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Top
Golf – Practice Makes
Perfect
Fun
Why
was the European Ryder Cup Team captain raving about a driving
range in Watford last month? DOMINIC PEDLER gives his verdict
on a pioneering new golf game featured on this week’s BBC
Programme Tomorrow’s World.
Sam
Torrance has notched up a few course records in his time,
but the one he set in late November in the unlikely setting
of a high-tech driving range in modest Watford, was surely
the most unusual of his career.
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Next
year’s showdown at The Belfry was the last thing on
his mind as the Ryder Cup captain needed all his wits
about him when pitting himself against the very latest
golfing challenge that is Top Golf.
“It’s
an amazing concept, you’ll have to tear me way from
it,” said Torrance who, true to his word, wouldn’t leave
the 44-bay, two-tier complex until, at his 8th
attempt, he bettered the distinctly ambitious ‘par’
for the ‘game’ with an emphatic 271 points.
Pros
like Torrance don’t of course normally ‘do’ driving
ranges - but then Top Golf is light years removed from
the standard, sorry-
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bucket of moth-eaten, zero-compression balls that you
reload half-heartedly at some distant tree or skyscraper.
It’s a truly ‘interactive’ experience developed by World
Golf Systems in association with a dozen high-tech partners,
including Maxfli who perfected the rather special golf
balls that makes the whole thing work. |
So
just how does
it work?
Far
from promoting the mindless beating of balls, Top Golf forces
you to pits you to practice in a structured format, firing
at very specific targets, with each and every shot immediately
quantified in terms of distance and accuracy. Aiming at a
flag is hardly novel in golf, but charting your progress on
a private monitor that compiles your individual aggregate,
represents a giant leap in the way we conceive the whole driving
range experience.
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At
a stroke (or 20, actually, that you get in each game)
Top Golf restores three of the key elements that, until
now, driving ranges have been distinctly lacking.
Challenge,
focus and feedback.
Central
to the entire concept is the golf ball itself. So often
the weakest link at the range, the ammo dispensed with
one swipe of your personalised Smart Card are genuine
Maxfli XS Tour balls that each incorporate a tiny micro-chip
that allows its movements to be tracked as it lands
in any of the 11 ‘greens’ on the ten-acre range. These
targets appear as giant horizontal dartboards, spread
out at distances ranging from 25 yards to 240 yards,
though operating more logically like archery targets,
with concentric circles as numerical ‘zones’.
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The
closer your ball pitches to the flag the higher the score
that clocks up on the screen in your own bay. A little graphic
of the target even appears, indicating precisely which ‘slice
of the cake’ you’ve just landed in, along with a system of
bonus points to spice up the action.
So
how does the target ‘know’ that it’s you who’s just scored
a ‘bullseye’, stiffing it 175 yards away, rather than the
tiger golfer in the next bay? Good question. Remarkably, the
same microchip operates in conjunction with the patented I.D
Ball system which (as the same name suggests) automatically
recognises that each of those 20 seemingly interchangeable
Maxflis has been allocated to you. Place the ball on the Astroturf
mat (or tee-peg if you’re going for the furthest greens) and
the ball is ‘registered’ like a bar-code at your local supermarket
check-out. A game typically takes 10 minutes but if you’re
still there two hours later (and it is floodlit), agonising
over which flag to pepper with your final throw of the dice,
golf’s answer to Big Brother
still knows it’s you.
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But
forget the techie specs, here is golf as an irresistible
blend of Ten-Pin Bowling, electronic darts and snooker
- with just a dash of Who
Wants To be A Millionaire?
For
as with all these, so the success of Top Golf (standing
for ‘Target Oriented Play’) hinges on tension whether
you’re intent on topping the electronic leaderboard
in the clubhouse or just struggling to save face on
golf’ version of a lad’s night out. As with all those
games, the scoring system here is
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designed
to make you think. Just how are you going to do play those
last two balls when you’re 10 points from glory? A drive into
the ‘outer’ of the 250-yard green will see you home and dry
with a ball to spare. But miss the target altogether, and
it’s a stableford-style ‘blob’. Perhaps two 5-irons to the
middle target would be the best strategy?
