Thanks to the efforts of Steve and Jill Genett, high-tech golf has arrived in Oconto Falls.
The husband and wife opened In the Rough in Highland Square at 323 E. Highland Drive on Nov. 1 and have welcomed a steady stream of customers to the business, which features two golf simulators that help golfers have fun while working on their game.
“We have two simulators,” Steve Genett said. “One is strictly golf, and one is golf and a multi-sport arcade that has basketball, baseball, football, disc golf, hockey, all kinds of stuff.”
The business also includes a full bar with beer, soda and cocktails; offers golf leagues from 6-9 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays; and has clubs available for rent, including clubs for left-handed golfers.
A golf simulator includes a projector that runs off of a computer.
“It projects that image out onto the screen,” Genett said. “In front of that is a launch monitor that reads your ball. When you hit it, it can pick up the way your club strikes it, the launch angle, the backspin. It can read quite a bit of things from that swing.”
Each simulator has thousands of courses for golfers to select.
“Another thing that’s nice is we pick up all the local courses,” Genett said. “If you have a hole that’s giving you problems, you can come here, set up the front nine or that specific hole and keep golfing that hole over and over again. It does a pretty good job of tracking distances on holes and where tee boxes line up. Sometimes, the trees aren’t right to what you get out there, but you’ll find a lot of main features on a course. It’s not going to be 100%, but it’s pretty close.”
Local courses in the system include River Island Golf Course, Oconto Falls; Pine Acres and Patriot golf clubs, Abrams; Irish Greens Golf Club, Oconto; Parkway Golf Course, Pound; Hunters Glen Golf Club, Crivitz; and Sweetgrass Golf Club and Sage Run Golf Course, Harris, Michigan.
Genett believes a simulator is the next best thing to being on an actual course.
“I was surprised,” he said. “On my drive on a course, I can usually go 210-240 (yards). It was the same on here. I used to have an outside-in swing where I was getting a lot of slice on the ball. Sure enough, it picked it up on here, too. It’s pretty accurate.”
The idea for opening a business started while Genett attended Northeast Wisconsin Technical College’s Green Bay campus a few years ago.
“One of the classes I was going to was entrepreneurship,” he said. “At the end of your time, they offered you a free LLC. We were going to go with a bicycle shop, because we were watching the chit-chat on (Facebook) Marketplace and everybody was going, ‘Where do you go to get a bike repaired?’ It would have been right here in Oconto Falls.
“We started to move on it, but then one of the other (repair shops) moved up this way and there was an eBike one that opened up a shop in Oconto.”
The Genetts started looking at places to open a golf simulator business.
“We looked at one on (U.S. Highway) 141 by Stiles, and that’s where we were going to get started, but that one fell through on us,” Genett said. “This (location) was another option that we had and it worked out good for us.”
The Genetts lease space in the strip mall that formerly housed a cellular phone store and Radio Shack.
Genett said it’s taken some time for customers to find In the Rough.
“On our first weekend open, nobody,” he said. “We were like, ‘Oh, no, what’s going to happen?’ We thought we’d get a few people in to check it out, but nobody came through. Finally on Monday or Tuesday, we had a couple of people come in and play. From there, it was slow, but there was a lot going on with Thanksgiving and Christmas. Gift cards were a big seller in December. People weren’t coming in to golf, but to buy gift cards for people. That kind of saved us for that month.”
Winter is the perfect time of the year for golfers to work on their game, Genett said.
“As the spring season gets closer and courses are starting to open, this is the time to get your swing back in order,” he said. “If you put your clubs away in November, you might want to come in and get the muscle memory worked out so when it comes time to hit the grass out there, you’re ready to go.”
Although it’s been open for more than three months, In the Rough has scheduled an official grand opening for March 6-8.
Tee times can be scheduled at golfintherough.com or 920-848-1000. Updated information can also be found on the business’s Facebook page.
Two golf simulators at In the Rough are able to recreate thousands of golf courses, including individual holes at a number of area courses. (Greg Seubert)
