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On Wednesday, the Practice Swing Center, a golf simulator, officially opened its doors with a ribbon cutting hosted by the LaGrange-Troup County Chamber of Commerce.

The center is halved between the practice center and RT Systems, a software development company created by co-owners Karin Thompson and Rod Thompson.

This addition to RT Systems was a passion project.

“The center is something I’ve always wanted to do and since we had the room to do it, we did,” Rod said.

The center has a virtual golf simulator with over 200 unique courses that allows users to play a full round of golf, get practice swinging the club and collect feedback on their game.

“You get a lot of information that you don’t get when you’re playing golf on the golf course,” Rod said.

The center has been used by high school and college golf teams and is open for community use.

“We want to help folks have fun with golf and improve their skills with the features of the simulator,” Karin said. “We make the simulators available to the LaGrange College Golf team and would love to talk with other golf team coaches about how we can help their teams.”

The center allows the community the ability to play golf all year-round despite the low temperatures in the winter or the high temperatures in the summer, she said.

“People can come here and play a full game of golf in two hours, rather than the four or five hours it normally takes to get around a course,” Karin said. “Most people don’t have a full afternoon that they can dedicate to golf, but they might be able to sneak out of the office at three o’clock, grab our last tee time, come over here and play till five, having the fun of it.”

Rod likes to step in and help where he can with suggestions, Karin said.

“He’ll watch the college guys and go, ‘Well, you’re not lined up quite right, and that’s why it’s cutting his slicing off to the right’ and try to suggest a few things to them without overstepping and trying to coach.”

“We’re enjoying the people who have come already. We’ve already had some customers and learning about them and the interaction with them has been great,” Karin said.

Practice Swing Center is located at 267 South Davis Road and is open Wednesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.