Courtesy of GolfZon
Nobody can say for sure what tomorrow will carry, however it doesn’t damage to take an informed guess.
As golfers, we are able to 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, effectively, sorta. The distinction is that Metropolis Golf was designed for public play. And whereas the SoFi Heart will boast a single, big display and a single, modular inexperienced, Metropolis Golf options 18 screens for 18 holes with 18 artificial greens, unfold throughout 106,000 sq. ft (almost the equal of two soccer fields), inside a large conference heart.
It’s a full-blown, high-tech indoor course.
The corporate behind it’s GolfZon, the South Korea-based display golf big, whose honchos have hailed the venture 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 “essentially the most preferrred city golf course,” providing “a brand new and distinctive golf expertise akin to enjoying a spherical on an actual course proper in the midst of 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 further companies and facilities, together with golf classes, merchandise, health courses and eating. (It additionally hosted a $700,000 display golf match final month.)
Neither is it meant to be the one one among its sort. For those who’re seeking to the longer term, take into account this: GolfZon says it envisions enlargement for Metropolis Golf into main cities around the globe.