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Hello GBR,

Today’s edition opens with further evidence of golf’s growing investment in technology, data and automation. Bushnell has connected launch-monitor data directly to its rangefinder ecosystem, Uneekor is launching a global simulator competition, and Toptracer has reported a 29% rise in installations ahead of its largest-ever activation at The Open.

The R&A’s full acquisition of DotGolf and Gullane’s use of robotic mowers also show how digital infrastructure is becoming increasingly important across the game.

Elsewhere, LIV Golf is reportedly honing in on securing funding, which could prove crucial to the League going ahead in 2027, while the final big read examines the commercial divide emerging inside the PGA Tour’s proposed 2028 structure.

Premium Championship Series events may attract sponsorship packages approaching $30 million, but the more difficult question is whether the less-fancied Challenger Series can offer sufficient value to existing partners without the Tour’s leading players.

Enjoy today’s read and have a good weekend.

BUSHNELL LINKS RANGEFINDER DATA TO CLUB RECOMMENDATIONS

Bushnell Golf has expanded its Link ecosystem to connect the Tour V7 Shift rangefinder with the new $2,499 Launch Pro Circle B and Foresight app.

The system records launch monitor data, stores it in MyBag and transfers it by Bluetooth to the rangefinder, allowing golfers to receive “playing-as” yardages and two-club recommendations based on their own carry distances and dispersion when they shoot a flag or target. The Circle B uses a three-camera system positioned beside the ball, rather than behind it, to capture impact data indoors or outdoors, with Bushnell’s Tim Tiel saying it can record “about 24 inches of ball flight right at the moment of impact.” The free Launch Pro subscription tracks carry distance, ball speed, spin and launch data, while the $199-a-year Silver plan adds clubhead speed, smash factor, club path and angle of attack, and the $499-a-year Gold plan adds 25 simulated courses.

The Foresight app also offers ball normalization using a virtual Callaway Chrome Tour series ball, altitude-adjusted yardages, session editing to remove outliers and club-specific gapping, with the University of Arizona using the altitude feature before reaching the NCAA Men’s Championship match-play semifinals at La Costa.

UNEEKOR LAUNCHES GLOBAL ONLINE SIMULATOR TOURNAMENT

Uneekor has partnered with GSPro and Simulator Golf Tour to launch the first Uneekor Invitational. The global online tournament is open exclusively to Uneekor launch monitor owners and will run from August 17 to September 4, beginning with two qualifying rounds on The Old Game, a new Carl’s Place-designed course, before players are placed into three ball-speed divisions for Championship Week on The Wilds Golf Club.

Division winners can receive up to $2,500 in PGA Tour Superstore or Scheels gift cards, with additional closest-to-the-pin contests backed by Vice Golf, YETI, Evnroll Putters and Avoda Golf. Scott Gaines, Uneekor’s global head of sales, said the partnership gives players “a legitimate stage, real competition, and a championship worth playing for,” while marketing director James Murphy said it was the first time Uneekor had given its global owner community “a real stage to compete on, together.”

TOPTRACER REPORTS GLOBAL GROWTH AHEAD OF RECORD OPEN ACTIVATION

Toptracer has reported global growth in range use and installations. The company said every Toptracer screen worldwide was used for an average of six hours a day throughout 2025, while global installations rose 29% compared with the first half of 2025, before its largest-ever activation at The Open Championship at Royal Birkdale.

At The Open, Toptracer traced 60,433 shots on the Tournament Range and 8,170 shots across all 18 holes, debuted AI tracing, recorded 28,880 virtual rounds of Royal Birkdale in the Global Challenge and logged 103,675 shots across 20 hospitality simulators, with several thousand lessons delivered onsite by PGA GB&I professionals. President and general manager Scott Blevins said new features including Toptracer Go were helping “raise the bar” globally, while broadcast technology director Ludvig von Schenck said AI Tracing makes the platform “leaner, faster, and more accurate than ever” as Toptracer prepares to launch a new global tournament later in 2026.

TROON PRIVÉ TO MANAGE THE CROSBY CLUB IN CALIFORNIA

Troon has been selected to manage The Crosby Club in Rancho Santa Fe, California. The private club, located in the San Diego foothills on Bing Crosby’s former ranch property, will be overseen by Troon Privé across club operations, agronomy, food and beverage, and membership sales and marketing.

The Crosby Club’s 6,796-yard, par-70 course was co-designed by Brian Curley and Fred Couples and opened in 2004, with amenities including a practice facility and fitness and wellness center. Troon vice president of operations Justin Lake said returning to the club was “a true privilege,” while Bando Group said Troon Privé’s expertise aligned with its aim of delivering “an unparalleled luxury lifestyle and championship golf experience.”

CANADIAN GOLF ROUNDS FALL BELOW 2025 RECORD PACE

Canadian golf rounds remained below last year’s record pace in June. NGCOA Canada’s June 2026 Rounds Played report showed average rounds for the month down 6.0% year on year to 5,011, although that was still 1.5% above the five-year average. Season-to-date rounds were 5.0% behind 2025 at 10,446, but remained 3.0% above the five-year average and represented the second-highest total through June since tracking began in 2014. Alberta recorded the sharpest decline, down 22.3% for June and 20.3% season to date amid its weakest June weather score since 2016, while British Columbia and New Brunswick were the only provinces tracking ahead of 2025 and PEI was the only province up year on year for the month.

LISBON GAINS GROUND AS SHORT-BREAK GOLF DESTINATION

British golfers are increasingly choosing Lisbon for short group trips. Booking data from Glencor Golf Holidays shows stays in the Portuguese capital average 4.5 nights, the shortest of the Portuguese golf destinations analyzed, with average bookings for seven golfers and September the most popular month.

The operator said Lisbon’s appeal is being driven by regular direct flights from UK airports including Manchester, Bristol, Luton and Heathrow, plus easy access to leading courses, many of which can be reached in around an hour from the airport. “Lisbon is becoming the obvious choice for golfers who want to get away for four or five nights without sacrificing the quality of the golf,” said Corrie Renton, co-director of Glencor Golf Holidays, adding that the destination works well for friendship groups and golf societies looking to fit several rounds into a convenient overseas break.

THE R&A TAKES FULL OWNERSHIP OF DOTGOLF

The R&A has taken full ownership of DotGolf, a specialist golf technology business that builds digital tools for national federations.

