TWO RIVERS — The weather outside might not be frightful, but it certainly isn’t too conducive to much outside activities.
With that in mind, the Two Rivers Parks and Recreation Department is hoping to give the community a place to go when families don’t want to turn into snowmen and snowwomen.
A new golf and multi-sport simulator, which is open to the public at the J.E. Hamilton Community House, has been open for three months but Two Rivers recreation supervisor Kenny Shillcox has seen an uptick in use over the past few weeks.
“The weather the last three weeks have a been a lot colder and we’ve had a lot of positives, a lot of people coming through and looking at it,” Shillcox said.
The simulator, a Truegolf Apogee system uses an ultra-high-speed stereoscopic camera to capture a comprehensive range of data points for not just golf but a variety of other games such as basketball, baseball, hockey, cornhole, soccer, disc golf, bowling and footgolf.
“The big push is for golf, it is very accurate,” Shillcox said. “It has a real, true accuracy.”
The cost for the simulator is $25 per hour for up to four people for golf and eight people for other sports Monday-Thursday and $35 per hour Friday-Sunday.
“The benefits are its a great environment and you can bring food in with you, a cooler of drinks,” Shillcox said. “That helps save the cost.”
Shillcox stressed all proceeds go back directly into supporting Two Rivers youth sports through and parks and recreation department.
I personally tried out golf, footgolf, baseball, soccer, a quarterback and kicking challenge in football over the course of about an hour and a half.
My thoughts are anyone who is into golf will absolutely love the golf simulator.
It can give you real time information for how your shot is including how you’re hitting the ball with your club.
As someone who has only gone golfing once in his life, it was almost too accurate, because with how terrible I am, it would have taken me about 15 shots just to reach the green on a Par 4, but I’m far from the target demographic.
Once I managed to mercifully reach the green, with an assist from Shillcox, the putting was extremely fun and more my speed.
Shillcox demonstrated different modes for golf, including practice, driving range and different settings such as changing the difficulty for golf and all other games from easy, medium and hard.
It’s not hard to imagine an avid golfer spending several hours, especially with the ability to play over 100 real-life courses, although Shillcox lamented there’s no courses from Wisconsin on the system currently.
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Footgolf was a bit more my speed but it would take some practice to know how hard I’m kicking the soccer ball, but is very similar to golf, which makes sense.
The game I was the best at was the field goal kicking simulator, and there’s an option to try a 79-yard field goal.
On easy, I had the distance to make it but because I ramped up the power I was more than a bit wide left.
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As Shillcox mentioned, the real draw is the golf simulator although with so many other options there’s more than enough variety for an entire family to enjoy or a group of friends.
To book a session, you can visited the Two Rivers Parks and Recreation website, visit in person at the J.E. Hamilton Community House or call 920-793-5592.
Contact Tom Dombeck at 920-686-2965 or tdombeck@htrnews.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @Tom_Dombeck.
This article originally appeared on Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter: Two Rivers Parks and Recreation has new Truegolf Apogee system
