors and more … how hard can it be?
“I learned very quickly that it’s not easy,” says MyGolfSpy founder Adam Beach. “If you haven’t worked directly with Foresight or Trackman, you basically just better figure it out yourself. There was nothing at Home Depot that you could buy for this.
“I still have the file somewhere. There’s probably 400 pieces of paper in there from typing things up, calling field companies and getting estimates. I wish I had been able to open the GPT Chat and type, “How do you build a crappy golf simulator?”
With the help of local contractors who weren’t what you’d call experts at installing simulators and shocks, we put together what Beach describes as “the most Frankenstein crap you’ve ever seen.”
“We came up with one thing that worked, but, man, if you hit a ball in left field and it hits those metal frames… We used to go through five or six screens a year. The projectors were absorbed. The bulbs burned out very quickly.”
It worked, but there were a few things in our first installation that could have been done better. We learned a lot from the process, and while the advent of DIY kits has made building a golf simulator much easier, the biggest takeaway from our first build was that it would be better to work with experts for the next one.
Getting to know each other
A few years ago, Beach had a chance meeting with James Laidlaw, owner of In Home Golf, a custom golf simulator installation business based in Toronto. As indoor golf and home golf grew in popularity, Laidlaw’s business took off. We hadn’t quite outgrown our first headquarters, but the writing was on the wall. Beach kept Laidlaw’s business card close.
By the time Beach met Rene Delgado, owner of Indoor golf shopwe had moved beyond thinking we might need a new test facility in the early planning stages for it. Delgado had reached out to ask us to test his new impact screens, which he believed were a cut above anything else on the market at the time.
Now, it’s not lost on me that most golfers might consider the impact screen to be among the least exciting parts of a simulator setup. Almost every golfer wants a launch monitor, and if you can hook it up to a projector that delivers crystal clear graphics in stunning 4K, so much the better.
But the screen? Does it matter?
In the early days of what became the indoor golf boom, I took a part-time job at the first indoor golf facility in my area. Having worked with those early impact screens, I can assure you that things have come a long way.
At that time, sound attenuation was not very important, so when the ball hit the screen, it was almost as loud as when the club hit the ball.
Durability was also not too much of a concern. In the facility I worked at, holes were a frequent occurrence, screens went down, and mostly we just learned to live with it, because that’s how it was.
As with everything else, screens have improved significantly in recent years. We’ve found some good ones, but the performance – yes, I know that’s a weird word to describe what is in very simple terms a piece of hanging fabric – from the screens Renee sent was next level.
They proved quiet on impact, durable and hung better and were less prone to creasing than anything we’d tested. Projected images looked sharper and cleaner than on any screen we had used.
Starting
When it came time to get serious about bringing our new test facility to life, Beach had already decided who to call.
“I contacted James and he told me that his company had been bought by Renee and The Indoor Golf Shop. Rene Delgado believed that the domestic golf market was about to explode, and he wanted to do two things. He wanted to sell and install his products, and he wanted to control his own destiny by making as much of the product at home as possible.”
Put another way, Delgado imagined Indoor golf shop as the proverbial one-stop shop for all things indoor golf.
According to Beach, “It took a few conversations with Rene, but I went, ‘That’s the guy I’m going with.’ Really quickly, I had supreme confidence that not only would Indoor Golf be able to sell me the equipment, but with James and his team now part of the company, they would be able to install it and it would be more better than we had.”
MyGolfSpy didn’t start completely from scratch Indoor golf shop. The new building was under construction and we had a rough floor plan that included four putting bays, an area for a PuttView putting green and significantly more office space.
What the team at Laidlaw and The Indoor Golf Shop brought to the table was the expertise to help us fill in the gray areas between the ideas that existed on paper and the reality of a brick and mortar build.
Very quickly, Laidlaw took our two-dimensional drawings and turned them into 3D renderings. He identified parts of our plan that weren’t going to work, while at the same time going above and beyond to find solutions for some of our most unique needs.
For example, the first set of plans called for beams and other structures between each of our impact dens. In most installations this would have been fine, if not ideal, but our bays had to double as photo and video studios.
The beach envisioned a single line of bays that could be fully opened, allowing uninterrupted site lines from one end to the other.
The installation team at Laidlaw and The Indoor Golf Shop went to work and, using retractable netting, developed the perfect solution.
While there was nothing inherently wrong with the original plan for mounting the projectors, Beach was concerned about how they would look in our videos. Laidlaw promised to think about it. The next morning, we had new interpretations of what turned out to be the perfect solution.
When we said we didn’t want to close the pitching ceiling and instead wanted to make full use of the vertical space, Laidlaw was able to convince us that we would be unhappy with the result. He’s done enough installations to know that the reality of the idea isn’t always as great as the idea itself. Instead, he came up with a solution to open up the space a bit to give us what we were looking for visually without compromising the primary function of the space.
And when the county inspector’s office got extra particular about certain details, Laidlaw took care of that, too. “James was my right-hand man,” says Beach. He said: ‘I will speak to the county about you. I will get rid of the problem. The next thing that comes up, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ “
Sweating the details
Perhaps what was most impressive about the MyGolfSpy experience Indoor golf shop it’s that they sweat details that we would never have considered.
Our bays are equipped with extensive padding and damping that not only reduce noise, but also ensure that there are no vulnerable areas. The left side of the screen is no longer a problem.
If you’ve played any golf simulator at all, you know that balls always find their way under the screen. At MyGolfSpy HQ, the bottoms of the screens are hidden below ground level. Hidden is an additional structure – a kind of ramp – that turns the balls instead of letting them disappear into the abyss.
Likewise, the response of the batting screens themselves was tuned in the installation to return balls into the strike zone. It’s a small detail, perhaps, but when a single test can be more than 10,000 shots, the convenience is also a quantitative time saver.
When we mentioned on a follow-up phone call with Laidlaw that one of the screens wasn’t returning the ball the way it did during installation, he offered to fly down to fix it.
“Everything is so duplicated in our facility,” says Beach. “It’s crazy how clean and neat a job they’ve done.”
It all goes back to what I mentioned at the beginning. The team in Indoor golf shopfrom the sales guys to the design and installation team, it was reliable, trustworthy and efficient every step of the way.
After all, that’s the benefit (or at least it should be) of working with a team of experts. They know trade secrets that the contractor down the road doesn’t. They helped us dial in and bring our good ideas to life, while giving us the confidence to trust them when we were told our ideas weren’t as good as we thought.
And, not surprisingly, the Laidlaw team and The Indoor Golf Shop executed the build to nothing short of perfection – and we didn’t need to call anyone’s mum.
“I’ve had a business for 25 years and it’s the easiest project we’ve ever had,” says Beach. “They give you confidence.”
Your one stop shop
I don’t miss that most of you will never build an indoor golf facility, but some of you will build a simulator at home, while others will be looking for a DIY solution for the basement, garage or spare room.
Whatever the scale of your project, the team at Indoor golf shop can help you find the right equipment and support you during the construction project. Whether it’s just a mat and net or a full simulator enclosure, they’re ready to help.
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