The governing body, which acquired a 50% stake in August 2023, has now bought the remaining 50% from Golf New Zealand, with the 55-person company continuing to operate as a standalone business with its own leadership, governance and operations. Since The R&A’s initial investment, DotGolf has expanded internationally, added multilingual capability, grown to 21 national federation customers and now supports more than 2.5 million golfers. Mark Darbon, Chief Executive of The R&A, said the acquisition supports long-term investment in “technology, data and digital capability” to benefit federations and golfers worldwide, while Golf New Zealand CEO Jeff Latch said DotGolf had taken “a kiwi tech company successfully onto the world stage” and would continue helping federations grow the game.

GULLANE SAVES UP TO 40 LABOR HOURS WITH ROBOTIC MOWERS

Gullane Golf Club in East Lothian, Scotland, has introduced four Toro Turf Pro 500 robotic mowers across its three championship courses. The machines arrived in April after a trial with Toro and Reesink Turfcare, were operational within ten days, and now work overnight across 16 fairways on Gullane No.1, No.2 and No.3, saving the club 30 to 40 labor hours a week during the growing season. Course manager Paul Armour said the technology “helps us use our people more effectively” and does not replace greenkeepers, instead freeing staff for hand mowing, bunker maintenance, trimming, presentation work and agronomic detail. The electric fleet is supported by Gullane’s 2025 solar-powered charging infrastructure, bringing fuel, oil and servicing savings, while Armour said the rotary cut quality has been strong and that returning clippings to the surface could become another turf-health benefit.

LIV GOLF REPORTEDLY CLOSE TO NEW INVESTMENT LIFELINE

LIV Golf is reportedly close to securing new funding for 2027 and beyond. The New York Post reported that the league has received “multiple written commitments” from blue-chip investment firms that would act as anchor investors, with chief executive Scott O’Neil understood to have been seeking around $250m-$300m after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund said it would stop funding LIV beyond 2026. The proposed structure, described as “LIV 2.0”, could give players a majority stake in the league, with further meetings expected around next week’s LIV Golf New Jersey event at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster and a possible deal by September. The funding talks come as LIV still faces uncertainty over its season-ending Michigan Team Championship, although its New Jersey and Indianapolis events are expected to proceed and its recent UK event at JCB Golf & Country Club reportedly drew 50,000 fans across four days.

Additional Reading: Sky Sports in the UK are claiming that the team finale scheduled to be played later in August will go ahead, contrary to rumors.

LIV Golf hasn’t confirmed or denied whether or not LIV Golf Michigan will go ahead, but speculation rose after Cleeks GC captain Martin Kaymer’s interview with Today’s Golfer, where he stated that he thought it was “highly unlikely” the $40 million event would go ahead.

RAI NAMED FIRST WINNER OF RORY MCILROY AWARD

Aaron Rai has been named the inaugural winner of the Rory McIlroy Award. The new annual trophy, named after Europe’s first Career Grand Slam winner, goes to the DP World Tour member who earns the most Race to Dubai points across the Masters, US PGA Championship, U.S. Open and The Open. Rai finished 48th at the Masters, won the US PGA Championship at Aronimink, tied 11th at the U.S. Open and tied 79th at The Open to finish on 1,876.5 points, 42.5 ahead of Open champion Ryan Fox, with McIlroy saying Rai’s Sunday performance at Aronimink was “truly impressive”. Rai, who became the first Englishman in 107 years to win the Wanamaker Trophy and rose to a career-high 15th in the world, said it was “truly honoured” to receive an award carrying McIlroy’s name; he will be presented with the trophy by McIlroy at the BMW PGA Championship in September.

CALLAWAY ADDS QUANTUM MINI SPINNER SCORING WOOD

Callaway is launching the Quantum Mini Spinner fairway wood. The new “scoring wood” is designed for golfers seeking more spin, steeper descent angles and better control on long approach shots, sitting between a traditional fairway wood and a hybrid. It features a compact, deeper profile, high center of gravity, AI-optimised high-spin face, refined Step Sole, taller face and a shaft 0.75 inches shorter than a standard fairway wood to promote cleaner contact and tighter dispersion.

The 7-wood and 9-wood models use a lightweight carbon sole to move mass higher in the head, with Callaway’s Evan Gibbs saying “the increased spin rate provides more consistency and helps the ball stop faster on the green”; the club launches from August 14, with pricing listed at $485 (£359, €420).

THE PGA TOUR’S $30 MILLION SPONSORSHIP RESET

The first publicly named sponsors attached to the PGA Tour’s 2028 Championship Series have something in common. Travelers, Sentry and Sompo are all insurers prepared to support tournaments within the Tour’s new premium competition.

Travelers has confirmed that its long-running Connecticut event will remain among the Tour’s leading tournaments. Sentry will transfer its title sponsorship to the established Torrey Pines event from 2027, while Sompo has entered a multi-year agreement that will begin with a tournament at Silverado Resort before moving to an as-yet-undisclosed Championship Series market in 2028.

The Arnold Palmer Invitational has also been confirmed for the top series. Mastercard remains its current presenting sponsor, but no public announcement has yet clarified whether that agreement extends into the new structure. The Tour says it already has an initial group of ten of the expected 15 regular-season Championship events lined up, meaning considerably more of the commercial picture has been settled than publicly disclosed.

The emerging line-up provides early evidence that the PGA Tour can sell its premium product. It also turns the 2028 overhaul into a series of practical commercial decisions. Existing title partners must decide whether stronger fields and greater scarcity justify a higher commitment; host markets must determine how much top-tier status is worth protecting; and companies considering golf sponsorship will have to choose between premium national exposure and a lower-cost regional proposition.

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HOW TO PARTNER WITH US: If you are interested in contributing to and strengthening our content offering as a partner, company, or institution, we would be pleased to hear from you at newsroom@golfbusinessreview.com.

Hello GBR,

Welcome to this week’s first edition of GBR.

We start things off at the point where golf’s emerging trends become commercial decisions. Royal Lytham’s investment in five autonomous mowers suggests robotic turf care is moving beyond a trial period and into the normal equipment-buying cycle, while Golfmanager’s Canadian expansion shows how software providers are adapting their models to win established club markets.

