Greenlife Golf Club Marbella has recently incorporated Toptracer technology to its driving range and has created the largest state-of-the-art center in Andalusia. This system unites traditional golf with virtual golf to offer more fun and entertainment to the fans of this sport, both to those who are starting or want to start as well as to players with a high level of play.
The club has made a major investment to remodel its driving range facilities and improve the chipping and putting green area. They have installed a total of 28 posts in the driving range equipped with Toptracer technology that performs a complete tracking of the stroke and the tracing of the ball thanks to several cameras strategically located on the driving range. It is a technique that allows to know the distance, trajectory and height that the player achieves with each club in his bag.
The strokes are made on colored artificial targets (target greens) scattered around the ball drop zone at different distances.
Toptracer technology, besides being a key tool for learning and improving the game, is also synonymous with fun because the player can enjoy alone, compete with friends, family, or online, with fans from anywhere in the world. It has a free App in which the player can easily identify himself. every time you want to use Toptracer, so you can keep your results on your cell phone, store statistics or participate in different rankings.
“We were looking for”, says Victoria Domínguez, director of Greenlife Golf Club Marbella, “to achieve something different that would make golf even more fun and a place of leisure for both professional players and amateurs and video game lovers”.
“When we came up with this idea,” Victoria continues, “we had some doubts because it is still risky to give a twist to golf, a new approach to a sport that is quite traditional and in some ways corseted.”
“This is a totally different concept and we didn’t know how it would be received by the fans, but the response has been spectacular. We’ve had people tell us how did you come up with this? What a wonderful idea to couple technology with a visual system with artificial targets that locate the exact shooting area and you can see the trajectory of the ball, where it’s going and how far away… and at the same time it’s fun and you can compete with other players both on the practice court and online”.
“It opens up,” says the club director, “a world of possibilities for the practice of golf that did not exist until now, and challenges that make it much more enjoyable to go to throw balls at a driving range. It is no longer just a matter of hitting the ball forward over and over again. Now you can get a lot of statistical data on ball dispersion, know if you are using the right club for a certain shot, if I get the distance I want, how can I improve, etc. All this information that used to be available to the teacher when analyzing our game, is now available to any player on the screen and can be stored on his or her cell phone”.
You have achieved an avant-garde and innovative driving range…
-Yes, I think the future of golf goes that way. Like other sports that have been modernized and adapted to new technologies, golf also needed it. This can be fun for someone who simply wants to have a good time, as an alternative to a bowling alley, for example, without having to have a certain level of play, as it is also useful for those who want to improve their game, because they have all the records of their activity, their progression, where they have to correct…
When you have the application, which is free, on your mobile and register your profile with a QR code and the screen of your shooting range identifies all your data, reloads them, and all the results you have been getting you can have them on your phone; and if you have participated in a ball closer competition for example, you can see your position in that hole that is played on a virtual course. You can see the position of your own driving range, in Spain or worldwide.
It is curious and very enjoyable to be able to participate in this type of global challenge from your field of practice.
-Can your driving range be an alternative to a traditional round of golf or is it something very different?
-Yes it can be, because you can still play your traditional golf on a course of your choice but through technology. You can play virtual courses that are loaded into the system and do the full course, nine holes, or alternate holes, whatever you want.
We currently have fifteen courses from around the world loaded in our system, the most famous ones, but we are adding more every week. We are convinced that it can be a new and attractive incentive for all golf players and for those who want to start.
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