The present invention relates to a device for practising golf indoors and outdoors. More particularly the invention concerns a device in the form of a cupboard or cabinet containing a framework that supports damping elements.

Background Golf practising is often complicated by long travels to good practising courses that in addition are expensive to use.

This has led to the development of several different equipment for indoor or outdoor golf practising in limited areas. Some examples of such prior art equipment are given below.

US patent No. 5,116, 056 describes an equipment for indoor practising of golf swings, particularly driving range practising, from a teeing spot against a net assembly. With "driving range"is in this context meant an arrangement for practising swings with high force and speed. The equipment according to this patent comprises a net assembly with an angular support rail attached to the ceiling of the room. The equipment covers a large angular area and thus provides a high degree of safety with respect to erroneous swings. It has however a size and a type of assembly that most people are reluctant to set up at home in their living room or in a office with relatively limited space.

US patent No. 5,409, 230 concerns equipment for indoor practising of all kinds of golf swings, included driving range. In the same manner as for the previously discussed patent, the equipment includes rails to be mounted to the ceiling, rendering parts of the equipment visible in an unsympathetic manner when not in use.

US patent No. 1,166, 496 (from 1915) shows a ballstop arrangement for indoor golf practising. The equipment comprises a curtain suspended from a support. The equipment is not suited for being left visible in a living room or an office when not in use, and if designed to tolerate substantial erroneous swings, it will be large and unhandy to move.

US patent No. 5,042, 813 describes equipment for golf practising where pockets are arranged to indicate where the balls hit. This equipment does not seem to be designed to handle high force swings and is not suited to be left visible in an ordinary room when not

in use. It must either be packed away after use each time or only be used in a room particularly used for practising and the like.

Also US patent No. 1,785, 150 concerns equipment for practising golf swings, where the main purpose is to mechanically show the point of impact of the ball (hit point) on a plate or in a cabinet not far from the tee. This system does not seem to be particularly well suited for high force (driving range), and provides a limited vertical error tolerance. A main focus of this patent is the mechanism for returning the balls to the tee.

US patent no. 5,354, 062 describes a cabinet for storing golf clubs and for practising putting.

US patent No. 6,319, 145 concerns equipment for catching golf balls having a design quite like a hockey goal. In the"goal"is arranged means to damp the ball speed and an inclined floor that ensures that the ball is returned in the direction of the user. The equipment is not designed to be left permanently in an ordinary room and it provides limited tolerance for erroneous swings unless dimensioned in a way that makes it very unhandy.

Sweedish laid open publication No. 459,395 also describes a device for catching golf balls with a"goal"shape. The device is designed in a way to be collapsed and stowed away easily when not in use. It seems to have low tolerance for errors sideways and is definitely not suited for being left visible in a living room when not in use.

Objective It is thus an object of the present invention to provide a device for golf practising including practising"driving range"type swings with high force in limited areas, such as indoors in a common living room or in a regular office, with a high degree of safety/ tolerance for erroneous swings both horizontally and vertically.

It is a further object to provide said device with an aesthetic appearance so that it may be left visible also when not in use, hereunder to avoid permanent, visible installations of rails or the like in the ceiling.

It is still further an object to provide a device that may be used outdoors in urban environment or in other environments where for safety reasons the balls must be prevented from being hit away with high force.

The invention The above mentioned and other objects of the inventions have been reached by the device according to the invention, which is defined by the characterizing part of claim 1.

Preferred embodiments of the invention are disclosed by the dependent claims.

The device according to the present invention comprising a cabinet is particularly intended for indoor use, but may also be used outdoors, provided the cabinet is manufactured in a material that can withstand moisture, excessive sun exposure and temperature variations.

As more readily understood by the following detailed description of some preferred embodiments of the invention, the device according to the invention provides a high degree of safety/error tolerance both in horizontal and vertical direction. Furthermore the device according to the invention does not require a permanent attachment to a wall or a ceiling, though it may be mounted as a wall cabinet if desired. More particularly it may be designed as a natural and beautiful peace of furniture when not in use. Activation for use is simple and is performed in seconds by simple manipulations.

Detailed description with reference to drawings Fig. 1 is a front and a side view of an embodiment of the invention with closed, side hinged cabinet doors.

Fig. 2 is a front view of the cabinet of Fig. 1 with open doors in a situation prior to the frame work being moved from its passive to its active position.

Fig. 3 shows in perspective the cabinet of Fig. 1 and 2 with open doors and the frame work in its active position.

Fig. 4 shows a different embodiment of the invention from that of Figures 1-3, with a top hinged cabinet door.

Fig. 5 shows a simple system for returning the balls from the device according to the invention.

Fig. 6 shows a mechanical system for the indication of where the balls hits in connection to a device according to the invention.

Fig. 7 shows schematically a system for electronic registration of hit points etc. in connection to a device according to the invention.

Fig. 8 is a view of an embodiment where the frame work is attached to a certain lining in the cabinet of a device according to the invention.