Elsewhere, Troon’s owners test buyer interest at a potential valuation above $2 billion, Five Iron Golf opens the first venue in its planned UK rollout, and record participation and rounds data continue to strengthen golf’s wider investment case. We also examine the uncertainty surrounding LIV Golf’s season-ending team event after comments made by Martin Kaymer last week and what it reveals about the league’s search for fresh funding.

Enjoy.

ROYAL LYTHAM BUYS FIVE AUTONOMOUS MOWERS BEFORE THIS WEEK’S WOMEN’S OPEN, AS ROBOTIC TURF CARE CROSSES INTO THE BUYING CYCLE

Last summer at Royal Porthcawl, robotic mowers cut all 18 fairways of the AIG Women’s Open, the first time The R&A had allowed autonomous machines that responsibility at a major. That was the demonstration phase, and demonstrations are built to be televised. What settles a category is duller than that.

Royal Lytham & St Annes, which hosts the same championship from Thursday, 30 July, has purchased four CEORA 546 EPOS units and one Automower 580L EPOS through Balmers GM, an authorized Husqvarna dealer, with two further units provided by the manufacturer to support championship preparation.

For anyone running maintenance in Scottsdale or Naples rather than Lancashire, most of that paragraph travels intact.

Lytham is now the venue that objection has to argue against. The club has staged The Open eleven times and the Ryder Cup twice, and this week it takes on the 50th playing of the women’s major. The familiar line about serious surfaces not trusting autonomous kit has to get past a championship host with no room for equipment gambles.

It went through a dealer, which is the ordinary route and the reason this reads as adoption rather than a pilot. Parts, warranty and a service van within range, the same arrangement behind every other machine in the shed. Balmers was Husqvarna UK’s Pro Partner Dealer of the Year for 2025 and works out of Burnley, in the same county as the club. Service coverage is half of any turf equipment decision.

Where the case actually lives is the roster. Paul Smith, Lytham’s course manager, describes a hybrid program in which conventional cylinder units and robots work alongside each other, crediting the machines with easing workshop pressure and freeing people to be redeployed across the course. Repetitive mowing consumes predictable crew hours all season. A machine that absorbs those hours returns staffing room where rosters run thinnest.

A caution belongs next to all of it. The announcement contains no headcount figure, no hours saved, and no price, so treat it as a reference point rather than a ready-made business case.

The technical footing has moved this year as well. EPOS satellite guidance replaced the buried boundary wire that once made robots impractical on a course whose cutting zones shift with the season and the setup. In April, the fairway-to-rough transition strip became a free software update. A vision accessory followed in May for selected professional models, camera plus infrared, reading animals, balls, clothing and standing water in daylight or low light. Nothing in the announcement places it at Lytham.

The 50th playing of the AIG Women’s Open starts Thursday at Royal Lytham. The purchase order got there first.

• The full story — the machines, the software, the dealer economics, and the places where the announcement goes quiet.

GOLFMANAGER, THE SPANISH CLOUD PLATFORM RUNNING 400 CLUBS WORLDWIDE, ENTERS CANADA AS NGCOA’S OFFICIAL SOFTWARE PARTNER

NGCOA Canada has close to 1,500 members. As of July 24, all of them can buy Golfmanager, the Spanish club management platform making its Canadian debut, through the association’s Golfmax purchasing program at a member rate, and keep the Moneris processing rates that come with the card.

Golfmanager sells one cloud system covering the tee sheet, the till, memberships, retail, food and beverage, payments and reporting. One supplier instead of four, one set of numbers at the end of the month. By the company’s account, it runs at more than 400 facilities worldwide, 37 of them among the top 100 resorts in continental Europe, with Meliá, Iberostar, Marriott Vacations and Hyatt on the client list.

Golfmax is the association’s group buying program. NGCOA Canada negotiates once for the whole membership, and a single 18-hole course pays what 1,500 facilities are worth rather than what it can extract alone.

What did not change is the part worth reading twice. Card processing stays with Moneris, owned by two of Canada’s largest banks, at rates the association negotiated years ago. All-in-one platforms usually bundle payments in, since the cut on every transaction is where a good share of the margin sits. Change software and the merchant fees normally travel with it. Ottawa kept them apart.

Ryley Scott, CCO at NGCOA Canada, put it in those terms: members wanted newer software and were not prepared to trade the Moneris rates for it. Daniel Sillari, CEO of Golfmanager, described the move as bringing Canadian clubs a different way of thinking about running a facility.

Contracts get signed now. The tee sheets fill in April.

THE R&A AND FALDO DESIGN PARTNER ON SUSTAINABLE COURSE DEVELOPMENT

The R&A Sustainable Agronomy Service has agreed a global collaboration with Faldo Design.

The partnership will bring The R&A’s agronomic expertise into Sir Nick Faldo’s golf course design portfolio, supporting projects from feasibility and planning through to grow-in, opening and long-term course performance. The work will focus on sustainability, resource efficiency and playability, with advice covering soil and water suitability, climate-adapted grass selection, construction and rootzone specifications, maintenance facility planning, machinery needs, staffing structures, turf establishment, opening-condition benchmarks, agronomy audits and soil analysis. Daniel Lightfoot, Director, Sustainable Golf at The R&A, said early-stage involvement would help ensure new and renovated courses are “built on strong agronomic foundations” and prepared for future environmental and performance demands, while Simon Jones, Managing Director at Faldo Enterprises, said the collaboration gives Faldo Design “exceptional agronomy expertise” and supports high standards across design, maintenance and client support.

Sir Nick Faldo said strategy, memorability, playability, respect for nature and enjoyment remain central to Faldo Design, adding that the R&A partnership would help ensure “a high-quality standard before, during and after construction” of its courses worldwide.

FIVE IRON GOLF OPENS FIRST UK VENUE AT BROADGATE

Five Iron Golf has opened its first UK venue at Broadgate in London. The 6,900-square-foot site at 1 Finsbury Avenue, close to Liverpool Street Station, is the first location under a 10-site UK franchise agreement and combines eight Trackman simulator bays, access to more than 440 courses, professional instruction, club fitting, memberships, leagues, tournaments, complimentary premium Callaway rental clubs and corporate event space.

