LEWISTON — In the dead of winter, with the course under feet of snow, people were still playing 18 holes at Martindale Country Club.

In December, Jim Day, Martindale’s majority owner, added three golf simulator bays to another of his companies, Winners’ Circle, and had Martindale digitally scanned, an involved process with low-flying mini-helicopters and Google Earth. It’s the first course in Maine digitally translated for simulator play.

Of all the 130 or so e-courses offered at Winners’ Circle, the Auburn one has been the most popular.

His target audience: The serious golfer who wants to keep the rust off their game.

“It’s somebody who likes to play golf who wants to keep their swing tuned through the off-season,” Day said. “They’ll come in as soon as the snow flies, and this year we had plenty of that.” 

The bays look like tall, curtained boxes with a giant screen, each connected to a P3ProSwing simulator. The P3, made by Les Otten’s Sports Vision Technologies out of Bethel, is being further refined for the commercial market, Day said.

“(Otten) made the opportunity available to me and we’ve been working closely with them to enhance the experience for the golfer,” he said.

After choosing a course between big names such as Pebble Beach, Big Sur, Monterey Bay, or going with Martindale, golfers can choose course conditions (soft, dry, normal), weather (clear, cloudy, showers, rain) and wind speed.

How many times do they opt for wind and rain?

“Not very often,” Day said, laughing. “But when we do a tournament we might consider it. We would try to match up our tournaments with what the pros were playing on TV.”

Tournaments this winter, held between Friday night and Sunday afternoon, attracted 30 to 40 players. At other times, Day said, it wasn’t unusual to see foursomes used to playing on actual greens come in to play a round together on the simulator. Others came in to take lessons from the assistant professional at Martindale.

The technology is leaps ahead of his first foray into golf simulators. In 1992, he’d opened Full Swing Golf also inside the Mollison Way business park with five machines and a putting area.

“The technology we chose was a brand new technology and they ended up having some difficulty supporting us, unfortunately,” Day said. “They wouldn’t stand up to the test of time.”

After a year, he decided the space was better used for off-track betting.

Day said he’s been happy with the reception, particularly for the Martindale course. His original goal was to keep things easier for local players: “If you know the course, you only have to learn the machine. You can see how realistic it is to real life. You can see the bench, the marker, the tee boxes to collect broken tees.”

Membership for the simulators costs between $100 and $150. Members can play for $15 an hour, nonmembers for $30 an hour.

Day expects them to stay open for another few weeks and during inclement weather in May.

Then, he suspects his players will be after the real thing.

kskelton@sunjournal.com