And
if all this sounds very Tomorrow’s
World, sure enough the programme’s crew were down
recently for an item to be broadcast on BBC on Wednesday December
6th. Tune in at 7 pm to find Steve Redgrave, Olympic
hero turned keen amateur golfer, notching up a creditable
125 points at his first attempt.
Still,
it wasn’t anywhere near the 250 points that the techies suggest
represents the ‘par’ against which the system automatically
calculates your Top Golf handicap. Our guess is that a fair
Standard Scratch Score will emerge at around the 222 mark
that Torrance clocked at his third attempt. Sam had three
blobs on his ‘card’ (see printout) on that occasion - but
that’s golf - while his crucial 11th ball (that
always counts double) netted him an outrageously useful 26
points. Sam’s course record of 271 already looks like taking
some beating, while the ‘Maximum 400’ is destined to become
a cult, golfing Holy Grail. Top Golf’s equivalent of the Nine-Dart
Finish and snooker’s 147 requires 20, flawless 20-point ‘Bulls
Eyes’ at the furthest targets, making the elusive European
Tour ‘59’ (or even the Grand Slam) look like mere bagatelle
(so prove me wrong, Tiger!).
Ultimately
the game should be welcomed for encouraging golf practice
by retaining the human element while using technology in a
way that is practical, informative and just plain fun. Purists
will no doubt claim that it betrays the traditions of the
game - just as they did with one-day cricket, penalty shoot-outs
and sudden-death playoffs. Others will point to various quirks,
with the system of bonus points in particular hardly logical
though surely equivalent to the element of luck that exists
in every form of golf.
Still
others will point to the Americanised culture of ‘target golf’
that the concept inherently encourages, (while, at the other
extreme, this writer can report that drastically mis-hit shots
can be rewarded by landing on greens other than the one intended).
Finally,
the cost structure that varies between £1.80 and £3.60 (according
to the system of credits and peak/off-peak times) - for just
20 balls - is obviously far removed from your standard golf
range.
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But,
then the ‘whole new ball game’ cliché is appropriate,
as this is a very different form of entertainment.
We
can’t halt the march of technology and it doesn’t take
too much imagination to see how the principle will evolve,
especially when the Japanese get their hands on it as
the system goes global. Greens will no doubt improve
to register exact distances rather than broad ‘bands’,
while the spin-factor of the
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ball - currently irrelevant – must surely also be brought
into the equation. |
And
don’t let’s ignore the Internet potential: standardisation
should mean that worldwide leagues could be set up with players
in different locations competing against each other, with
action relayed over the in-bay monitors.
The
sky’s the limit.
And
if challenge and motivation don’t deliver the necessary improvement
in your game, the Watford centre also happens to be home to
a branch of the David Leadbetter Academy. Take your pick from
a variety of top instruction packages (individuals and groups)
with some appetising ‘seasonal specials’ currently on offer.
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Also
on-site is a well-stocked American Golf Discount outlet;
the Bayview café and bar, an indoor putting green; with
plans afoot to pipe Sky
Sports to the giant leaderboard screen -
all in a space-age clubhouse that looks, from a distance,
like a miniature version of the Millennium Dome.
But
don’t let that put you off. Beam yourself up to Watford
and enter the golf zone…..
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FACT
FILE
TopGolf
Game Centre
Bushey
Mill Lane
Watford
Hertfordshire
WD24
7AB
Tel:
01923 222045
Directions:
From the M1 junction 5, take the A4008 South towards Watford,
Go right at the first roundabout into Colonial Way.At
the next roundabout go right into Radlett Road and first right
into Bushey Mill Lane.
Website:
wwwtopgolf.co.uk
(check for complete details of prices and membership)
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