The venue also includes a full-service bar and restaurant featuring floor-to-ceiling windows, a private terrace overlooking Broadgate and large-format screens showing live sport. UK CEO Eric Parker said London needed “somewhere that combines great food, drinks and entertainment with an experience that absolutely anyone can enjoy,” while co-founder and CEO Jared Solomon said Five Iron aims to build places where serious golfers can improve, friends can meet, and newcomers can “pick up a club for the very first time.”

TOPGOLF AND WORLD SERIES OF GOLF LAUNCH NATIONAL QUALIFYING SERIES

Topgolf has partnered with the World Series of Golf to launch its first venue-based qualifying tournament. The poker-style golf competition will be staged simultaneously across 30 Topgolf venues in 11 states: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina and Tennessee, with players using the WSG app’s hole-by-hole betting mechanics while playing nine holes in Topgolf’s virtual golf mode.

Qualifying events will run on September 1 and 2, with players first competing in four-person bay groups before venue winners advance to a National Qualifying Championship at Topgolf Scottsdale on October 2; the last player standing there will earn Topgolf’s designated competitor place in the World Series of Golf Championship, where the top prize is up to $250,000. Highlights from the qualifying events and National Championship will also run across Topgolf Media Networks. Topgolf CEO David McKillips said the format combines “the strategy and excitement of poker with the skill and competition of golf,” while WSG CEO Robert Davidman said the partnership makes the format accessible to everyone and turns each event into “content, stories, moments that grow this sport.”

TROON OWNERS EXPLORE SALE AT MORE THAN $2BN VALUATION

TPG and Leonard Green & Partners are exploring a potential sale of Troon Golf.

Bloomberg reported that the private equity firms have appointed investment banks to assess buyer interest in the Scottsdale, Arizona-based golf course operator, in a deal that could value the business at more than $2bn, although no final decision has been made and the owners could still retain the company. TPG acquired Troon in 2021 alongside Symphony Ventures, the investment vehicle of Rory McIlroy, with other investors including Justin Thomas and investment banker Jimmy Dunne.

Founded in 1990, Troon now manages more than 825 locations worldwide, including Kapalua Resort in Hawaii and Tobacco Road in North Carolina, and the potential sale comes amid rising private equity activity in golf, including Apollo’s reported $3bn sale of Invited Clubs to KSL Capital Partners and the launch last year of TPG Sports by McIlroy and TPG with backing from Abu Dhabi-based Lunate Capital.

U.S. GOLF ROUNDS REMAIN AHEAD OF RECORD 2025 PACE

U.S. golf rounds remained slightly ahead of last year’s record pace at the midway point of 2026. Golf Datatech’s June National Rounds Played Report showed national play up 1.2% for the month and 4.2% year to date, with public-access facilities ahead 1.3% in June and 4.3% for the year, while private clubs rose 0.7% for the month and 3.9% year to date.

The strongest June regional gains came in the Mid-Atlantic at 3.9%, West North Central at 3.7%, and East North Central at 3.3%, with notable state-level increases in Indiana, Minnesota, Kentucky/Tennessee and Pennsylvania. NGF provides confidential facility-level rounds data to Circana’s Golf Datatech for the monthly industry reports, which continue to show U.S. play tracking above the record number of rounds recorded in 2025.

ENGLAND GOLF REPORTS 12.6M ADULT PARTICIPANTS

England Golf says more than 12.6 million adults in England played some form of golf in the past year.

The figure means more than one in four adults took part, with participation led by 9.4 million people playing crazy or mini golf, while traditional nine- and 18-hole golf still attracted around 7.3 million adults, and 98% of recreational golfers are expected to continue playing. The data follows a 34% rise in junior club membership in 2025, from 46,028 to 61,483, and comes as England Golf prepares to launch Get into Golf Week on August 3 to help families, juniors and beginners find welcoming entry points into the game. “Millions of people are already engaging with golf in different ways, and junior membership is rising fast,” said Matt Draper, England Golf’s development and membership director, with Ambassador Cruise Line also hosting a national competition for new and returning golfers taking part in Get into Golf activity this summer.

The figures sit alongside The R&A’s latest participation report, which said more than four million people took up golf in the past year, including more than three million juniors.

ROSE FOUNDATION AND DRYVEBOX DELIVER 2,500 SCHOOL GOLF EXPERIENCES

The Kate & Justin Rose Foundation and Dryvebox UK have delivered their 2,500th golf experience for children in inner-city schools. The project, launched in February, brings a mobile golf simulator into schools across the UK, with the foundation funding the equipment, simulator access and PGA-qualified coaching to introduce golf to young people who may not otherwise encounter the sport. Kate Rose, chair of the foundation, said the partnership supports “access, opportunity and inclusion,” adding that 2,500 young people have now experienced golf “in a fun, interactive way.” The sessions include children with special educational needs and pupils at risk of exclusion, with repeat visits already being booked by several schools. Dryvebox UK’s Alex O’Brien said the project is “removing all the barriers to entry” and showing children “the game might be for them,” while 50 further sessions are already scheduled and the foundation is targeting golf experiences for 7,500 children each academic year, alongside wider summer activity for disadvantaged young people across the UK.

NEXGEN GOLF TO OPEN LANARKSHIRE’S FIRST 24/7 INDOOR CENTRE

Nexgen Golf is opening a new indoor golf center at Maxim Park in Eurocentral, Motherwell, on the outskirts of Glasgow, Scotland.

The 1,800-square-foot facility will be the region’s first 24/7 indoor golf center and the second site for Nexgen Golf, led by golf professional Chris Tierney. The venue will feature three Trackman iO simulator bays for virtual golf, coaching, year-round practice, corporate events and product launches, with Nexgen aiming to make Maxim Park a leading indoor golf destination in Scotland. Tierney said the company was “extremely excited” to open at Maxim Park and confirmed it would partner with “the world’s leading launch monitor and simulator company, Trackman.” Maxim Park, Scotland’s largest business park and home to occupiers including HSBC UK/first direct, Aviva, Balfour Beatty, Amey, Barratt, VMO2 and T Clarke, said the arrival of Nexgen Golf would add to its amenities, with park services director Caroline Baillie saying high-quality leisure facilities support employee wellbeing, collaboration and opportunities to connect beyond the office.

