Golf addicts fight winter withdrawl

Syracuse – For the addicted golfer in central New York, the long, snow-covered winter months can be the harshest of withdrawals.

“It’s like you can’t get your fix,” said Doug Waterbury, a co-organizer of the annual Syracuse Golf Expo (Feb. 20 – 22).

But a fiend does what he can. Waterbury’s show at the State Fairgrounds is one of the ways golfers can find their fix when the snow covers the fairways. Golf equipment, artificial putting greens, free round and resort giveaways were housed in abundance to help fill the golfing void.

The Expo even featured three full-size golf simulators that use laser swing analysis and GPS projection screens to create a real-life golf experience for the show-goers.

The simulator drew mixed results in terms of replicating the golfing rush, but Douglas Simone, who was running the simulator at the Expo and owns one that he keeps in his garage, acknowledged it provided at least a deeper dose of the fix during the doldrums of winter.

“I find a lot of my golfing buddies still being my golfing buddies in the winter time because they all want to come over and play,” Simone said.

At Home in the Dome

For those who’s addiction can’t be fed with just retail and digital recreation, The Golf Dome at Turning Stone offers one of the only other recourses — apart from hitting into a net at home and putting on your rug.

“I don’t know what we’d do without (The Dome) in the winter here in central New York,” said Steve Tersten of Whiteboro. “We’d probably go crazy.”

Golfers pay $10 for a half-hour of unlimited range practice (meaning no limit to the amount of balls one can hit), $20 for a one-hour session, and $36 for an hour at the Dome’s own pair of simulators. The Dome even hosts a “Turning Stone Winter Series” event on its simulators that pits golfers against each other on some of the world’s greatest courses, including St. Andrews, Pebble Beach, and Bethpage Black.

Virtually, of course.

“It doesn’t really do it for me,” said Steve Sanger, who comes to the Dome at 9:30 every morning with his buddy Tersten. “I was fortunate enough to get to play Pebble Beach once, and let me tell you, nothing on a computer can ever replicate that feeling.”

Sanger prefers to use the Dome to hit as many balls as he can to stay sharp and fill the void with volume. He summed up the quandary of the addicted golfer in central New York:

“November, December, you can tolerate it, but then this time of year you start seeing the golfers out on the course (on TV), with all the spectators out there in their shirt-sleeves, and it’s like, ‘Really, what am I doing in central New York?'”

What he’s doing is getting his fix– where ever he can find it.