Finished my golf simulator

My wife and I both love golf, but with a new baby, getting out to the course became nearly impossible. So, a golf simulator made sense, with one catch: she wanted it to double as a theater room and be easy to take apart, not a permanent setup.

The loft space I used is about 17’x11’ with 9’ ceilings, but there’s an annoying pillar in one corner that made things interesting. The screen setup uses a 10’ stick of 1” EMT conduit, insulation foam, and a worm gear motor controlled by remote. I bent some fender washers to match the EMT’s curve and used them to attach the screen and foam. The motor connects to the EMT with a shaft coupling, and the opposite end sits in a pillow block bearing. The screen itself is a 10’x9’ “hanging style” Spectrum screen with 3” sleeves on the top and bottom.

The hitting mat is layered as follows:
• ¼” birch plywood base
• 1” rigid foam
• ¼” foam mat
• SYNlawn putting green

Everything’s held together with spray adhesive. I cut out a section for the Beavertail hitting insert and added grip shelf liner plus four rubber pads underneath to keep it from sliding on carpet.

I’m using the Square launch monitor mainly because I don’t have a gaming PC and it runs fine off my phone. The only adapter that’s worked reliably is the official Apple USB-C to HDMI dongle. I’ve been experimenting with an old refurbished PC (GT 640 GPU, SSD, 16GB RAM), but it still stutters a bit, so the phone setup might stay. Any advice on that is appreciated.

The blackout curtains on the sides help with sound, reduce light reflection, and protect from shanks. So far, they’ve done their job.

The whole build took about two months (could’ve been faster if my daughter wasn’t terrified of power tools). Total cost came to roughly $3,500.

Even though the title says I’m done, I’m still tinkering. There’s always something to improve.

I probably missed a few details, so I’ll update this post as questions come in and post a comment later with links to the parts I used.