Macpherson also won A$10,000 (\u00a34,979) to go with his spot at the tournament, which begins on Thursday in New South Wales, Australia, with a prize pot of A$800,000 (\u00a3609,624). <\/p>\n
With plenty of experience on the simulator and spotting Golf NSW was introducing a new virtual pathway as a way to qualify, he decided to enter. “It all paid off, thankfully,” he said. <\/p>\n
Macpherson’s triumph in the final, without touching a blade of grass, was secured on a course he knows well – Bonnie Doon, the third oldest golf club in Sydney. <\/p>\n
“I have played there a few times, so I know where I was going and stuff like that,” he added. “And I played quite a lot of sim golf when I’ve been practising, so I knew what spots to avoid and whatnot.”<\/p>\n
Indoor golf simulators have grown in popularity in recent years and are used as a training device by many of the sport’s top players. <\/p>\n
The technology uses a combination of hardware and software that allows golfers to play via a giant screen, without the need for a golf course or driving range.<\/p>\n
In January, major winners Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy launched Tomorrow’s Golf League (TGL), an indoor simulator league featuring PGA Tour players, which aimed “to take golf into the 21st Century”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Macpherson also won A$10,000 (\u00a34,979) to go with his spot at the tournament, which begins on Thursday in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-279529","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}