It’s hard to shake a stick, or perhaps more pertinently, swing a golf club in London these days without bumping into an indoor golf facility of some shape or form.
Such has been the growth of these venues over the last 10 years or so that there are now more than 40 indoor golf spaces in the capital – more than any other city in Europe by quite some margin.
Access to a sizeable population of young professional customers has been the key driver behind the growth and the sheer concentration of swing studio and golf entertainment centres in London, but so has the progress in simulator technology that is at the beating heart of these establishments, which, when combined with a strong food and beverage offering, some comfortable sofas, mood lighting and a techno sound track, creates the perfect environment for some fun post-work entertainment or serious pre-work practice, or whichever way you choose to cut it.
While such venues were once tucked away in secretive basements or out-of-the-way industrial estates, today’s indoor golf facilities occupy prime real estate in and amongst trendy urban developments and busy office blocks, rubbing shoulders with high-end retail outlets, corporate HQs and swanky restaurants.
The latest indoor golf brand to join the likes of Urban Golf, Pitch, Tee Box and Caddi Club in the UK capital is the global behemoth that is Five Iron Golf, which already boasts over 30 sites in the US, along with recently opened venues in Saudi Arabia and Spain. The American-owned indoor golf chain opened its first UK site in Finsbury Avenue in Broadgate in July, with the 6,900 square feet flagship facility already proving a big hit with city workers.
The Broadgate outpost is the first of a ten-site franchise agreement in the UK, led by Five Iron Golf UK chief executive Eric Parker, which forms part of a £20 million expansion of the brand, providing the foundation for future growth in London and throughout the UK.
I visited the site at the beginning of August, just a few days after it first opened, to check out the facility, bringing along three fellow golfers, all in their late teens and early twenties, to give it a virtual spin. Although experienced players on real-life courses and pro-level online gaming golfers, none of my party had previously visited a golf-as-indoor-entertainment space, so were excellent guinea pigs for the Five Iron experience.
First off, the site is slap bang in the middle of the City, just a five-minute stroll from Liverpool Street station and surrounded by towering office blocks containing the corporate headquarters of any number of major banking and legal firms, along with upmarket shops and a wide range of restaurants. If location is your main driver, then Five Iron has nailed it, with thousands of young urban professionals just a greenside chip away from the front door.
The site itself anchors the ground floor of 1 Finsbury Avenue on the shiny new Broadgate Campus with floor-to-ceiling windows and a large outside terrace giving it a very inviting and refreshingly unintimidating feel as you walk up to the entrance, whose bold signage leaves you in no doubt about what lies within.
Step inside and aside from the unmistakeable sound of metal on urethane, the open plan interior looks more like an upmarket sports bar than a golf simulator venue – a place where you’re just a likely to stop by to watch a Premier League game with a few friends or work colleagues, than you are to play 18 virtual holes at Pebble Beach. As it turns out, Five Iron would like you do both, as one of the packages currently on offer builds in simulator time along with food and drinks and comfortable seating to watch a football match or any number of other sporting events on banks of big TV screens.
The eight simulator bays are spread about across the generous space – and each bay is almost wide enough to accommodate a left and right hander swinging at the same time. Each boasts TrackMan technology and provide access to more than 440 virtual golf courses, allowing players to practise, compete or simply discover new and inventive ways to miss fairways on several continents.
Callaway’s latest range of Quantum clubs are provided as part of the bay hire fee, with a variety of shaft flexes offered to suit your swing. Golfers can, of course, bring their own clubs, while members can keep a set stored on site for added convenience.
After 20 minutes spent warming up on the driving range – during which time every player’s swing stats were presented, analysed and pulled apart to almost painful levels of detail – we played a variety of virtual courses, including a few holes on Turnberry’s Ailsa course, a couple at JCB Golf & Country Club (LIV Golf had just been held there) and the closing stretch of Celtic Manor’s 2010 course (inspired following a recent visit by my playing partners).
As golfing obsessives, the level of detail provided by Trackman, including slow-motion overhead images of the clubhead at impact, provided plenty of talking points, while the incredible recreations of some familiar golf courses also impressed our group. As is the case with many simulators, the putting element of game play is exceptionally sensitive, and we quickly turned off that part of the game – two-putt gimmes from anywhere on the green and one-putts from six feet – in order to ensure we weren’t still tackling Turnberry’s third hole before the facility closed for the night.
Bays can be converted to non-golf activities like zombie dodgeball, multi-sport target games and a variety of shooting games, so you don’t need to be an experienced golfer to make use of the technology, and even if you’re new to golf, there are plenty of fun golfing challenges beyond the traditional driving range/simulator courses that most golfers expect from a simulator site.
We tried a couple of the golfing games, including one involving an urban landscape where you were hitting balls to greens on neighbouring tower blocks, but as true golfing aficionados we soon found ourselves wanting to return to real-life courses and trying to recreate hero shots on iconic holes from around the world.
In between shots we were kept supplied we a steady flow of drinks and light bites from Five Iron’s full-service bar and kitchen, whose menu includes a wide range of smash burgers, wood-fired pizzas and tapas-style eats, along with a creative range of craft cocktails and a sizeable choice of draught beers and soft drinks.
I’m not generally one for eating a three-course meal at the cinema, but with a four-ball sharing one bay you soon discover there is more than enough time to take down a couple of sliders or a few slices of pizza while your friends are sizing up an approach shot or deciding which club will bet extricate their ball from a fairway bunker. It’s way more than a cut above your average 10-pin bowling alley or multiplex fare, and was eagerly dispatched by my hungry, yet surprisingly culinary discerning mob.
The night of our visit, a Monday evening during the height of the city’s summer holidays, found the facility fully booked, with each bay generally featuring two players, although some, like ours, had four. Two seems like an ideal number if you want to play more shots while halving the cost of bay hire, which is currently around £60 an hour during peak times, although up to six players is possible as there is plenty of comfortable seating offered in each bay.
There was a casual corporate after-work drinks event taking place in the bar area and the TVs were showing live coverage of cricket’s The Hundred competition, so there is no pressure to play golf or even use the bays if that isn’t your bag.
With PGA-qualified coaching staff on-site for instruction and custom-fitting, and a number of leagues and special events taking place throughout the year, Five Iron Golf is open to members, pre-booked visitors and walk-ins, but judging by the early popularity of the venue, it won’t be long before new sites across London will be required to satisfy demand.
Feedback from my group of Gen Z golfers was overwhelmingly positive, and not just for the quality of the pepperoni pizzas, with all of them being thoroughly impressed with the concept and the execution. If anything, as technical golf nerds it was the quality of the technical swing data, as much as the simulator element of the game play, that got them most excited, but that’s the beauty of these places – you can make it as fun or as serious as you like. It’s entirely in your hands.
Looking at the broader golf entertainment space in the UK, and specifically in London, it will be interesting to find out at what point supply begins to meet demand, and when that curve begins to plateau, as with high rents and high start-up and running costs, strong membership uptake and renewals, along with a regular supply of new and returning visitors, will be required to ensure long-term survival.
Five Iron Broadgate is open from 6am-11pm Monday-Friday, 8am-10pm on Saturday, and from 11am-6pm on Sunday. Bay hire starts from £60 per hour for up to six people. For bookings and more details, visit fiveirongolf.co.uk or call 0203 7613599.