Golf simulators are booming across Australia, from garage setups to full commercial venues. And almost everyone building one makes the same expensive mistake: buying new clubs for a job that used clubs do better.
The maths of a simulator is unforgiving. Clubs get hit thousands of times, shared between players of every standard, occasionally clipped against screens and walls, and replaced without sentiment.
Nobody should be feeding brand-new retail clubs into that environment. Here's how to kit out a sim properly, whether it's your garage or your business, drawing on what we've learned supplying quality used clubs from Japan.
WHY USED IS THE ONLY RATIONAL CHOICE
Simulator use is high-volume and low-glamour. The ball never leaves the room, so nobody needs the marginal gains of this year's release, and depreciation on new gear is savage the moment it becomes shared equipment.
A used club in good condition performs identically indoors, costs a half to a third of new, and when it eventually retires, the financial loss is small enough not to matter.
For a home setup, that means your dream bag costs a normal bag's money. For a venue, it means fleet economics that actually work.
WHAT SURVIVES HEAVY SIMULATOR USE
Not all clubs are equal under fire, and this is where buying experience pays.
PING sits at the top of the durability list. The finishes wear slowly, the heads shrug off contact, and the broad fitting range covers most players. G-series irons and drivers are close to purpose-built for shared use.
Game-improvement heads from any major brand outlast blades for a simple reason: perimeter weighting spreads the punishment of off-centre strikes from players of wildly different abilities.
Steel shafts beat lightweight graphite in shared iron sets, and mid-weight stock graphite in woods handles the workload better than delicate aftermarket exotics. Save the Tour ADs for your own bag.
BUILDING THE HOME SIM BAG
For a home setup, you don't need fourteen clubs. Most sim golf is played with six: driver, a fairway wood or hybrid, a mid iron, a short iron, a wedge and a putter if your software counts them.
Buy used and that six-club core lands around $600 to $900 for genuinely good gear, which conveniently also clears our free-shipping threshold. Spend where it matters, on the driver and irons you'll hit most, and go simple everywhere else.
STOCKING A COMMERCIAL VENUE
Venue owners face a different equation: multiple bays, left and right handed players, every height and swing speed, and gear that has to look presentable because it represents the business.
The template that works: two or three shared sets per bay built from durable game-improvement heads, drivers in forgiving lofts, a handful of left handed options, which are chronically undersupplied in Australia but readily available from the deeper Japanese market, and a rotation plan that retires the most worn clubs each quarter.
Condition grading matters more here than anywhere. A transparent grade on every club means you know exactly what you're putting in customers' hands, and honest mid-grade clubs are the sweet spot: presentable, fully functional, priced for fleet economics.
A NOTE FOR VENUE OPERATORS
If you run a simulator venue, driving range or academy, it's worth knowing we work directly with venues on fleet supply, drawing on bi-monthly buying trips to Osaka for consistent, condition-graded stock at trade terms. Wholesale accounts open in September; reach out through the site and we'll make sure you're first in line.
THE VERDICT
Simulators reward the unsentimental buyer. Used, durable, honestly graded gear delivers everything the screen can measure at a fraction of the outlay, whether you're building a garage bay or a twelve-bay venue.
For more: start with our full used range, or browse left handed stock that venue operators struggle to find anywhere else. Flat $30 shipping from Adelaide, free over $600.