Home Tee Hero Course Suggestions

[Anemoi]

Hi everyone, I know there are lots of opinions on the R10 but it seems like that there are at least a few of you on here who own them. With 40,000+ courses available I don't even know where to start outside of giving the famous courses a go. So if you have an R10 I would love to know what your local course is or if you found a course that you really enjoy playing. If you play the course regularly and have any comments on how realistic the sim is post those comments up as well.

The course I play most often is Indian Hills Golf Course in Pennsylvania. It is pretty darn accurate although I feel the fairways are a bit tighter then they should be but Home Tee is pretty accurate displaying the elevation changes.

Looking forward to some new courses to try.

[Brettster]

Hello, yes I recently purchased an Approach R10 and started playing with it last week. I also signed up to Home Tee Hero (HTH) to try out the simulator features with it at my local range.

I agree it's fun to play local courses, when you're starting out as a way to check on the accuracy of the Approach R10, because you pretty much know where you hit the ball, and you can see if you're hitting it in the same place on Home Tee Hero, and you know which clubs to pick too - harder to choose when you're playing a course for the first time, based only on yardage (and elevation). I like to pick one of the many local courses (probably 10-15 total) that I've played previously and there are at least 5 that I've played regularly over the years which will give me a real good idea on the Approach R10 accuracy, and even on the position of trees/water on the course. Should be fun as one of my local courses plays over the local river a few times - so would like to see how that shapes up in HTH. I've not loaded it yet, but as you notice, all of your local courses come up when you open it, as it knows where you are in the world (GPS) and offers you all the courses it has in it's library to play.

One thing I also like to do is try to play some of the courses the pros are playing, just so I can see how tough those courses are playing. That being said I played the front 9 at Whistling Straits (The Straits course) a few nights ago, just before it got dark and I had to quit. It was a great experience.

Here are a couple of things I noticed. 1.) I played with Chipping [x] ON, and I felt like it was very hard to judge short chips. I'm not sure why, but I think it's just being told to hit a 20-40 yard chip is hard for me to visualize when I'm looking at a tiny iPhone screen on the range. I ended up chipping over several greens, several times. 2.) It was hard for me to see how the putting/circles work around the greens at Whistling Straits and I think it is because most greens there are quite large. I've been told that it is 3' for the inner circle (one putt), 20' for the outer circle (two putts), and anything on the green - but NOT inside either circle (three putts) which is how it turned out. Pretty cool. I'm interested to see how that would work on one local course we have that is a par 3 with tiny greens, where I think most greens are not even 20' in diameter, so how would that play out?

There are also some nice options you can choose when playing HTH such as
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a.) Sound, seemed to create bird song/sounds throughout the hole and actual shot sounds when showing the ball path, as well as 'water sounds' when I hit it into Lake Michigan. I think all of this will play out nicely when I get my iPhone connected to an HDMI cable and Project that image on a screen in front of me - however, right now it's only a portrait image so not very useful until they can make a Landscape image available for projection.

b.) Wind - that was interesting, as I chose the lightest wind (breezy) yet still noticed most holes were showing winds on them, that seemed to be quite true to how they were showing during the Ryder Cup play. A few times the wind affected my shots enough to reduce my distance or push my ball off-line, so I can imagine how difficult it would be to play with Wind set to the highest setting (Very Windy? Not sure what the exact term was used).

Overall my experience with HTH has been great so far... I know the graphics are a little like a cartoon, and not close to some 4K, 3D simulator graphics, but they are good enough to allow you to play a course and get a good idea of how that course might play, if you have never played it before. And adding in Wind just makes it that much more realistic if you're going to be playing on a windy day (one thing I don't like, especially at new courses)... .

How do you compare your play at Indian Hills in PA Anemoi with HTH?

[Anemoi]

I only played the front nine in a bit of a rush after hurriedly setting up my indoor "simulator" area. Overall I think it compared quite well but not perfect. I have played for years so I know it very well. I would rate accuracy 85%-95% as compared to the real thing so definitely a great way to get an understanding of the course layout. A few things my wife and I noticed (she golf there regularly as well)

1. For some holes the ladies tees appeared to be at the same location as the whites based on yardages. This was not correct as the majority of holes at Indian Hills are pretty generous from the Red tees. Whites seemed accurate to me.

2. As mentioned the scale of the fairways seemed off. Visually they looked narrower. I think this might be a matter of perspective due to the cartoon graphics and things not being totally to scale. I may have to borrow a range finder and get some fairway widths to compare.

3. The fourth whole which is a hard dog leg left seemed to be shorted then it should. At least based on where my ball landed. The distance I got was more then believable but the landing spot was somewhere I never hit before. Again I would have to range the shot on the course but instantly my wife commented that it seemed unlikely I could have hit that.

4. There are some holes with very elevated tee boxes or uphill shots. While the graphics make it look level the yardage indicator is accounting for that change which I think was pretty accurate.

General Home Tee thoughts.

