Tucked away on the first floor of the Carol Johnson Poole Clubhouse is the newly renovated Player Development Suite, home to the club fitting and repair services at the Lonnie Poole Golf Course.
Player development services, which began at the golf course in 2015, have grown at an exponential rate over the last seven years and have expanded far beyond their original goal of providing a lab-like experience for Professional Golf Management students at NC State. Today, the staff at Lonnie Poole have reimagined what the Player Development Suite could be and focus largely on helping to fit golfers with the perfect clubs for their game and repairing old favorites.
In the recent renovation, the Player Development Suite transitioned from two smaller bays to one much larger area that now holds a new, 16 by 11 foot screen on which a variety of golf courses, including Lonnie Poole, can be projected. This larger bay area allows players to feel less crowded in the space and get a better idea of how their swing will look and feel outside, on the course. Players being fitted for new clubs can use the bay to test out their clubs and improve swings by hitting a ball toward the screen, which the GC Quad launch monitor will then analyze. The GCQuad is a professional-grade launch monitor, normally only available to prestige players, and it can tell you the speed, spin, carry, and total distance of your swing and ball. With all this data at your fingertips, the updated Player Development Suite makes it easy to pick which clubs are the best for your game.
Player development at Lonnie Poole is also a particularly unique experience because it is right off of the golf course, which is often used to complement the in-suite experience. As mentioned earlier, Lonnie Poole is one of the golf courses that can be projected during your fitting, meaning that players can be fit using the driving range that is right outside the clubhouse. Daniel Spurling, the director of player development here, told me that “everything chosen for club fitting is in an effort to make it as real as possible and to validate the fitting for the player.” Spurling also shared that that’s a large reason why people come to Lonnie Poole for fittings; it makes a big difference to be able to get the fitting and then go outside and see the ball fly in real-time.
Lonnie Poole is a Golf Digest Top 100 Fitter and has also been named among the top 50 Club Fitters in North America by Golf Magazine. In all fittings at the Player Development Suite, players are offered access to all major manufacturers of clubs and deal with one person throughout the entire process. The same person that fits you for clubs is the one who builds them. Also important to note is that no commission is made off of club sales at Lonnie Poole, meaning that the entire experience is devoted to helping the player find the best fit for them.
For more information on how to make an appointment at the Player Development Suite, email Daniel Spurling at dspurling@lonniepoolegolfcourse.com or call the Golf Shop at 919.515.6527.
More information on player development in general at Lonnie Poole can be found at https://lonniepoolegolfcourse.com/improve-your-game/