Zen’s bold move to change indoor golf

Golf Features catches up with Zen Green Stage founder Nick Middleton to find out what’s behind their exceptional technology.

Golf Features: Who is Zen Green Stage ?

We’re a team of specialists in engineering, product design and coaching based in the north of England, making adjustable playing surfaces for the golf industry and soon for other markets. 

Golf Features: Why make the floor move?

There are so many answers to that question! Let’s start with a key word: ‘transference’. If you only ever practice off the flat – whether it’s putting, the long game or the short game – then no matter how well-grooved your swing or putting stroke is, or how extensive your launch monitor stats are, your game is immediately put under pressure out there on the golf course, where you are rarely hitting off a flat, perfect lie.

On Green Stage or Swing Stage you’re practising skills which can be transferred onto the golf course. How does your putting stroke – and your mind – change when faced with a downhill, breaking short putt? Practice on a Zen. Why do you slice the ball off the tee? Cure that on a Zen by hitting shots with the ball above your feet, and gradually reducing the slope. Having problems with your weight transfer when hitting uphill, downhill or on a sidehill lie? Need to learn to drill the ball low into the wind? Struggling to read greens? A Zen moving floor makes it easy to practise all the shots you’ll find on a real golf course.

With a Zen Green Stage, PGA Professionals can “take the lesson to the golf course” like they’ve never been able to before.

You can change your Face Path, Angle Of Attack, Swing Direction and Swing Plane just by moving the ground. That’s what a Zen makes possible. The key swing parameters can instantly be addressed, challenged and improved upon within seconds, by moving your Zen floor.

For putting, you can hit every makeable putt on the planet on a Green Stage. Whether fitting a new putter, working on your stroke, or learning to hole more clutch putts, a Zen gives you billions of different combinations.

Golf Features: What is unique about the Zen Green Stage moving floor?

We’re the only tech in the world which creates adjustable slopes for both putting and hitting shots on the same playing surface. Our Putting & Full Swing Zen Green Stage is fantastic if you want to work on both. Nothing else in the world gives you that.

Our Zen Master putting surface is also unique, and only available on a Green Stage. You can’t buy it for your putting studio floor, for example. It is organic, like grass, it doesn’t track, it stays perfectly true even when you create extreme breaks, and it gives you years of grass-like putting. The many Tour pros who have bought Zens for their own use, all absolutely love Zen Master – it actually took us seven years to perfect it.

There are other aspects in which a Zen is also unique … only Zen carries the UKCA compliance mark for safety, for example. Only Zen can create breaks including double-breaks and compound breaks to within 0.1% accuracy. And only Zen offers you presets to recreate any putt under 20ft in history. 

 Golf Features: Who is buying them?

It’s across the sport. Several of this year’s Ryder Cup players already have a Zen at home, for example, and Tour golfers are one of our fastest-growing areas. 

Several PGAs worldwide including the PGA of America and The PGA here in the UK now have Zens at their headquarters for coach education. Well-known Tour putting coaches such as Phil Kenyon have Zens (Phil has two), and a host of PGA Professional teachers in 18 countries now teach on Zens. We’re also now in many Major venues – for example, this year’s U.S Open venue the L.A Country Club has a Zen – and we’re in a growing number of USA universities.

The Middle East is also a rapid growth area for us, as Zen is now recognised as a world-class product which provides quality for even the most demanding customer. 

Around a third of our customers are private individuals, buying a Zen for their home, but two thirds of our sales are to the golf industry, primarily golf instructors and golf clubs.

 Golf Features: How would I know if this technology would suit my golf centre? 

A Zen Green Stage will transform more or less any existing golf technology, whether you are talking launch monitor, golf simulator, putting tech, force plates or 3D motion capture. 

So it is all about your budget, and your available space. Zens are as small as 6 x 8ft, and go up to 20 x 8ft in size. Our moving floors are just nine inches deep, so most people have sufficient ceiling height to put a Zen moving floor into a swing studio, or a dedicated putting space.

Movement contributes to your wellbeing, and as Zen moving floors power more and more golf venues the sport is set to play a huge role in putting years on your life – and life in your years!

Golf Features: What is the best setting to get a financial return on a Zen installation and what are the costs?

The new Zen Swing Stage is a good one to look at first. It creates real-world slopes purely for hitting shots, and enables you to charge a premium for a new kind of golf lesson, or for an hour’s use in a new kind of driving range bay. As it is smaller than a Green Stage, it is less expensive and you will find that word quickly spreads about being able to hit off slopes indoors or at the range!

Owners worldwide are now booking out Zen Green Stages by the hour, and golfers have to be dragged off it at the end! We are developing our own global online booking system so people can buy a green fee for time on a Zen, just like out on the real golf course.

Being able to instantly change the slopes on a perfect, grass-like surface is utterly absorbing, and people view putting practice in a whole new way on a Zen.

Price-wise the Swing Stage is around £15k plus VAT, with the Green Stage ranging from around £20k to £30k. There are various options for both which our team can quickly take you through. We can also now introduce UK buyers to Fore Finance, who offer the opportunity to spread payments on the purchase of a Zen moving floor.

Golf Features: Where can I try them out?

We have Zens in numerous facilities throughout the UK now, so we urge people to visit www.zengreenstage.com, fill in an enquiry form, and ask us the question.

If you ever visit St Andrews, however, we have a fabulous Zen Experience showroom set up just 30 seconds’ walk from the 18th on the Old Course. It really is something special, and it is in a deeply significant historical location. Our Green Stage sits exactly on the green site of the original closing hole at St Andrews – in 1764, the golf course had 22 holes! In those days, the course finished bang outside Old Tom Morris’s pro shop, which is the modern location for the St Andrews Golf Company hickory shop at 8 Golf Place. Our showroom is downstairs.

Golf Features: What does the future hold for Zen Green Stage?

Almost all of our development now is focused on digital enhancements of the Zen moving floor experience. Data capture, cloud, online bookings and memberships, app development, integrating with other golf technology, providing more ways to pre-set the way the floor moves, recreating famous putts, supplying information which helps you to improve how you practice … it is more or less never-ending!

We have started a new technology initiative called Deep Green, in honour of Deep Blue the famous IBM supercomputer which beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. As you’d expect we are not revealing much at this time, but you can expect a different take on how artificial intelligence can enhance golf participation. Watch this space…!

In the future you will find more and more Zen moving floors around the world: we have really only just scratched the surface. Most of the top 50 Tour players in the world already either own or have regular access to a Zen Green Stage or Swing Stage, and we expect rapid growth both on Tour, and at golf venues which aim to offer the gold standard golf experience.

You will also see an increasing number of integrations, where we have linked Zen Green Stage and Zen Swing Stage movement with other people’s technology, in a quest to produce the seamless ‘moving floor golf lesson’ or the perfect golf simulator session. Nobody loves putting in a golf simulator at the moment, but Zen Green Stage is changing that. 

You could say we’re on a mission to ‘Zen your game!’.

And as more PGA pros and driving range operators experience the benefits of a moving floor, we feel that within three years golfers worldwide will be walking into their local golf facility and asking: ‘have you got a Zen?’

www.zengreenstage.com | @zengreenstage | #golfsmovingfloor

+44 (0)1226 781000 | info@zen.golf