skytrak for pretty much a complete beginner

[taylor310]

My biggest issue with wanting to hit it in my living room is ceiling height. I have 10+ foot ceilings in my living room. My garage is only 8 foot 8 inches. I have some friends over 6 foot that would not be able to play in the garage with me(he hit the ceiling going through slow practice shots with a driver in the garage already). I also have a theater set up upstairs, but the ceilings up there are only 8 feet. I can swing my club slowly without hitting anything, but even I would be a little concerned about that up there. Plus I would have to use some kind of temporary/movable impact screen + nets in front of my expensive theater screen.

Another option would be on the patio in the back yard, but with winter coming up I would rather find a warmer client to hit balls...

[Bubba22]

The garage sounds like your best bet. Can you swing wedges there with no issues? You may need to choke up on the longer clubs. Go for the ProTee or ST. Optishot is fun but the accuracy is not nearly as good.

[taylor310]

Yeah, it seems like the garage would be best for me to practice on a daily basis, but for friends we can set it up int he living room and use foam balls, or maybe the back yard.

[golfinaddicts]

My Two Cents.
Skytrak > Optishot
Optishot will only piss you off with its constant poor and misreads, Even if you tape your clubs with quality gaffers tape ect and spend hours adjusting the settings it is still just a toy and not a very good one for the money. If it were 50$ they might have something but the trouble you go through just to hit a few balls with it and how incredibly bad the ball flights are on it, its junk imo. I had the optishot and got the skytrak for that reason,

Don't worry about the protee for club head data. Club head data will do you no good if you don't have an experienced teacher there to tell you how to fix it, You get the exact same info from skytrak if you understand ball flight laws you just have to figure it out on your own. Sure you dont get the degrees your face is open or closed or path ect but its pretty easy to figure out your face was too closed or your path was too far right ect from just the ball flight and start direction. You can tell your angle of attack by using the launch angle and spin characteristics. A little bit of foot spray on the face or contact face tape to see where you make contact with the face is probably a lot more useful to you than club head data.

Also like others have said lessons lessons lessons. Its so much easier to learn from the Begining than try to change something you have ingrained through hundreds of rounds and 10s of thousands of balls on a driving range. Sure at the beginning just making contact with the ball is something you can practice but you will even be hurting yourself somewhat more than helping if you aren't swinging correctly . Most people do not have a slice when they hit their first balls but as soon as they hit one bad one out of the heel and it cuts a little because of gear effect then they instinctively start to swing further to the left to stop the ball going right and that only makes the problem worse. The next thing you know they have a slice they can't get rid of all because they were just beating out balls and though they knew how to fix it.
Sure you can learn on your own but I bet in more than 90% of people they would learn faster with some lessons. I know I picked up more and my swing got better in three lessons than it did in three years of trying to teach myself.

[taylor310]

Thanks everyone for all the help. I bought a 5 pack of golf lessons. Hoping that will be enough to get me on my way! I also ordered the Skytrak and can't wait for it to get here!

[taylor310]

Lessons + the Skytrak are definitely the way to learn to play golf I must say. I feel like at a normal range I'm just hacking away at balls and don't have a real understanding of where they go(that whole keep your on the ball until after the follow-through) and WHY they went there. With the skytrak I can hit a ball and have an amazing visualization of the ball. I practiced for 2 hours last night and plan to practice an hour or 2 at least 3-4 days a week as well as having a lesson once every 10-14 days. Really helps to be able to do this from the comfort of your garage! I know I most likely WONT be passing up all my friends anytime soon, but with the combination of lessons and the ability to practice SOOO much I don't see it being too far out of the realm of possibility beating them some next spring/summer when we get out to play again.

I bought TGC and was SOOO gung-ho to play full rounds, but i'm getting the most out of just hitting balls on the range mode of the skytrak software.

[Joko]

Yeah when I first got tgc I was still in practice mode 90% of the time so I didn't initially jump right in. I played a few here and there and then would end up practicing on the course often. Fast forward 6 months or so I'm much more confident playing the courses as long as they aren't crazy like pebble beach last week.

I love it though and looking forward to taking some more lessons now that I know more about the game and ball flights, etc