TRAVELERS CONFIRMED AS FIRST PGA TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES EVENT

The Travelers Championship has become the first confirmed PGA Tour Championship Series event. The annual post-U.S. Open tournament at TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Connecticut, will join the new elevated series when it launches in 2028, with regular Championship Series events set to feature 120-player fields, $20 million purses and 36-hole cuts.

The Travelers has been on the PGA Tour schedule since 1952, when it was known as the Insurance City Open, has been staged at TPC River Highlands since 1984, and has been backed by Travelers as title sponsor since 2007 after replacing Buick. Travelers executive vice president and chief administrative officer Andy Bessette said inclusion in the new series was “validation of the collective effort” invested by the sponsor, tournament team, fans and volunteers over two decades, while PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said the event does “a lot of things that we’re looking for in a Championship Series event.”

The 15-tournament series will sit alongside the majors, The Players, reimagined playoff events and Ryder and Presidents Cups, with Sports Business Journal reporting that 10 title sponsors have already been secured, each expected to pay about $30 million, and more Championship Series announcements likely before next month’s Tour Championship at East Lake.

LIV TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP IN DOUBT AS KAYMER CITES 5% CHANCE

LIV Golf’s season-ending Team Championship is in doubt, according to Cleeks GC captain Martin Kaymer. In an interview with the UK’s Today’s Golfer, Kaymer stated it was “highly unlikely” that the August 27-30 event at The Cardinal at Saint John’s in Plymouth, Michigan, would go ahead, putting its chances at 5% after a captains’ meeting during LIV Golf UK at JCB Golf & Country Club.

LIV returned after a seven-week break following the postponement of its New Orleans event, and Kaymer said he expects the final two individual events at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster and The Club at Chatham Hills to proceed. The uncertainty comes as LIV seeks new funding for 2027, reportedly around $350 million, after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund said it would withdraw financial support; Kaymer said “it depends so much on the investors” and added: “If the signature is not there, then it doesn’t mean anything.” The situation has been complicated further by the Asian Tour’s move to align with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour, weakening LIV’s feeder structure, while Kaymer said replacing the Michigan finale with a team event in Indianapolis would be difficult because “how do you want to have a team winning the whole season if you don’t have a team event?”

While Kaymer is merely stating his views, LIV Golf has not issued anything in response as they continue to focus on seeking new sponsorship.

Royal Lytham & St Annes has bought five autonomous mowers. The order runs to four CEORA 546 EPOS units and one Automower 580L EPOS, supplied by Balmers GM Ltd, an authorised Husqvarna Pro Partner dealer. Husqvarna is providing a further two CEORA units to support preparations for the AIG Women’s Open, which Lytham hosts from Thursday, 30 July, through Sunday, 2 August. It is the 50th playing of the championship, and the club’s first since Georgia Hall won there in 2018.

A year ago at Royal Porthcawl, CEORA robots cut all 18 fairways throughout this same championship, the first time The R&A had entrusted autonomous machines with that responsibility at a major. Husqvarna’s announcement files that week under the company’s “involvement”. At Lytham the verb changed. Purchased.

What was bought

• Four CEORA 546 EPOS. Husqvarna’s commercial-scale robotic mower, built for large surfaces and designed to deliver consistent results without continuous operator input. This is the fairway-class machine.

• One Automower 580L EPOS. The same autonomous capability applied to more varied terrain, guided across its zones with the same satellite precision.

• Two further CEORA units, provided by Husqvarna to support championship preparation. These sit outside the purchase.

• The supplier: Balmers GM Ltd, an authorised Pro Partner dealer. Not the manufacturer.

The kit, in plain terms

EPOS is Husqvarna’s satellite guidance system and the reason this category became workable on a golf course at all. Earlier robotic mowers needed a physical wire buried around the perimeter of every cutting zone, and changing the zone meant digging. EPOS draws the boundaries virtually and manages them from an app. On a property where cutting zones shift with the season and the tournament calendar, that is what makes the machine usable at all.

The connected machines are run through Husqvarna Fleet Services, which is where cutting zones, heights and schedules get set.

First Cut, added in April, handles the transition strip between fairway and rough, the band that gives a hole its visual definition and decides how a missed drive plays. Maintaining it has traditionally required investment in specialist equipment. Husqvarna’s version creates the strip inside Fleet Services by copying an existing fairway and expanding it, adjusting around bunkers or a revised layout, each area with its own cutting height and schedule. It shipped as a free software update, no additional hardware, compatible with every CEORA and Automower 580L EPOS.

The AI vision accessory, released in May for selected professional Automower EPOS models, pairs a camera with infrared illumination to identify and avoid what appears on the turf: animals, golf balls, clothing, standing water, in daylight or low light. Installation is handled by an authorised dealer. Husqvarna has not said whether the Lytham units carry it. What matters is how the two layers stack. Guidance sets where a machine may go. Vision is what lets it notice a fox or a bag that turned up inside those boundaries since the last pass.

Why the dealer is the real headline

A technology stops being an experiment on the day it starts moving through ordinary distribution.

Lytham bought its robots from the same trade channel that supplies the rest of the shed, with parts, warranty and local servicing sitting behind the invoice. Balmers has been selling turf machinery since 1979, runs depots at Burnley and Wakefield, and was named Husqvarna UK’s Pro Partner Dealer of the Year for 2025. Burnley is in the same county as the golf club.

Any demonstration can prove a machine performs on a fine July evening. The question a course manager has to answer lives months further out, in the dark half of the calendar: who turns up in February when the thing stops. That is what the supplier line settles, and it is the detail in this announcement that travels furthest.

What it changes on the ground

Paul Smith, Lytham’s course manager, describes an operation running two systems side by side. “We have developed a hybrid maintenance program that enables us to have the benefits of both conventional cylinder and robotic mowing,” he said in the announcement. By his account, the robots have helped the club deliver optimum mowing year round, improved turf health, eased pressure on the workshop and allowed resources to be redeployed into other areas of course maintenance.

That is a staffing statement. Repetitive cutting is predictable work that consumes crew hours every week of the growing season, and a machine that absorbs it hands those hours back. For any club that struggles to fill a maintenance roster, the redeployment line is where the business case lives.

Smith stops short of the claim a board wants to hear. No headcount reduction, no hours saved. The announcement carries no price either. The reference venue improved this month, which does nothing to the acreage or the wage bill on anyone else’s property.

