Category: NYC Golf Culture

Europe Won the Solheim Cup on a Trackman Stage. The Same Data Runs Your Bay on W. 39th.

Team Europe claimed the 2026 Solheim Cup. Fifteen points to thirteen.

At Bernardus Golf in Cromvoirt, Netherlands, Europe won back women’s golf’s premier team trophy at the 20th edition of the Solheim Cup, running September 11 through 13. The U.S. and Europe entered Sunday’s singles matches knotted 8-8 after a tightly contested two-day run. The home team pulled away early in the final session. Carlota Ciganda secured the decisive point, beating Jennifer Kupcho 4 and 2. Captain Anna Nordqvist, who spent fifteen years as a player for Europe before taking the captaincy, left Bernardus having won it as a captain too.

Then there is the technology that ran the whole event.

Trackman was named the Official Ball Tracking and Simulator Supplier of the 2026 Solheim Cup. Not a peripheral sponsorship. The measurement infrastructure. Every ball flight quantified for broadcast and precision analysis went through Trackman’s radar and camera systems at Bernardus. The company has more than 100,000 installations across over seventy countries and serves as the official data standard on the PGA Tour, DP World Tour, LPGA Tour, and LIV Golf. Those same systems run the bays inside Hack Shack at 108 W. 39th Street, six blocks from Bryant Park.

Trackman built a global competition around the tournament. From August 26 through September 13, any golfer at a Trackman-powered indoor facility could register, pick a side, and play the four par 3 holes at Bernardus Golf as a closest-to-pin challenge. Hole 4 with bunkers narrowing the approach. Hole 6 with the green pressed against water. Hole 11 running long alongside sand, the toughest of the four. Hole 15 leaving almost no margin between the flag and the hazards surrounding it. The data engine was the same one the pros competed under on live television. Different side of the Atlantic.

A common question about indoor Trackman setups is whether the accuracy inside a simulator bay actually matches what the system delivers outdoors on tour. Trackman CTO Fredrik Tuxen addressed that directly in a piece published September 10. His answer: it does.

Trackman iO combines Doppler radar with high-speed cameras and infrared illumination inside a single ceiling-mounted unit. Radar handles ball speed and depth information that cameras cannot reliably produce on their own. The cameras run at 1,800 frames per second, measuring 3D spin orientation to within less than one degree. No special balls required. No markers on the club. The system reads grooves directly and recalibrates its zero point for launch direction automatically each time it starts. The golfer does not touch any of that process.

That matters in a lesson context specifically. When your instructor pulls up your face angle at impact or your attack angle with a specific club, the precision of that number traces back to an automated calibration you never had to think about. That is a meaningful difference from systems that require manual alignment before each session. We covered how Trackman’s data turns elite ball-striking into something you can actually study when Scottie Scheffler dismantled the FedEx St. Jude field in August. Same principle. Different player.

September is the right moment to think about this. Bryant Park’s outdoor season is closed. Fall golf windows in New York are shorter than anyone wants. Hack Shack runs year-round, with Trackman bays available for open play, group events, and instruction backed by the same system that measured every shot at Bernardus Golf last weekend.

The technology just won a Solheim Cup. Book a bay.

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.