Hack Shack, Author at Hack Shack

Last Call for the Lawn

Bryant Park’s outdoor summer run is winding down. The Picnic Performances series — 24 shows presented by Bank of America, spanning music, dance, opera, and circus under the Midtown skyline since May 28 — closes out over the next few weeks. An Accordion Festival fills the lawn on August 28. Parallel Exit’s Sunset Circus follows on August 29. The series ends September 11 with a tribute concert marking the 25th anniversary of September 11th, 2001. Paramount+ Movie Nights on the lawn continue through mid-September on Monday evenings. Piano in Bryant Park runs weekday afternoons through October 1.

The park stays alive. But the rhythm shifts. The long summer evenings get shorter. The heat breaks. Anyone who has lived in Midtown for more than one August knows exactly what happens next: the outdoor tables empty out, the commutes compress, and the city tilts back toward its actual pace. That’s when the simulator bays start filling up.

Indoor golf in New York City doesn’t have an off-season. That’s the entire point. A significant portion of the city’s indoor golf customers come for reasons that have nothing to do with the weather — they’re here because getting to an actual course from Manhattan requires a train, a tee time booked three days out, and most of a Saturday. A Trackman bay in Midtown requires none of that. Show up. Hit balls. Leave.

The fall shift does change the mix of who walks in. Summer in Midtown runs on tourists, corporate groups, and the kind of spontaneous decision-making that happens when you’re already outside and the evening hasn’t decided where to go yet. Fall swings it toward the committed player. The golfer who spent the summer playing Bethpage or Van Cortlandt on weekends and wants to keep the swing dialed through November. The beginner who caught the golf bug at a corporate event and is now looking for something consistent. The group that stopped asking “where are we going?” and just books the same simulator bay on Thursday nights.

Trackman data doesn’t care what month it is. Ball speed, launch angle, spin rate — the numbers are the same in September as they are in June. What changes is the context around the session. September through March is when the practice actually stacks. Golfers who put in simulator work through the cold months show up in April with something to build on. The ones who stop playing in late summer show up in spring rebuilding from zero. That gap is real and it’s measured in handicap strokes.

Bryant Park is a few minutes walk. The Hack Shack is in the same neighborhood. The summer programming ends. The Trackman bays don’t.

What’s Still On at Bryant Park Before the Season Closes

August 28 — Accordion Festival (Picnic Performances), 7:00pm. Jourdan Thibodeaux, Saami Brothers, and Chicha Libre.

August 29 — Parallel Exit: Sunset Circus (Picnic Performances), 5:00pm. Circus performers with credits from Cirque du Soleil and Big Apple Circus.

September 3 and 4 — Asian American Arts Alliance / Brass Festival (Picnic Performances), 7:00pm.

September 10 and 11 — Dance Party All-Stars and the 25th Anniversary of September 11th tribute concert, the final two shows of the 2026 Picnic Performances season.

Monday evenings through September — Paramount+ Movie Nights on the Bryant Park lawn, films beginning at 8:00pm.

Weekday afternoons through October 1 — Piano in Bryant Park, 12:30pm–2:30pm on the Upper Terrace.

Scottie Scheffler Just Dismantled the Field in Memphis. The Data Behind It Is in Midtown.

Scottie Scheffler won the 2026 FedEx St. Jude Championship by eight shots. Not seven. Not three. Eight — on a punishing TPC Southwind track, against 68 of the best players alive, in heat that had guys reaching for electrolyte packets between shots. He finished -17. Win No. 21. At 30 years old, he became the third-youngest player to reach that milestone since 1960, behind only Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.

Numbers are fun. Here’s the one that matters.

Scheffler picked up nearly nine strokes gained putting against the field over four days in Memphis — the best putting performance of his entire career. That’s not a hot streak. That is a man with elite data-feedback habits who has trained himself to be lethal on the greens, and Trackman was recording every bit of it.

What Strokes Gained Putting Actually Tells You

Strokes gained isn’t a vibe. It compares every putt you hit to the statistical average of every other tour player from the same distance, on the same surface, in the same situation. Miss a four-footer the field converts 70% of the time? You’ve lost strokes. Drain a slippery 22-footer from above the hole where the average conversion rate sits below 15%? You’ve gained them.

Scheffler made three birdie putts from outside 20 feet in the final round alone. He made an 11-birdie second round that tied the TPC Southwind course record with a 61. That isn’t coincidence. That is a repeatable pattern built on disciplined practice with real-time feedback.

Trackman doesn’t just track where the ball ends up. It captures club path, face angle at impact, ball speed, launch angle — and across more than 40 data parameters per shot, it shows you what your stroke actually does versus what you think it does. That gap, between perception and reality, is where handicaps live and grow.

The Same Tech Is a Few Blocks From Bryant Park

Hack Shack runs Trackman simulators right here in Manhattan. The same dual-radar and optical tracking system PGA Tour officials deploy on-site — the same platform Trackman just brought to the 2026 Solheim Cup as its Official Ball Tracking and Simulator Supplier — is the engine powering every session in the bay.

That’s not marketing copy. Trackman has over 100,000 installations across more than 70 countries. It is the standard. And it is bookable in Midtown today.

You do not need to be grinding toward a FedExCup title to use it. You need honest data, a realistic round on a virtual course rendered in the same graphics engine tour players train on, and the willingness to look at what’s actually going wrong. That’s the only entry bar.

Whether you’re working with one of Hack Shack’s instructors on a specific shot shape or just running a casual 18 with friends on a weekend afternoon, the Trackman unit behind every bay is capturing the same parameters that told Scheffler he was nine strokes better on the greens than everyone else in the field.

The FedEx Cup Playoffs Are Live. This Is the Time.

The BMW Championship goes next at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis, August 20-23. Only the top 50 in FedExCup points make it. Scheffler sits at 4,873 points, well clear at the top after earning 750 more with the St. Jude win. The top 30 from Bellerive then head to East Lake for the Tour Championship and the full FedExCup title.

Rory McIlroy left Memphis in a rough spot. “I’m just so far away from where I need to be,” he said after his final round. Even at that level, the gap gets identified through data first. Then closed through work.

For NYC golfers, the playoff stretch is the best excuse to actually get serious reps in. The courses being played — TPC Southwind, Bellerive — reward precision ball-striking and putting. Exactly what Trackman is designed to measure and improve.

Book a bay. Run your putting numbers. Find the gap. Then close it.

Author: Hack Shack

Bryant Park’s Summer Is Almost Done. The Golf Season in Midtown Is Just Getting Started.