1. I too was struggling with chipping. I found that looking at the distance and measuring my backswing helped. I am a "feel" chipper so not having the visual was initially a challenge but in the long run I think knowing a half swing with my Gap goes about 40 yards is going to help. We set this up in our yard and measured off 30 yards an distances were mostly within 2 yards when chipping I was impressed with that.

2. I think the visual size of the greens is misleading but I think this could also be a scale thing like I described with the fairways.

3. I am currently getting some shots with longer clubs that seem to be coming shorter the they should. I know this is a common complaint. I will however also get shots that seem to go about what I would expect give or take 5 yards, which is well within user margin of error. So it could be a swing inconsistency. E6 for comparison seems to be reading accurately or a little long. (It registered a 270 yard three wood which is longer then my average driver.)

Overall I am happy. I hope they can dial in the distance issues a bit tighter but I also plan to take more care leveling and aligning my unit. Even as it stands I think it will be a beneficial to my game. It will absolutely get me swinging the clubs way more then ever before. For now I will take distance numbers with a grain of salt.

I average about 95 at Indian Hills so I am far from a great golfer if that puts my comments into perspective.

[Brettster]

Nice Anemoi - so you're seeing good results. I like that you stepped off some yardages on the chips and they were accurate within 2 yards - it was hard for me to tell on the range, and like you, I'm a feel short-game player (mostly visual), so quite hard to gauge the amount of power to put into a swing when I cannot visually see where the actual pin is - of course this becomes easier if you are projecting an image in front of you and the image is fairly accurate - which I'm not sure the current HTH is? Did you project your image, or going by what came up on your phone?

Yes, the green sizes are misleading, seem to be scaled way down - that's why I wonder how it would ever display the greens at this local Par 3 course, where some greens are barely 15' across, curious how that would play, I'll have to play that course in HTH and see.

I'm in the process of finishing out my shed (12'x16') so I want to get turf, hitting mat, screen, net, etc. Do you have something similar?

You also mentioned E6 reading accurately but a little long, were you running the iOS version (on your iphone) of E6? I will probably run it on my iPad and project that image up to an impact screen (likely about 10' wide by 6'-8' tall). I wonder with the E6 as you mentioned the longer drive - with the elevation changes you mention it will make quite a difference in ball distance, so maybe that was it, or must that the E6 is reading better - I've heard that as well? Keep posting on your further results and I will as well. Just hoping for an update to the Garmin App that allows HTH to go into Landscape mode - that would make a huge difference, and then lastly wanting Garmin to integrate with TGC2019 (The Golf Club 2019) for a full-on simulator experience.

Thanks for the honest assessment of your game, I won't tell you what I shot on the front-nine at Whistling Straits as it was horrendous! I will tell you I only had 1 par, and many holes it was taking me 2-3 chips back/forth to get on the green, so pretty frustrated with the chipping. I'm a much better golfer than it showed in HTH, however I'm coming off an 8 week layoff because of back problems, and have been hardly playing this summer at all... just one more reason to get my Simulator up - so I have a lot more time to practice/play in the simulator and not have to spend so much time driving to/from a course/range to find it closed, or some other problem. I also have a 4 year old I'm trying to get into the game, so I think it will be much more fun for him in the simulator than the limited chances he gets to swing/play at the local par 3!

[nbar]

HTH is fun my 2 complaints are the distances for me are around 20-30 yards short so for a short hitter it becomes difficult to play a course and a local course I play doesn't have all the tees.

[Anemoi]

Brettster After playing some more last night I am leaning more toward the greens/fairways being accurate but since you are zoomed out in your view somewhat they appear smaller. When comparing the view to E6 I think it becomes more apparent. In E6 you are standing at your ball so to speak whereas in HTH you are zoomed out viewing from above. I think its sorta like comparing a first person shooter (E6) game to a third person(HTH).

I just got my cheap projector in yesterday and set it up so I am now playing on a screen. I set out to build a "simulator" for as cheap as possible. So I went with the bare basics to see if I liked it and will upgrade as needed. The first piece that seems to be failing me is the old Ipad Air 2 I had around can't handle projecting E6. It was fine playing E6 just on the Ipad but once I hooked up the projector it stutters terribly, so I am considering an upgrade.

[Anemoi]

I guess I used the wrong term. I am currently using a lighting to hdmi adapter.

[Brettster]

And you have stuttering with the adapter? How old is the iPad and which version is it? You should not have any stutter with that adapter? Which adapter do you have - you might want to try the actual Apple lightning->HDMI adapter which is more expensive (around $40).

[Anemoi]

@Brettster
It is an Ipad Air 2 using a genuine apple adapter. The picture freezes and stutters terribly.

[Rlefig]

Hey all great comments! So far I have found the R10 to be pretty accurate. Definite fun to play a game on it. I found chipping hard at first as well as it is so hard to judge distance but as I played more got fairly accurate at it. I am high 80's to mid 90's golfer most of the time. I would love to play this in my detached garage but would have to remove a ceiling tie and I am nervous as the garage is ancient.