Indoor Golf Practice: Why Slopes Change Learning and Performance with Mark Immelman

I’ve been thinking about a line that came up in my conversation with Mark Immelman:

Golf indoors is accelerating. But the ground is still missing.

We can now play a full round on a simulator in an hour and a half. We can access world-class data. We can practice at times and in places the traditional game never allowed.

That’s a meaningful shift for accessibility and engagement.

This issue comes when a lot of indoor golf practice still asks golfers to learn on a surface they rarely play from.

The course isn’t flat.

It never has been, and learning shouldn’t ignore that.

This is the core tension Zen was built around.

Not “How do we make indoor golf more entertaining?”

But: “How do we make practice more representative of the game we’re trying to perform in?”

This concept is explore further in our blog Flat vs Sloped Practice: What Really Transfers.

Zen Green Stage started with a simple observation from tour-level coaching.

Nick (our founder) spent time on tour seeing how elite players solved real greens—then came home to a studio where putting practice happened on a flat carpet. The behaviors didn’t translate cleanly in either direction.

That wasn’t a motivational issue. It wasn’t a “more reps” issue.

It was an environmental issue.

If the indoor golf practice environment doesn’t contain the key constraints of performance, we shouldn’t be surprised when performance doesn’t show up on the course.

That idea has guided everything since.

We still tend to teach golf like the task is stable.

We gap clubs. We assign fixed yardages. We describe a “150-yard club” as if the number exists independently of lie, slope, wind, firmness, target, and consequence.

Then golfers step onto the course and discover what they already knew deep down:

The shot makes the swing.
Not the other way around.

On a downhill lie into a firm green, your “stock” swing may not be the right movement solution. On an uphill double-break putt, your “straight” stroke idea stops being useful unless it’s anchored to a read, a start line, and a speed plan.

This is where indoor golf practice often becomes confidence-building, without becoming competence-building.

I used a surfing analogy on the podcast because it exposes the problem quickly.

Imagine learning to surf by practicing pop-ups on the beach. Stable ground. Predictable conditions. It feels like learning.

Then you enter the sea and the board is unstable, the wave shape changes, and your timing becomes the task. Now the movement solution needs to adapt.

Golf has been doing the “beach lesson” for years.

Flat mats. Static greens with fixed breaks. Repetition in a context that removes the thing that defines performance: variability.

That doesn’t make flat practice “bad.” It just makes it limited, especially if it becomes the only environment we experience in practice. Hence why uneven lies practice should become part of every golfer’s development plan.

During my MSc research, I looked at putting behavior across different slopes.

What we found wasn’t chaos. It was something more interesting:

• Each golfer was consistent within a given slope condition.
• Their movement solution changed across different slopes.

Posture shifted. Balance shifted. How the arms hung shifted. The club’s relationship with the ground shifted.

The idea of “one stroke” across environments didn’t hold up. It was more accurate to say:

Golfers have stable solutions for specific environments.

That insight changes how you view coaching.

It nudges you away from teaching a universal technique, and towards helping golfers perceive, decide, and adapt.

A big chunk of indoor golf practice culture is driven by the search for confidence.

Golfers want a swing they can trust.

The issue is that confidence built in a narrow environment becomes fragile when the environment changes. Real golf tests more than technique; it tests the golfer’s ability to organize themselves for the shot in front of them.

Zen’s aim is to close that gap by making practice environments more like the performance environment.

On Zen Green Stage, one button can create a random slope—uphill double breaker, downhill right-to-left, subtle tilt at the hole with more slope under your feet.

That does something important:

It shifts attention away from internal mechanics and towards external problem-solving.

You start asking different questions:

• Where is “straight” from this position?
• What’s the speed window that keeps the ball on a makeable line?
• What am I feeling under my feet—and is that misleading me?
• What routine helps me commit to this read?

That is “deep practice” in a practical sense: not more thinking, but more meaningful perception and decision-making.

We explored this further in our blog Purposeful Indoor Practice with Slopes & Data.

One part of the conversation was the idea that golfers need three modes, not one:

• Play to expand your shot vocabulary and explore what’s possible
• Learn to focus on a specific problem with purposeful variability
• Perform to express what you’ve got today, under consequence

Zen environments support all three because they can recreate the course indoors; especially when combined with measurement tools (launch monitors, putting analysis, force plates) in service of learning.

1) Stop practicing for your “perfect day.”
Build skill for the days when the lie is awkward, the wind is up, and your timing isn’t sharp.

2) Train the read and the plan, not just the stroke.
Putting improves fastest when you practice start line + speed on real slopes.

3) Use your last round as your practice plan.
Instead of “I’m bad at irons,” get specific: downhill lies, ball-above-feet misses, uphill right-to-left putts. Recreate those.

4) Look for robust outcomes, not perfect movement.
The goal is a ball flight and a putt that holds up across conditions—not a swing that looks tidy on flat ground.

1) Coach the environment as much as the athlete.
If the environment stays constant, you’ll mostly coach technique. If it changes, you can coach perception, decision-making, and adaptability.

2) Let golfers solve problems before you explain them.
A moving floor creates natural feedback loops that support self-discovery and ownership.

3) Ask better questions.
“What did you perceive?”
“What did you commit to?”
“What changed when the slope changed?”
These questions produce learning that transfers.

4) Use data to support exploration, not to prescribe one model.
Different golfers organize differently on different slopes. Your job is often to help them find their stable solution for that environment.

1) Differentiation is no longer “we have a simulator.”
It’s: how realistic is the experience?
Real slopes and lies change the perceived value immediately.

2) Better realism creates better retention.
Golfers fall out of love when they practice hard and still fall apart on the course. Environments that improve transfer protect motivation.

3) Programming beats access.
The centers that win will package experiences: slope challenges, green-reading tests, “play–learn–perform” sessions, coach-led skill development.

4) Build psychological safety through repeatable exposure.
Many golfers fear the situations that cost them shots (downhill lies, short breaking putts). Recreating these indoors lowers the stress and increases competence.

The future of golf isn’t purely outdoors or indoors.

It’s a more connected pathway, where indoor environments don’t just measure performance, but prepare golfers for the variability that defines the sport.

That is the simplest version of what we mean by a golf course indoors.

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