The Morse Golf Academy had seemingly just opened its doors when the COVID-19 pandemic slammed them shut for about five weeks.
That temporary hiatus clearly hasn’t set Jim Morse’s baby back one bit. Business has been coming in steadily since the indoor golf instruction and club fitting center reopened in early May.
One look inside the state-of-the-art facility is all it takes to understand why.
Located at The Legends Golf Club in Franklin, where Morse is the director of instruction, the academy features three 500-square-foot hitting bays — two for lessons and one primarily set aside for club fittings. Each has three cameras set up to track the swings of both right- and left-handed players, top-of-the-line launch monitors and large projection screens.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
Morse envisioned the academy primarily as a place that golfers could use to continue improving their games in the winter — but the lure of the technology and the convenience of the permanent camera setup has already made the setup popular even during the peak of golf season.
"I’ve been pleasantly surprised that I’ve used it a lot this summer," he said. "Out of the lessons that I’m giving, I bet I’m doing 75, 80 percent of them inside."
What separates the facility from anything else in or around Johnson County is the Foresight Sports GCQuad launch monitors, which assess the swing at impact to measure every aspect of ball flight. The four cameras inside each shoebox-sized machine can analyze everything about what’s happening with both the ball and the club on impact and provide an immediate readout and simulated ball flight on the big screen.
Everything from the spin rate, speed and launch angle of the ball to the angle of the club is measured instantaneously, giving Morse and his wife Crystal, the head pro at The Legends, every possible bit of data they could possibly need to address a player’s swing.
The tricky part is finding a way to use all of that data and translate it in a way that makes sense to the player.
"Each student varies in their interest in technology and their level of understanding of it, so I think that kind of dictates how they use it," said Ted Bishop, the owner and general manager at The Legends.
Fortunately, Jim Morse believes he’s found the right balance.
"I’ve been teaching for 25 years," he said, "so I understand what most students want, and it’s usually simplicity — and I can provide that while also giving them this good information."
Some players — Bishop points to Franklin Community High School standout Damon Dickey — can’t get enough of the advanced metrics. Others respond better to a more simplistic approach.
The combination of the advanced data and the video analysis allows the instructor to tailor lessons to whatever the golfer’s learning style might be.Â
"Most people need to see the video to get a good grasp of what their swing really looks like and what they’re doing," Jim Morse said. "I’ll always have them start out in here regardless of what the weather looks like, so they can see all that stuff and they can get all the information that we get from the launch monitors as far as what the golf ball is actually doing, what the golf club is actually doing.
"You pair that together with the video, and it’s a pretty cool way to learn — and, I think for most people, an easy way to learn, because most people are visual."
The academy also features a chipping and putting area that covers roughly 800 square feet. That space won’t necessarily get as much use in the summer, Jim Morse says, because most players prefer the feel of natural grass for their short-game lessons, but it will pay bigger dividends when the weather becomes more unpleasant later in the year.
According to Jim Morse, the indoor green runs "just as true and just as fast" as the ones on the course, and there are some breaks built into it as well, so the difference should be negligible when it comes to instruction.
The club fitting studio, though, has been arguably the biggest benefit so far. Jim Morse and Dan Gibson have been using the third bay to help tailor clubs to the needs of each player.
Morse Golf Academy is one of just four Callaway fitting studios in Indiana, and the only one in the southern Indy metro area.
"To help people play better golf, you’ve got to make sure that the equipment they have isn’t hindering their progress," Jim Morse said. "I’ve seen that happen for years. You can get someone to change their swing, but if their equipment’s not correctly fit, they’re not going to see the benefits. Thus, they may start making changes in their swing to try to fix that."
Though the academy is doing the fittings, it’s not selling the equipment — all of that business is funneled over to the pro shop at The Legends. The academy’s focus is on providing golfers with a roadmap to on-course success, and that’s unlikely to change, even as Jim and Crystal Morse continue to learn more about the technology at their disposal and the additional opportunities it could unlock.
"I feel like the vision for the academy is always evolving," Crystal Morse said. "There’s a lot of possibilities that we could use that facility for."
