The beauty of the game is that it takes us out of our workaday routines, away from screens, into the fresh air, kissed by the wind, warmed by the sun, feeling the earth beneath our feet.
Or not.
It’s a brave new world, and our favorite pastime has evolved with it. Indoor golf is no longer the oxymoron it used to be. Simulators, of course, have been around for years. And for the past two seasons, Tour pros have even been competing on the simulated layouts of TGL.
An indoor course that anyone can play.
That’s the pitch from CityGolf USA, which recently announced what it describes as “America’s first full 18-hole indoor golf course,” set to open in Nashville this winter.
Keep reading, though, and you realize that “indoor course” is being loosely defined. CityGolf USA is not to be confused with Megalodome, a concept that calls for an executive course of par-3s and par-4s, housed within a sprawling complex of interconnected domes, just outside Chicago (though whether it’ll ever get built is another matter).
CityGolf USA promises something different — a hybrid of virtual and traditional golf, with 18 sequential holes played on Golfzon simulators inside a 175,000-square-foot warehouse. Smack your shot into the screen, and once your digital ball has landed, the screen lifts to reveal a putting surface on which you finish out the hole. Shades of TGL, for sure.
Along with this contemporary form of the game, the venue will include the kind of extras first popularized in the alt-golf industry by Topgolf, including a restaurant, a bar, a pro shop, private event spaces and certified PGA teaching pros.
However you feel about simulator golf and these venues — personally, they’re not my jam — it’s hard to deny that the game remains ripe for disruption, especially in urban areas, where time is short and land is scarce. That’s the target market for CityGolf USA, which says that Nashville is the first of multiple planned locations around the country, all aiming to reframe what a round of golf can be.
Tobacco Road sprouts a short course: Mike Strantz reframed our understanding of what a course could be, incorporating classic design elements into wonderfully whimsical creations, nowhere more famously than at Tobacco Road in North Carolina. And though Strantz himself is no longer with us (he died of cancer in 2005), Tobacco Road now has a short course that taps the architect’s iconoclastic spirit. The Matchbox, a 12-hole par-3 layout with synthetic turf (and a mix of real-sand and faux bunkers) blended into the natural landscape. It opened Aug. 1. You can get a closer look at it in the video below.
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The latest whispers from Whispering Pines: In the same North Carolina Sandhills region, Kyle Franz’s redo of the Pines Course, one of two 18-holers at the Country Club of Whispering Pines, should be ready for play in September. Its reopening will expand the portfolio of Ross Resorts, the same ownership group for which Franz restored three other prominent area courses, Mid Pines, Pine Needles and Southern Pines.
A taste of Candyroot: One more from the Carolinas: Candyroot Lodge, a resort-in-the-making near Jefferson, S.C., about 80 miles southeast of Charlotte, will welcome preview play on its first course starting on Oct. 28. Designed by Broomsedge architect Mike Koprowski, the course stands to be a game-changer for a golf-mad Charlotte region that is relatively light on public-access destination golf. In lieu of traditional tee times, Candyroot will be selling day passes: all-you-can-eat golf, food, drinks and a bag of swag for $175. Those passes will go on sale on the Candyroot website on Sept. 8.
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