Eleven Opens and a purchase order

Lytham has staged The Open eleven times and the Ryder Cup twice. A venue with that record, committing in the run-up to a major it hosts this week, moves the reference point for every club that has filed autonomous mowing under “not for a surface like ours”.

Jonathan Snowball, who leads Husqvarna’s professional division in the UK, called Lytham “one of the most recognisable venues in the sport” and read the commitment as a clear signal of where autonomous turf management is heading. Andrew Meeks of Balmers GM called it a marker of the confidence now placed in the technology at the highest level of the game. Both men sell these machines. The sequence stands without them. Two consecutive AIG Women’s Opens with Husqvarna robots on the host’s turf, and this year’s host is a paying customer.

• The 50th AIG Women’s Open starts Thursday at Lytham and ends on 2 August. Five of the mowers in the club’s maintenance programme are on its own balance sheet.

HOW TO PARTNER WITH US: If you are interested in contributing to and strengthening our content offering as a partner, company, or institution, we would be pleased to hear from you at newsroom@golfbusinessreview.com.

Hello GBR community,

We open today with a pattern we’ve been watching build for months: venues that spent real money on established range technology are pulling it out and starting again. The lead story traces what’s behind the switch, and why nearly every move points in the same direction.

Also in today’s edition, a $19.99 card game built for the table is making its bid for the pro-shop counter — with register math that doubles the shop’s money and a founder exhibiting at the PGA Buying Summit in Frisco this weekend.

Enjoy today’s edition of GBR and have a good weekend.

NOT ALL RANGE TECH IS EQUAL: THE QUIET MIGRATION IN THE RANGE BUSINESS

Something has nagged at us for the better part of a year, and it shows up first in the installations. Venues that spent real money on established ball-tracking have been pulling it out and starting again. Not upgrading around it. Replacing what they already owned. Once is a one-off. Past a dozen, it’s a pattern worth understanding.

The venues themselves are the first clue. This isn’t one corner of the market: Chelsea Piers has made the move; so has Bethpage. When a high-volume commercial site and one of the most credibility-conscious practice destinations in American golf land on the same decision, coincidence stops being a satisfying answer.

The second clue is where they’re going. In nearly every case, the replacement has been the same: Inrange. And nearly every venue that made the switch has grown revenue since — a hit rate rare enough in any business to make you ask what these operators know that the rest of the market doesn’t.

None of it comes cheap. Ripping out working kit costs real money and real disruption, and the incumbents it replaces built the measurement standard this industry trusts. That is exactly what makes the volume of moves worth explaining.

The short version: it has almost nothing to do with how well any of these systems tracks a golf ball. The operators switching haven’t bought a better tracker. They’ve changed categories — from software built to measure a golfer to software built to earn from every kind of customer who walks in.

We’ve laid it all out in today’s piece: the economics of the ceiling most ranges never notice, the honest case for staying put, and the full list of venues now running the new model at both ends of the market. The list doesn’t look finished, either. The talk in operator circles is that more marquee venues are weighing the same move.

• Read the full story: Not All Range Tech Is Equal: Why Operators Are Switching Their Tech to Maximise Revenue.

THE $120 DECISION: A CARD GAME BIDS FOR THE PRO-SHOP COUNTER

Play Nine proved a golf-themed card game earns a place at the register, moving units in the hundreds of thousands across retail and online channels, by the company’s own account. It did it as a casual, family-friendly product. Go Low or Go Home is built for the table Play Nine leaves untouched: a patented five-card game with three known cards in hand and two unknown cards in the bunker. Its formats are lifted from how tournament golf is actually played, closer in feel to Texas Hold’em with golf cleats swapped in for cowboy boots.

The mechanics run like a hole of golf, where shot selection is a matter of tradeoffs. A dealer hands each player two face-down bunker cards and three cards in hand, and every turn is a shot with its own risk and reward:

1. Draw from the discard pile and play it as your shot.

2. Draw from the deck and either play it or discard.

3. Lay down a card from your hand.

4. Gamble on one of your hidden bunker cards.

The only way out of the bunker is to discard that card on a turn or play it face-up as a shot. The lowest hand wins the hole.

The two products share the same $19.99 MSRP. Wholesale is $10, and the standard opening order is twelve units, $120 in total. Each sale leaves $9.99 in the shop, a 100% margin that doubles the counter’s money, and six units sold cover the whole order. It isn’t a pitch to replace Play Nine. It’s a pitch for a second SKU in a category the shelf already knows how to sell.

The founder is John Beran, a former CPA and MBA who filed the patent and holds the trademark himself, after an idea born mid-cruise and a Wisconsin childhood where winter took the golf season away. Where Play Nine is an at-home parlor game, Go Low gives the foursome a reason to stay at the table and compete.

The early proof is blunt. At its inaugural tournament at Midland Trail Golf Course in Louisville, fourteen of sixteen players bought the game on the spot. A women’s event follows in August, and the company is building the dealer and rep network to run more. That is also its broader pitch: revenue for the hours a course can’t currently sell, from rainouts to the simulator bay to the 19th hole. A future Golf Genius integration would put that competition on tournament software courses already run, something Play Nine’s family-friendly format was never built for.

The buyers are worth the shelf. The National Golf Foundation puts the average core golfer’s holiday gift spending near $934, roughly 50 percent above the typical shopper, and 13 million core golfers drive more than 90 percent of golf purchases. A $19.99 box is easy math against a number like that. Beran exhibits at the PGA Buying Summit in Frisco this Sunday through Wednesday and opens holiday pre-orders in the coming weeks.

• The full story, with the founder’s background and the register math, is on GBR.

CANADA TARIFFS COULD RAISE COSTS FOR U.S. GOLFERS

U.S. golfers could face higher prices on Canadian-made golf equipment from August 19.

EssentiallySports reported that President Donald Trump’s additional 50% tariffs on certain Canadian imports could affect golf brands including Haywood Golf, Blacksmith Putters, SGC Putters, Levelwear, Sunice, Dormie Workshop and Pioneer Golf Co., with the White House saying the measures were imposed under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to address what it called Canada’s “discriminatory treatment” of U.S. commerce. The White House said the tariffs, signed on July 20, are intended to offset disadvantages facing American exports including cars, alcohol and dairy, and will take effect 30 days after signing. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the move was “the latest in a series of unilateral U.S. trade actions” and argued it violated CUSMA, while Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters chief executive Dennis Darby called the tariffs “an alarming escalation” that could damage businesses and consumers in both countries.

