![]() We’re trying to get them to sell an experience.”Īmong the early adopters is Matt Clay, a golf instructor and general manager at Del Mar Golf Center, just north of San Diego. “Many driving range operators have spent so much time thinking about how to sell balls. “One of the big challenges is, how do you get someone to change the way they think?” Mehta says. Though bays equipped with Toptracer have been shown to generate nearly double the revenue of bays without it, selling the idea isn’t always easy-not in an industry that’s widely set in its ways. For range operators, the costs pencil out to roughly $225 per bay, per month. ![]() Topgolf makes its money by leasing the equipment. (One game in development-taking aim at a virtual range-picker - sounds like it ought to be a hit among golfers of all stripes, everywhere.) In anticipation of going global, Topgolf is developing localized versions of Toptracer Range, translated into other languages, with graphics and games adapted to different cultures. An even larger market lies overseas, with 4,500 stand-alone driving ranges in Japan and Korea alone. There are roughly 900 independent driving ranges in this country, according to the National Golf Foundation, along with 15,000 golf courses, many of which have ranges of their own. A glance at the numbers shows ample room for growth. Since last year, when Topgolf began offering Toptracer Range to driving ranges in this country, eight practice facilities here have adopted it. FlyingTee, a golf and entertainment venue based in Jenks, Okla., recently unveiled Flite, a bundle of technology and services designed to generate a similar kind of range-of-the-future fun. Topgolf is not the only company with this vision. The idea here is to satisfy something in between.” “On the other, you have Topgolf, these fully gameified venues that draw demographics which are pretty much unrecognizable to traditional golf markets. ![]() “If you think of the spectrum of golf facilities, on the one side you have traditional driving ranges and the traditional audience they attract,” Mehta says. The aim is to find a happy medium between the rollicking good times of a Topgolf and the old-school solemnity of your grandpa’s driving range. Unlike Topgolf facilities, which rely on limited-flight balls with microchips embedded in them, Toptracer systems work with ordinary golf balls-a key distinction for golfers who are out to work on their games. The goal is not to replicate the Topgolf experience. In the coming years, Topgolf hopes to install Toptracer Range in thousands of facilities around the world. Less serious golfers can laugh it up while competing in skills games, or playing virtual golf on simulated courses. Topgolf is now supplying that system to driving ranges, a high-tech bundle of cameras, screens and software designed to turn a hitting bay into something more.Īlong with tracking and displaying shot-shape, Toptracer Range captures a host of data, including distance, ball speed and launch angle. Key to that effort is Toptracer Range, a camera-based shot-tracking system that may sound familiar CBS just started using Toptracer for PGA Tour broadcasts. For other people, the traditional driving range is not an especially good experience and it’s certainly not a great gathering place. “That’s fun for serious golfers like you and me, but as we know, that demographic is steady if not shrinking. “A traditional driving range is essentially an empty field where people hit balls,” says Ani Mehta, vice president of corporate development for Topgolf Entertainment Group. Having colonized the space where golf and entertainment meet with its own quickly multiplying venues (there are now 44 Topgolf locations in the United States and the United Kingdom, and counting), the Dallas-based company has broadened its ambitions: It wants to revolutionize the practice grounds next door. In short, your driving range may look something like a Topgolf.Īt least, Topgolf is working hard to make it so. It may be a destination where you hang out with your buddies, eating, drinking and listening to music while smacking shots under the watch of ball-tracking cameras, in the glow of on-screen graphics that display results of games you play against your friends. In the not-so-distant future, your local driving range may no longer be a place where you buy a bucket, retreat to a bay and bang balls by your lonesome until the balls are gone.
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