Golfing inside this winter?

Published 4:00 am Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Rain. Snow. Sleet.

All of it is good for Dan McCleery’s business.

“I hate the cold, but I’m praying for 10 feet (of snow),” says McCleery, owner of Central Oregon Indoor Golf in Bend.

For McCleery, the golf season is just beginning.

As the owner of a facility that uses two electronic golf simulators to attract golfers to take their games inside, the more severe the weather, the better for business, McCleery says.

McCleery, 46, has spent a lifetime around golf. And he is now is in the PGA of America’s apprenticeship program at Black Butte Ranch’s Glaze Meadow course to become a golf professional.

But his indoor golf business got off to a slow start.

In fact, at this time last year, Central Oregon Indoor Golf’s simulators were in storage after years of scraping for business in an industrial section of northeast Bend.

That shop closed in July 2011. But this past February, McCleery found a more centralized location in a strip mall on Third Street and Brosterhaus Road in southeast Bend. And now he is hoping the business he first started in 2007 is about to take off.

“I couldn’t get people from the west side (of Bend) to drive over there,” McCleery says of his former location, which was tucked away in a nondescript commercial center off Empire Avenue.

Now, he says, his indoor golf facility is more accessible to area players. Even potential customers from Sunriver “are just 15 minutes away.”

At worst, McCleery’s business seems like a tap-in par: offering golfers a place to play in a golf-crazy area that largely shuts down for the season in October.

One of the facility’s simulators uses computer graphics and the other uses still frames of real courses. And each offers dozens of real layouts, including such famous tracks as Augusta National, to give a golfer a re-creation of the real game.

Central Oregon Indoor Golf is not the first business to have a golf simulator in Bend. Retailer Pro Golf of Bend uses similar technology, particularly for club fittings and occasionally for recreation.

Now he believes he has the space to take advantage. Instead of what was essentially a small warehouse, Central Oregon Indoor Golf in its new location is more inviting, with tables and chairs and a couch that allow players to wait in comfort for their turns to swing.

With the availability of beer and wine for purchase, the facility is much closer to what McCleery had originally intended.

“We wanted it to be more like a ‘man cave,’” McCleery says.

“The goal is starting to be realized, which is to grow this thing to multiple machines and to add a little restaurant and bar,” McCleery adds, envisioning a sort of combination sports bar and golf center.

A full bar and restaurant are still a ways off.

But the seeds of growth appear to have been planted.

Bill McClure, a 63-year-old Prineville dentist who lives in Bend, is a regular at Central Oregon Indoor Golf. And he says the new facility is a marked improvement.

McClure, who says he practices with McCleery’s simulators about three times a week, calls the new facility “a little warmer and closer,” and should increase foot traffic and help golfers experience what keeps McClure coming back.

“It is a good way to keep your swing going,” says McClure, and avid golfer with a 15 handicap. “It’s not real golf the whole time, but it is enough golf that you can work on your swing and actually work on different clubs for distances and things like that. It’s a lot of fun.”

McCleery is hopeful that he can now attract more golfers like McClure.

McCleery’s golf leagues on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights are nearly full for this winter. And he has thoughts of adding more leagues on Monday and Friday nights, if demand warrants.

“He’s got guys coming in just about every night playing leagues,” says 70-year-old Bend orthodontist Vince Quas, another regular at Central Oregon Indoor Golf. “And they are having a really good time.”

League nights can get rowdy, McCleery says, with hooting and hollering that would largely be frowned upon in a more conventional golf setting.

That is just the kind of atmosphere McCleery had dreamed of when he first decided to open, after having a similar experience himself at an indoor center in Klamath Falls.

“That’s what hooked me on these things,” McCleery says of the simulators. “I was down there playing in a league on Thursday nights in Klamath Falls … on two of these things (simulators). And I just fell in love with it. I was having a blast.”

Central Oregon Indoor Golf

Basic per-hour rates: $20 for singles, $30 for twosomes, $35 for threesomes, $40 for foursomes

Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 9:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m.; Sunday, 10 a.m.-6:30 p.m.; Monday, appointment only. Tee times are encouraged.

Contact: www.coigbend.com; 541-633-7277

Address: 1245 S.E. Third Street, Suite C-4, Bend