The cabinet as depicted on the Figures 1-2 is designed with side hinged doors, where a left hand door lv and a right hand door lh each covers half the cabinet front. Other types of doors may be used, like sliding doors that is made to be pushed aside vertically or horizontally, doors that are hinged at the bottom or at the top, or simply a curtain for a door. Fig. 4 shows a cabinet that is similar with the cabinet of Fig. 1-2 but for the door It that is top hinged.

Fig. 2 shows an embodiment of a framework 2,3 for suspending all of or parts of the damping elements. For the sake of simplicity the damping elements are not shown in Fig.

2.

Furthermore, the damping elements 4-7 shown in Fig. 3 are depicted as comprising simple nets, divided in sections, a centre section 4, a top section 5, a right hand section 6h, a left hand section 6v and a bottom section 7. While successful swings lead to hits in the centre section, the remaining sections provide safety/error tolerance.

Fig. 5 shows a variant of the embodiment shown in Fig. 3, the cabinet being provided with an inclined channel for automatic ball return. The depicted inclined channel is divided into two sections, a first section following the damping material 4 and a second section leading in the direction of the tee. Balls that hit the centre section 4 of the damping elements will fall into the channel and roll back to the user.

The damping elements 4-7 may be manufactured in varying materials, such a dense textile materials or mats made in natural or synthetic fabrics, multilayer upholstered materials,

multilayer nets etc. in addition to the depicted, simple nets. The lower part of the damping elements may be entirely or partially free from the framework, and may be provided with weights at their lower edge so as to avoid excessive fluttering in the wind and to improve their damping effect which is useful for balls hitting with high speed. The entire damping material or part of it may be manufactured with an effective mass that is larger than that of a golf ball, thereby providing a means for additional damping of the balls.

It is also possible to use one type of damping material for the parts of the damping materials that extend out aside the cabinet front and other types of material or configuration for damping elements that are arranged in front of the cabinet 1 or within the cabinet, e. g. as shown in Figures 6 and 7 as further discussed below.

When the cabinet doors are opened, cf. Fig. 2, a framework 2,3 appears from which the damping materials are suspended. The detailed configuration of the framework may vary, but it is designed so that it may easily be folded out from the cabinet and thereby pulls the damping elements 4-7 out from therein, so that the damping elements both horizontally and vertically will cover an area that is larger than the cabinet front and preferably significantly larger than this, cf. Fig. 3. This ensures a high degree of tolerance for erroneous swings both in horizontal and vertical direction. It should be emphasized that the framework as shown in Figs. 2 and 3, in principle is independent of the door construction and may have the same design even if the door is of the type shown in Fig. 4.

In Fig. 3 the damping elements 4-7 in active position are outstretched in a funnel like shape, i. e. that the framework extends both sideways/upways and forward relative to the front of the cabinet 1. It is, however, not mandatory that the framework extends in a forward direction from the cabinet. It may also be designed to extend mainly or entirely sideways/upways out so that the damping elements form a substantially plane ball catching surface.

The framework 2,3 as presented in Figures 2 and 3 is independent of the door construction and the elements 3 of the framework mainly ensure that the damping elements 6v and 6h are horizontally and vertically outstretched while elements 2 of the framework mainly ensure that damping element 5 is outstretched with its upper edge at a vertical level higher than the top of the cabinet 1.

In case of erroneous swings the balls will often move with high speed along the floor/ ground. It is therefore important that the closest lower edge of the damping elements is designed without any hard rim from which the ball can rebound back into the room.

Parts of the framework 2,3 may by means of hinges and/or sliding mechanisms (not shown) on the inside of the doors, be designed to fold out automatically when the doors of the cabinet are opened and correspondingly designed to fold in when the doors are shut.

The invention covers both frameworks that need to be folded out manually to their active position and frameworks that wholly or partly are folded out automatically with one or more of the doors.

A particular tee mat (not shown) that does not constitute part of the present invention, may be used in connection with the cabinet and placed preferably in a predetermined distance from the same. The distance may be indicated to the user by means of a string attached with one of its ends to the tee mat and its other end to the cabinet, thus preventing the possibility of placing the tee mat too far from the cabinet. The tee mat may be a simple synthetic mat that spares the floor or another surface, optionally a mat particularly designed too place a tee on.

In other embodiments of the invention the centre section 4 shown in Fig. 3 as a simple net, may be replaced by a net 4'with openings to collectors arranged behind the net 4'to mechanically indicate the hit points of the balls and optionally to define a number of points representing the quality of each swing. Figure 6 shows such a variant with a number of openings 9index (12 at the alternative shown in Fig. 6) distributed horizontally and vertically over the centre section 4'of the damping elements, said openings leading to collectors arranged therebehind. Around each opening 9. the damping element is mainly funnel shaped so that the balls are guided to the closest opening 9 even if the hit point is somewhat sideway displaced relative to the opening.

Alternatively the centre section 4 of the damping elements may be wholly or partially replaced by a plate 4"or the like as shown in Fig. 7, that includes means for electronic registration of the hit point and possibly also the velocity or kinetic energy of each ball.

