HOUSTON – For any local golfer that has ever wanted whatever they’re swinging to be the right club, Major Champion and golf legend Hal Sutton has you covered. The 14-time PGA Tour Champion and 1983 PGA Championship winner held an open house this weekend at his all-new high tech golf academy, Hal Sutton Golf.
Hal Sutton, which opened on August 1 at 13455 Cutten Road in the Willowbrook area, offers any high-tech tool a golfer could need to get better, along with instruction from the 1983 PGA Player of the Year. Sutton teamed up with Chase Cooper, an ex-professional who has been a leading voice in the tech side of things in the golf world.
“We didn’t have all of this stuff when I was coming up,” said Sutton.
The range of the equipment at Hal Sutton includes the Trackman radar and Swing Catalyst, an in-ground plate that measures foot force.
“I’m a little bit more on the new school side,” said Cooper. “Hal always dug it out of the dirt.”
Cooper has worked in 3D imagery and other various tech aspects of the game, even working with golf’s current darling Bryson DeChambeau. Known as “The Scientist,” DeChambeau’s quest to add distance has fueled chatter on golf broadcasts since the re-start of the PGA Tour.
The beefed-up bomber has hit 400-yard drives on his way to a victory at the Rocket Mortgage Classic recently.
“Everything thinks he’s trying to make the game more complicated,” said Cooper. “In reality, he’s trying to make the game as simple as possible for himself.”
Sutton said his goal is primarily instruction for children, but will work with all ages and will use Cooper’s numbers and methods to “quantify feel.”
“Feel is different to each and every person,” said Sutton. “Sometimes feel is not real. Technology has quantified that. It gives us something we can talk about, something we can see.”