Courtesy of GolfZon
Nobody can say for sure what tomorrow will deliver, however it doesn’t damage to take an informed guess.
As golfers, we will gaze into the crystal ball and surprise: Is that this the way forward for course design?
The picture in query comes from Tianjin, a booming municipality in northern China, the place the ribbon was simply reduce on an out-of-the-box venue known as Metropolis Golf: a sprawling, indoor course that mixes digital and real-world play.
If that sounds a bit just like the SoFi Heart, the Palm Seaside Gardens, Fla., facility custom-built for the Tiger Woods-led golf league, TGL, yeah, properly, sorta. The distinction is that Metropolis Golf was designed for public play. And whereas the SoFi Heart will boast a single, large display screen and a single, modular inexperienced, Metropolis Golf options 18 screens for 18 holes with 18 artificial greens, unfold throughout 106,000 sq. ft (practically the equal of two soccer fields), inside an enormous conference middle.
It’s a full-blown, high-tech indoor course.
The corporate behind it’s GolfZon, the South Korea-based display screen golf large, whose honchos have hailed the mission as each bleeding-edge and eco-conscious: all of the high-tech pleasures of the sport, on a smaller footprint.
GolfZon chairman Kim Younger-Chan has described it as “probably the most superb city golf course,” providing “a brand new and distinctive golf expertise akin to enjoying a spherical on an actual course proper in the course of the town.”
Simulators are hardly new to golf, however their use in alt-golf-as-entertainment venues has been on the rise, evident in ideas starting from TGL to Fairway Social, Topgolf Swing Suites, X-Golf and 5 Iron Golf. Like these different venues, Metropolis Golf goals to additional faucet the golf-as-lifestyle market by providing extra providers and facilities, together with golf classes, merchandise, health courses and eating. (It additionally hosted a $700,000 display screen golf event final month.)
Neither is it meant to be the one one in all its sort. In case you’re trying to the long run, think about this: GolfZon says it envisions growth for Metropolis Golf into main cities around the globe.