Sheffield is currently on the lips of golfers world wide.
After local boy Danny Willett's victory at The Masters, thanks in no small measure to his #1 ranked performance on the quick and sloping greens, its a great time for a company from the Steel City to be launching it next-level putting platform.
The Zen Green Stage, from Sheffield-based putting specialists Zen Green Technology, is a computer-controlled putting platform that enables golfers to create and practice an almost limitless number of breaking putts in a comfortable indoor environment. The benefits to this are two fold: not only do you get to groove your stroke but you also learn to understand how to read greens and develop an appreciation of break that is impossible from practice on a flat surface.
Nick Middleton and fellow Zen Green Stage inventor Andrew McCague based the concept on an original idea by the test pilot of the Mach 3 Lockheed Blackbird, US Air Force colonel Horace Templeton, who first created green-reading maps in the 1970s. In September 2014, Zen used similar techniques to help create greens maps at Gleneagles used by the victorious European Ryder Cup team.
Middleton explains further:
Colonel Templeton’s belief was that a golfer’s fundamental inability to read a green is the biggest single barrier to success, and it is one which we share.There’s growing scientific evidence that highlights the need for practice environments to mimic the real world. With the new Green Stage, both putting coaches and golfers at every level of the game, up to Tour superstars, can now master the challenge of the breaking putt in a consistent, repeatable, authentic environment like never before.
The Zen Green Stage is 16 ft long and a simple touch screen remote enables users to dial in custom slope settings, or to choose from pre-set slopes and challenges which can be created and stored in unlimited numbers.
The system offers up to 12% variation in rise and fall slope, variable contours that allow for double breaking putts and multiple cups as well as a quick-change putting surface which can replicate a variety of green speeds.