Pole Position: Chasing Stakes on the Toptracer Range

By Cameron Pratt, E-Commerce & Marketing Manager / Northway Golf Center

It's Belmont Week here in Saratoga County, an event that has been a welcome change of pace during these past few years as Belmont Park undergoes their renovations. Crowds swell, restaurant reservations are full, and everyone has their take on how silly of a hat they can wear.

(Spoiler alert: All of them are.)

Despite the fact that we as locals have to grit and bear the crush of traffic that accompanies this event, it does offer up a novelty that this area will miss when early June rolls around next Spring. And while track season carries a luster all its own—complete with vivid memories of swirling air from the overhead fans in the grandstand as peanut shells are snapped open—the hue of expectation diminishes as the final leg of the Triple Crown migrates back home.

What does not divest itself from these parts, though, is the spirit of competition that permeates every nook and brook of this fine spot of land. Cheers and jeers alike and not so dissimilar from the horse track to the golf course, with woes of an inside lane competitor mirroring those furled against grit teeth as you watch your freshly-teed Pro V1 sail into the trees. Or, conversely, the thrill of seeing your longshot take a lane far along the outside to secure a photo finish pairing nicely with that 130 yard pitch within 6" that "you totally meant to do" from earlier in the morning.

It's the thrill of victory. It's the agony of defeat. The duality of it makes the Good worth seeking, even when the looming Bad makes the effort frustrating.

Something most of us experience every single tee time, I suppose.

I've been a golfer since I was a teenager, on and off through the years as time, monies, and geographic location afforded me the opportunity to—along with various states of taking it seriously and not. Golf is hard, I would know: I've never broken 90.

Coming to Northway was a career choice, but it's also afforded me the opportunity to lean in to this great game: to really seek out and understand my own nuances as a player, and the greater vision of what golf means to all, worldwide.

Rest assured, dear readers, that my anecdotes and diatribes on the philosophies of golf are hereby saved for other days. We're in mid-Major season after all! And with the US OPEN and Belmont Stakes at our doorstep, the thrill of competition permeates the air. And so as I sit here at my desk I find myself wanting, craving the competition sewn in fairway finders and sunken putts.

Alas, for a 20 handicap my opportunities are few and far between. I am priced out and handicap-gated for local tournaments, nor do I wish to take this game too seriously. A paradox? Perhaps. I believe that this world allows for the serenity of golf and the strive to become better at the game to live in unison. It's the competition with the self, along with others, that spurns myself and others, ever on.

That's when I decided to create my Toptracer account.

If you haven't utilized the screens in the bays, allow me to paint the picture. Toptracer Range is the technology we run here at Northway that does something deceptively simple: it makes the range matter. Every shot tracked, every swing logged, your distances and tendencies and embarrassing pulls charted out in front of you with a frankness that your playing partners, in their mercy, usually withhold. It gives you feedback in all its live glory. Better yet? It saves to your phone.

For someone like me—fond of the game, humbled by the game, unwilling to quit the game—this is exactly the kind of accountability I didn't know I needed.

It's no longer a Practice Range. Hitting balls for the sake of hitting balls instantaneously becomes a wasted effort. I see my data, my history, and if nothing else: I can mark down my average distances for actual play. It becomes a slow, satisfying piece of evidence that the work is working (or, just as usefully, that it isn't). I've found more value in that honesty than in a dozen range sessions of well-intentioned guesswork. To this very point, the fact that I can label my golf bag with my actual clubs makes a world of difference insofar as the selection thereof goes.

Then there's Toptracer 12 and Toptracer 30: structured shot sets that do exactly what a round of golf does: put a number on it. Twelve or thirty shots, tracked and scored, giving you an honest snapshot of where your game actually lives versus where you think it does. I haven't posted a card on either yet, which tells you everything about my relationship with hard truths. But that's the beauty of it, you know? It's there when you're ready, and it'll still be honest with you regardless.

As for Virtual Golf: courses I have seen on the screen and genuinely want to set foot on someday, played from a bay off the Northway at a fraction of the cost and exactly zero of the travel. It scratches the itch in a way that's harder to explain than it is to experience; with the added benefit of forcing club change, decision making, and the discipline to aim inside the mind's eye.

Side note: if any of you have an extra spot in your Pebble Beach foursome available I happily accept the invite.

There is something about a scorecard—even a virtual one—that focuses the mind in a way that idle range work can't. Suddenly my 7-iron has stakes. Suddenly the yardage matters. Suddenly I care very much about a shot that, by any reasonable measure, carries no consequences whatsoever.

Golf does that to a person.

The one thing the bays can't cure is the putting yips, but that's a conversation for The Loop Putting Course, which deserves its own post entirely. What Toptracer does do is make every approach shot decisive: closer on the way in, the wider your chipping "putt" circle is. Where I might miss a rep on my flatstick, the extra practice hitting the close flag on the range is nothing to scoff at.

Though, it has absolutely highlighted my need for the A wedge that sits absent between my 44° PW and 56° SW.

And then there's the leaderboards. From closest-to-the-pin to full cards posted from your particular tees on a virtual course: anyone who signs up can stake their claim. Or, at the very least, showcase to themselves how they've come to improve over time. Low stakes by design but competitive in the slow-burning way that golf has always been competitive. You against the course, the field, or whatever you shot the last time you stood in this same bay with this same club and this same hopeful backswing.

Nobody is making you care. But you will care anyway. That's the game.

What I've appreciated most, though, is that none of this demands anything of you beyond showing up. Toptracer meets you where you are—from us 20 handicappers working on their dispersion, or the low single-digits grinding out the kinks before the real season kicks in, to the newcomer who just wants to see where the ball goes and have a little fun finding out. There's no penalty of lost balls for the ambition of getting better, and no requirement to take it more seriously than it deserves.

Some weeks that means working through a practice plan and logging every session. Other weeks it means playing eighteen virtual holes at Pebble Beach on a Tuesday afternoon because the mood struck and the bay was open.

Both are valid. Both are golf. Both, in their own way, scratch the itch that this time of year—with the Stakes and the Open and the whole intoxicating theater of competition hanging in the air—has a habit of aggravating.

Come and scratch it, here at Northway Golf Center.

Book your Toptracer time today.