Golf on 6, Mahopac
DAVID PROPPER PHOTO
Everyone is welcomed at Golf on 6 Indoor Golf Center.
There are people that come in just to have some fun with friends and more serious players that want to sharpen their techniques. With three golf stimulators and a friendly atmosphere, the Route 6 location has quickly made a name for itself among golfing circles.
“You see all different types of players,” co-owner Dino Odoardi said.
The store opened Feb. 1, though for the first ten days people from the community were welcomed to come in and try the virtual courses free of charge. On Feb. 11, the first official day for business, customers kept flocking in to get some swings in while the weather is still too frigid and snowy to play outside. Odoardi, Jerry Delbene and Joe Vittoria, three buddies that play golf together, own the business.
The trio decided to open up the golf center when they had trouble leasing the space out after a dollar store decided to close down. With Delbene and Vittoria owning the gas station next door, the three business partners decided to take the plunge and turn the space into a high tech man cave/she-shed.
Delbene, a Yorktown resident, described it as a spur of the moment decision to open up a type of place that’s nowhere else in Putnam. It took about six months to get everything completed, including getting three golf stimulators in. The indoor golf center will be adding a clubhouse where customers can grab a beer or some food in the coming weeks.
The three men, all graduates of Manhattan College, have known each other for decades, with Vittoria and Delbene first cousins and Odoardi and Vittoria brother-in-laws. The three have bonded over golf, playing on local courses for 20 years.
“We’re hackers,” Vittoria, a Yorktown resident, said. “We just go out and have fun.”
The center is filling a void that was left empty in the region when an outdoor driving range on the Somers/Mahopac border was closed a couple years ago to make room for a housing and commercial development.
“For the area it was something that was missing,” Delbene said.
While this is the busy season for indoor golf because of the weather, once it gets warmer, Vittoria said the hope to attract people that work during the day and can’t get to a course before sunset. Vittoria also wants to get people that watch golf but have never really tried playing it and are intimidated to go out on a real course.
“We’re hoping to be that niche where they come, relax, hit a ball, no one is going to judge them,” Vittoria said. “So that’s another group we’re going to try to reach out to.”
Odoardi, a North Salem resident, said the center is also trying to attract younger golfers by reaching out to local school systems to have their golf teams try out the stimulators.
Private lessons are also offered with the tutelage of a golf pro.
And despite the general complications that come with owning a business, the three have a solid relationship. Even when asked who the best golfer of the three men was, there was no hesitation is was Odoardi.
“We all get along, which is the key thing,” Joe said.
Golf on 6 is located at 250 Route 6 in Mahopac and its phone number is 845-533-5335.
