For those of you that have 'little' space (in life or in the garage!)

[Hughesy]

Hi everyone,

So my atrocious golfing ability has made me reassess the next stage of my life - may sound a bit over the top, but here goes with my reasoning and, hopefully, my ongoing story of my involvement in this wonderfully frustrating sport!

As I sit here typing this, I'm looking out at my MR2 that I love, but hardly get to enjoy. I'm looking at my Mavic Pro drone that I love, but hardly get to enjoy. I'm looking at my Motocaddy tour bag full of Mizuno and Cobra gear that drives me up the wall but actually remains the only leisure activity that I devote hours of my life to.

At the age of 45 I've decided that it's time I stop trying to relive my youth and concentrate on growing old gracefully. My fitness routines (that's a joke!) can no longer revolve around gym equipment - after all, J Lo hasn't come calling yet so the chances of that happening now are probably les than 50/50! But, with an enforced handicap of 26 (I lucked into a society victory last year after my body was possessed by an unknown entity with a modicum of ability for four hours), and only breaking a ton on a couple of occasions, can I realistically look to golf as an 'answer all' saviour?

I find myself in a position where I don't feel confident enough to join my local club and have the members look down their noses at me as I shank another one into the trees! I have to rely on either my few golfing buddies, or a trip to the range (which is pretty old school and not open outside of office hours) to aid improvement, and it just ain't happening...

Simulator time then!

Unfortunately, however, I'm not living in the US like most of you guys with basements and garages the size of a ballroom (how is that even possible - you all have country clubs under your kitchen!), I'm living in the U.K. where a garage is big enough to fit a car in, and maybe a cigarette paper, and I plan to put a SkyTrak system in there. And is has to be a SkyTrak as, with just eight feet of height before I hit a joist, every millimetre counts.

So, please, follow me on my story and see if I can get my handicap to where it belongs. Yup, 28!

[Admins - if you want to move this to the blogs section please feel free, but I think it's important it stays in the sim builds as I'm sure there are a lot of people in a similar boat as me and, initially at least, this will be a sim build thread]

[Hughesy]

Quick question in relation to putting with SkyTrak - I presume that you place the ball for putting in the same area as you hit your irons. Once that part of the mat wears how do you get around putting from, what is effectively, a divot?

Would really help to understand this small detail for the whole build.

Thanks in advance.

[mthunt]

There's no way around the bump a putt rolls over or around but the skytrak can be moved.

[shimonko]

You shouldn't steer away from a club because of your handicap - just stick to Stableford/Par type events where you have to pick up your ball each hole you take too many. Or scrambles/Ambrose where high handicaps are pure gold for their handicap contribution and random acts of brilliance. It's more etiquette & rules things rather than skill that make new players for long rounds - like looking for balls for too long too many times, not being ready to hit etc. You won't be getting much cardio with the simulator. If you have a motorised buggy, I'd ditch that too.

I have a 8' ceiling height in the garage, and at 6' find I don't hit the roof with either driver or wedge. Guess it depends how flat your swing it. I have a touch over 11' width so need to aim about 1/4-1/3 in from the right edge of the screen but have some ideas for that. At least I can flip the screen when it gets worn to have a nice fresh area.

[Hughesy]

I finally got around to finishing the garage off and hit my first SkyTrak shot at 8.30pm last night.

Here are a few images to detail how I went about it.

[Hughesy]

First off I glued four battens to the walls, the back ones for the net, the front ones for the screen. You will see that the left side is breeze block and the right side is normal brick. Note to all, the glue works a treat on the block, but it awful on the brick. Ended up pulling them off and screwing them to the wall instead. The net was then stapled on to the batten.

[Hughesy]

Next was the turf and the side barriers. Under the turf are some 10mm EVA floor tiles and the astro-turf was a 4mx3m end of roll cut. To give some protection from errant shots I screwed another two battens to the wall about 6ft further down and then used all the packing boxes left over from when we moved all held in by bungee cords. I am hoping that by leaving it fairly loose that this will act as a crumple zone.

[Hughesy]

Next up was the screen. I'd seen a post from another fellow sim'er on here that had used a net-type of canvas and though I'd try the same. It was really good value and eyelets at 50cm intervals were FOC. Again, this was bungeed on at various tensions until the screen was taught enough to lose the wrinkles but loose enough to take an impact.
I put it up thinking the join would be a strengthened point but, from an aesthetic point of view, I wish I'd put it horizontally top or bottom now. But it was getting late and I wanted to finish!

[Hughesy]

And here's the finished article!
I used some blackout/backdrop curtain (like a heavy felt) for the side walls and left it very slack so it would hopefully take some speed off the ball, if not all, before the cardboard took the full force.
I'm running a desktop PC and put a screen up on the wall opposite the striking point. I'm hoping to use my gaming laptop when I get TGC so I can have three screens up, maybe some YouTube tuition whilst I'm hitting!
You'll notice the projector screen is a little small. My own miscalculation - I measured it all with the image against the back wall, completely forgetting the 14 inches I'd need when the screen was in place. Maybe in time I'll move the projector back so it's more overhead but I'm fairly happy with it how it is.
Finally I installed a cheap LED strip of lights over the striking area to help the unit pick up the ball but, to be honest, I got every other ball as not recognised and wondered if that had something to do with the lighting?
As for the screen, it's pretty good but there is quite a lot of bleed through it. I read another post where someone had put memory foam toppers between the net and the screen and I think that will be my next upgrade adding to both the image and bounceback which, to be fair, is pretty negligible.
Anyway, that's how I did mine!

[PUNTE]

You took the long road but you wound up with a clean-looking setup. Quite attractive, screen bleed notwithstanding (which isn't so bad!)

[Sherzy]

Good work Hughesy, another UK member here looking to follow in your footsteps. A few questions, where did you source your materials from? How is the height issue working for you? If you don't mind me asking, how tall are you? I'm looking to build in a similar sized height space. I'm 5ft 8.