The resolution of the electronic gridwork may vary. Fig. 7 shows schematically the back side of a plate 4"divided in 20 grids. Sensors l0jndeX are distributed such that there is a

sensor for each grid of the plate 4". For simplicity only 4 of the 20 sensors are depicted in Fig. 7. The front side of the plate 4"will be covered by a soft material for damping the ball. Cables 11 connect each sensor to an electronic device 12 that based on impulses from the sensors performs the desired calculations, visualization and optionally storing of information. The sensors, electronics or signal processing are not as such parts of the present invention and therefore not described in more detail here.

With such an electronic registration, not constituting part of the present invention, several options for the further processing of the measured data are available. The hit point may e. g. be visualized by means of light spots or the like, and/or the theoretical length and deviation of the swing may be calculated. Alternatively a score is produced and stored for later use and/or added to previously obtained score for use in competition or for comparison with own earlier series.

It is possible to combine the device according to the present invention with other types of equipment for registration of direction and velocity of the swing than those mentioned above with reference to Figures 6 and 7, e. g. existing equipment arranged to register such information instantaneously at the teeing spot.

The framework 2,3 to which the damping elements 4,7 are attached, may be attached directly to the cabinet 1 or to a sleeve 13 that in turn is attached to the cabinet, cf. Fig. 8.

The latter construction makes it simple to replace the"organs"if it is desired to change functionality, e. g. from a cabinet only featuring damping elements 4-7 to a cabinet that also holds electronics 10-12 for indication of hit points and velocity. The framework 2,3 may be rigidly attached to the cabinet 1 or to a sleeve 13, but it may also be resiliently suspended (not shown) so that also the framework/suspension contributes to damping the kinetic energy of a ball hitting the damping element. It is readily understood that such a resilient or damping function, in the case where the framework 2,3 is attached to a sleeve 13, may be arranged between the sleeve 13 and the cabinet 1. In the latter case the entire sleeve 13 will be moved a short distance backwards into the cabinet 1 against the force from one or more shock absorbers (not shown) when a ball with significant velocity hits a damping element (e. g. damping element 4), and immediately thereafter the sleeve will return to its origin.

The cabinet may be of a stand alone type, it may be attached to a wall, attached to the floor or it may have wheels that makes it easy to move. It may optionally be provided with wheels that may be raised and lowered as desired.

The cabinet 1 preferably has a size allowing clubs, balls, a tee mat and possibly other related equipment to be stored in the cabinet when it is not in use. Normally such equipment is inserted through the front opening of the cabinet, but it may be equally convenient to arrange a particular side or back door (not shown) for such related equipment, as the front side of the cabinet to a large extent will be occupied by the mechanisms related to the framework 2,3 and damping elements 4-7. A door in the back side of the cabinet 1 is obviously not convenient if the cabinet is to be attached to a wall.

It is mandatory that the parts 5-7 of the damping elements 4-7 that are intended to catch balls hitting aside the cabinet front, are suspended from-and outstretched by-said framework 2,3 while damping element 4 in front of or inside the cabinet may optionally be attached to the framework 2,3 or directly to the cabinet 1 itself. This damping element may be designed as a mat that is provided with a particular frame or lining of its own and may be placed anywhere between the back wall and the opening of the cabinet and may optionally be slidably arranged. Such a mat may possibly include means for electronic registration of hit point and/or the kinetic energy as previously discussed. In this connection it is worth noticing that not all damping elements or parts of the damping elements necessarily are suspended from the framework.

In case of solid doors that are arranged to swing open, also the inside parts of the doors may be provided with damping elements. Parts of the framework may thus be attached directly to the inside of each door. If a particularly large catch surface is desired, this may be obtained by providing the cabinet with side hinged doors that overlap each other in their closed position. I. e. that one of the doors is at least partly hidden behind the other door in its closed position.

Also for the embodiments where the device includes a framework that is folded out independently of the doors, and in its active position suspends a damping element in front of the open door sides, the door inside portions may be provided with damping material.

Upon a high velocity swing the first layer of damping material, e. g. a net suspended by the

framework, will absorb parts of the ball's kinetic energy. If the ball streches the net so far that it comes in contact with the material on the inside of the door, this will-as a further damping element-absorb the remaining part of the ball's kinetic energy.

With cabinet or cupboard is primarily meant such with solid walls and doors. It also covers however, cabinets with doors and possibly walls with openings like in louvre walls or the like, or even a cabinet with only a rigid framework where all the walls are made of soft materials like textiles or the like.

For indoor use the cabinet may be made in wooden materials, preferably in decorative and strong wood like oak, beech, etc but may also be made in materials like brushed or coated steel or aluminium, coated synthetic materials or hardboard plates etc. Choice of material for the cabinet is not critical with respect to its function and is normally based on aesthetic considerations and cost considerations. For outdoor use the choice is made between materials that can withstand moisture, sunlight and temperature variations without having its properties being significantly deteriorated.

The functionality of the device according to the invention may be varied in many different ways. The cabinet may be arranged to be opened by the deposition of coins, for being placed in different locations, like hotels or private or public establishments.