NORTH AMERICAN GOLFERS LOOK BEYOND SCOTLAND AND IRELAND

North American golfers are showing greater interest in mainland European golf destinations. European Tour Destinations said tour operators at the 2026 IAGTO North America Convention reported rising demand for Spain, Portugal, France and Greece, while representatives from Costa Navarino, La Hacienda Links, Camiral, Palmares Ocean Living & Golf and Quinta do Lago used the Riviera Maya event to build relationships with buyers and travel specialists.

Ian Knox, Head of European Tour Destinations, said Scotland and Ireland remain the leading international destinations for U.S. and Canadian golfers, but mainland Europe is gaining from “expanding direct air routes, favorable exchange rates and the appeal of year-round golf.” Operators also reported stronger demand for experience-led travel built around culture, gastronomy and wellness, with Knox adding that “the destination itself matters as much as the course” and that inflation has not been a major barrier because many North American outbound golf travelers are high-net-worth individuals.

TOPGOLF RENEWS FIRST TEE PARTNERSHIP TO SUPPORT YOUTH GOLF

Topgolf has renewed its long-running partnership with First Tee. The youth development organization, which uses golf to build character, confidence and resilience, reaches more than 3.1 million children and teenagers each year through 150 U.S. chapters, 2,000 program locations and 12,000 schools and youth centers.

Topgolf, a trustee and strategic partner, has supported First Tee through chapter programming at more than 25 venues, alumni engagement, venue activations and promotion across more than 28,000 digital screens through Topgolf Media Networks. First Tee participants and alumni will receive $20 off gameplay at participating Topgolf venues through December 30, with the renewal following First Tee’s Game Changers Academy in Minneapolis and coming as youth participation in golf has risen 40% over five years. Topgolf CEO David McKillips said the partnership reflects a shared commitment to “expanding access to the game and the life skills that come with it,” while First Tee CEO Greg McLaughlin said Topgolf provides young people with “an engaging introduction to the game of golf.”

AVA GOLF LAUNCHES DATA-LED IMPROVEMENT PLATFORM

AVA Golf has officially launched its new website. The ParOne-owned platform is designed to turn golf performance data into personalized improvement plans, with eligible Arccos and Garmin users now being onboarded from its waitlist.

AVA connects with technology golfers already use, analyses data from rounds and practice sessions, identifies the trends most affecting scores, and delivers tailored instructional video playlists that evolve with each player’s game. The launch comes as National Golf Foundation data cited by AVA shows around 40% of regular golfers now use a golf app, with founder and CEO JR Charles saying the platform “bridges the gap between data and improvement”, while engineering director Aron Schüler said it helps golfers understand “what’s truly costing them strokes”. The instructional library includes Golf Digest 50 Best Teacher Cheryl Anderson, GOLF Magazine Top 100 Teacher Mike Malizia, Jason Birnbaum, PGA TOUR Golf Academy coaches and other recognized teaching professionals, with further technology integrations planned.

MYTIME ACTIVE REPORTS RECORD GOLF PARTICIPATION

Mytime Active has reported record golf participation across its venues. The charity, which manages 10 UK golf courses including six in the Midlands region, recorded almost 700,000 rounds between March 2025 and March 2026, equivalent to around 50 million balls struck on-course, a further 500,000 range balls and an estimated three million kilometers walked by golfers. Nearly 3,500 new customers booked to play for the first time, with facilities including nine and 18-hole courses, a 24-bay driving range with 12 heated bays and Toptracer, practice putting and chipping greens, and PGA-led adult and junior lessons. Mytime Active said the average player age is 57, with 40% of members under 25, 8% under 16, and men making up 82% of players, while chief executive Steve May said the aim is to provide “affordable, accessible, competitive golf in welcoming and sociable surroundings.”

FORMER 3M CHAIRMAN MICHAEL ROMAN JOINS PGA TOUR POLICY BOARD

Michael F. Roman has joined the PGA TOUR Policy Board as an Independent Director.

The former 3M chairman and chief executive was elected at the Tour’s June 22 board meeting in Hartford, Connecticut, and fills an open Independent Director seat, with the appointment effective immediately. Roman spent more than 35 years at 3M, holding leadership roles in the United States, Europe and Asia before becoming CEO in 2018, chairman in 2019 and later executive chairman; he now serves on the board of Abbott Laboratories and brings experience in corporate governance, strategic transformation and global operations. Joe Gorder, chairman of the PGA Tour Board, said Roman brings “valuable perspective” from leading “one of the world’s most recognized companies”, while Roman said he was joining during “an important period” and looked forward to working with Brian Rolapp and the leadership team on the Tour’s “continued growth and innovation”. 3M has been a PGA Tour partner since 1993 and title sponsor of the 3M Open since 2019.

OPEN FINAL ROUND DELIVERS NBC’S BEST AUDIENCE SINCE 2022

Ryan Fox’s Open Championship win at Royal Birkdale averaged 4.3 million viewers on NBC and Peacock. The final round was up 6% on last year, peaked at 6.1 million viewers from 1.15 pm to 1.30 pm ET, and became the most-watched Open final round in the U.S. since 2022 as Fox birdied the 72nd hole to beat Cameron Young by one.

All four men’s majors recorded final-round viewership increases this year, with the Masters averaging 13.99 million, the PGA Championship 5.76 million, the U.S. Open 5.5 million and The Open 4.3 million, although Front Office Sports noted the 2026 figures used Nielsen’s newer Big Data + Panel methodology. NBC’s Saturday coverage averaged 3.7 million viewers, the Open’s best third round since 2018, while USA Network averaged 873,000 viewers across more than 25 hours and Golf Channel’s Friday Live From The Open post-round show averaged 354,000 viewers. David Rumsey, Front Office Sports.

EUROPEAN TOUR GROUP REPORTS 2025 EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS

European Tour Group has released its 2025 Green Drive Sustainability Scorecard. The report tracks Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions across nine selected tournaments, including all Rolex Series events, plus office operations in Wentworth, Adlington, Dubai and China, using methodology developed with GEO Sustainable Golf Foundation after the Tour’s 2022 net zero commitment under the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework.

