Larry Bohannan takes you through the four par-3 holes of Stadium Course
Desert Sun golf reporter Larry Bohannan takes you through the four par -3 holes of Stadium Course at PGA West
Sitting in the middle of perhaps the most technologically advanced teaching facility in the Coachella Valley, Bryan Lebedevitch admits he sometimes wonders about the great golfers of the past.
“I’ve spent many hours pondering the same question,” said Lebedevitch, director of instruction at PGA West in La Quinta and ranked as one of the top 10 golf teachers in the country. “How did everyone who was good before tech get good? The answer is they did a lot of this stuff. We just couldn’t measure it at that time. I don’t think they did not do it. They did do it.”
The technology unveiled this summer at the PGA West Golf Academy’s Performance Lab – a facility just now being unveiled to returning PGA West members – can give precise measurement and data points to the swing of beginners to tour professionals. From a tilting putting green that can replicate great putts of the past to in-depth data on full swings, the Performance Lab is in the PGA West Resort clubhouse where real estate offices and even a convenience store once stood.
Lebedevitch, who counts among his students numerous touring professionals, says the technology of the performance lab might look like it is for his elite students. But it does have real-world practicality for PGA West members and non-members who are brought to the facility by the facility’s teaching staff.
“I think it is student dependent, and I think it is being able to control the environment that a student needs,” Lebedevitch said. “In this room there are five pieces of technology. Do they need every one of them? Probably not. But it is how the instructor drives the process for that person.”
The Performance Lab opened in June, but Lebedevitch says the high-tech systems have been de-bugged in recent months. Each day all three rooms of the facility, two full-swing hitting bays and one putting green, must be re-calibrated just in case something changes, like perhaps a small earthquake moving the room a bit.
The hitting bays include what looks like standard golf simulator technology, but the Performance Lab includes golf measuring devices from GEARS (Golf Evaluation and Research System) that can measure as many as 30 separate data points for a swing. Trackman measuring devices are also included on the ceiling rather than the units normally placed on the floor.
The result is analysis of practically any aspect of a swing, from shoulder turn to clubface at impact to measuring weight transfer in a player’s feet during a swing. One program will even allow a club to be calibrated so that it seems to float in space on the computer screen to show what the club is doing in a swing without the player.
“This is like the most in-depth program for measuring golfers and golf clubs that you can get,” Lebedevitch said. “We can turn on as much or as little as you like.”
The putting green at the front of the building is just as technology- and data-packed. Powered by Quintic Ball Roll technology, the green allows for tilting to create uphill, downhill sidehill and even double-breaking putts. Calibrated lights allow for ball roll, including the hop off a clubface or the skid of a ball, to be measured.
Lights embedded in the green can show the exact path a ball takes, allowing teaching staff a chance to match up the data of a putt to the reality of the roll. Lebedevitch said tilting of up to 3 percent makes for challenging putts, but 4 percent makes for impossible putting.
Perhaps surprisingly, Lebedevitch said he might start a new student on the outdoor range at PGA West to see just what a player is bringing to the teaching sessions and to get some preliminary data. But then it is inside to see how technology will help a golfer, being aware that some players can suffer from technology overload.
“You record a swing, my shoulder turn is short,” Lebedevitch said. “You make another swing, you work on a couple of ideas to help make more turn, you are able to show a golfer that they are making a change and you are able to prove it through data. You can look at this from any angle.”
It might be far more technology and far more data that Ben Hogan or Jack Nicklaus ever had, but it is something that can help golfers at PGA West, Lebedevitch said.
“Being able to measure something as opposed to not measure something is very interesting,” he said. “It’s more accurate than someone guessing on certain things.”