Results included a 48% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 office emissions, a 28% reduction in Scope 1, 2 and core Scope 3 emissions across its “Sustainable 9” events since 2023, 98% of tournament waste diverted from landfill, 530 tonnes reused or donated, and 99% of event fuel coming from HVO or blended low-carbon sources. “You can’t reduce what you haven’t measured,” said Maria Grandinetti-Milton, European Tour Group Director of Sustainability, citing progress in hydrogen and solar power, remote broadcast production, promoter sustainability standards and supplier awards.

BETTINARDI ADDS HIGH-MOI HEXPERIMENTAL #2 MALLET

Bettinardi Golf has introduced the Antidote Hexperimental #2, a limited-release high-MOI mallet based on its Antidote SB2 head shape.

Unlike the original zero-torque SB2, the Hexperimental #2 uses a traditional heel-shafted plumber’s neck with one-third toe hang, targeting players with a slight to moderate arced stroke who want stability and forgiveness without a zero-torque setup. The putter is milled in-house from a three-piece construction using a 303 stainless steel face, 6061 aluminum body and center insert, with F.I.T. Face milling, Black Armor TPT finish, Distressed Blue accents, a navy anodized center insert, matte black shaft, Black Hex PU grip and matching magnetic mallet headcover. “Zero-torque isn’t for everyone,” said Bettinardi president Sam Bettinardi, adding that the Hexperimental #2 is the company’s “take on a non-zero-torque, high-M.O.I. mallet”; it is available from today, July 24, through Bettinardi, Studio B Oak Brook and selected authorized retailers at $550.

CAN ITALY TURN RYDER CUP LEGACY INTO A REAL GOLF ECONOMY?

Italy should not be a difficult sell for golf.

It has the climate, cuisine, coastline and culture that attract millions of international visitors every year. It has luxury resorts, established clubs and, thanks to the 2023 Ryder Cup at Marco Simone, one of golf’s strongest recent success stories.

Yet there is an important distinction between becoming a successful golf destination and building a sustainable golf economy.

The latest R&A and European Golf Association participation data estimates Italy’s population at almost 59 million, but its registered golfer base at just 93,661, including 20,144 women and 8,968 juniors. The report estimates a wider playing population of around 183,000 golfers across 283 facilities. For a G7 economy with one of the world’s strongest tourism brands, those numbers remain modest.

That disconnect is what makes Italy one of Europe’s most intriguing golf markets.

The Ryder Cup provided the catalyst. Italy’s Ministry of Tourism estimated the 2023 event generated €262 million in additional economic impact, with Ryder Cup Europe and Federgolf — the Italian Golf Federation and national governing body for golf in Italy — highlighting the wider commercial value of hosting one of golf’s biggest events.

But a successful tournament is only the starting point. The real question is whether international visibility can be converted into sustained economic growth.

Read more

Play Nine did the hard part first. The golf-themed card game has moved units in the hundreds of thousands across retail and online channels, by the company’s own account of the category, and it did it as a casual, family-friendly product: easy to learn, lots of luck, steady scoring. It proved the category exists. It didn’t have to prove anyone would compete over it.

Go Low or Go Home is built for the table Play Nine leaves alone. Where Play Nine plays like a family parlor game, Go Low plays like Texas Hold’em wearing golf spikes: two hidden cards in the bunker, three drawn cards to work with, and momentum that turns on a single draw. No poker experience and no wagering are required to sit down, which keeps the game clubhouse-safe. What changes is the scoring dynamics. Each turn presents four strategic choices: draw from the discard pile, take a fresh card off the deck, play from the hand, or gamble on one of the hidden bunker cards. Every decision balances information against uncertainty, much like club selection on the course.

The two face-down bunker cards are where the game earns its edge. A player can sit on them, discard them, or flip one as a shot, and the rest of the table has to guess which. That single piece of hidden information is what turns a scoring exercise into a read on the people across the felt. Golf’s own logic stays on the scorecard, where the lowest hand wins the hole.

Four formats scale the stakes. Hole-by-hole match play settles a quick head-to-head. Positional match-play scoring ranks a full group, first through fourth. An amateur stroke version plays with handicaps and introduces a Snowman card, a name any golfer who has ever written an eight on a scorecard will recognize. The professional format strips out the mulligans, where a single blow-up hole can wreak havoc on a player. Play Nine asks a player to manage their own hand. Go Low requires you to read the table.

For the buyer, the two products sit at the same price point, which is precisely why the comparison matters. Retail is $19.99, wholesale $10, and the standard opening order is twelve units: $120 of inventory in a hand’s width of counter space. Each unit leaves $9.99 in the shop, a 100% margin, so the counter doubles its money on a box that cost it ten dollars. Six units sold cover the entire order before any of it becomes profit. That is not an argument for replacing Play Nine on the shelf. It’s an argument for a second SKU in a category the counter has already priced, stocked, and sold once.

The founder is John Beran, a former CPA with an MBA and a career spent commercializing intellectual property, from animal-health testing to semiconductors. This is the first company where he is the patent filer and trademark holder himself. The idea traces to a card game played on a cruise and to winters in Wisconsin, where the golf season shuts down and rain washes out whole weekends. What he remembers losing on those days isn’t just the round. It’s the table talk: the needle, the press, the foursome’s running arguments.

That is the company’s wider pitch, past the register. It frames the game as revenue for the hours a course currently can’t sell: rainouts, the off-season, the gap before a tee time, the 19th-hole table, the simulator bay between swings. A rained-out morning is time a facility already staffs and cannot bill, and a foursome dealt into a hole is a foursome that stays on-site and orders another round. That puts the box in the simulator lounge and on the F&B floor as readily as in the shop.

Competition is the engine behind that argument, and the company has an early data point for it. It staged its inaugural men’s tournament at Midland Trail Golf Course in Louisville with a field of sixteen. Fourteen of them bought the game on the spot. An inaugural women’s tournament follows in August, also in Louisville. Beran recruits and trains dealers to introduce the game and run tournaments, signs independent reps to walk it into retail settings, and partners with event managers as fields scale up. An integration with Golf Genius, still ahead, would connect play to the tournament software most courses already run, opening club-versus-club competition and junior-golf fundraisers on infrastructure a facility already trusts. None of that is available to Play Nine’s mostly family-friendly play. It’s the part of the pitch that only makes sense for a game built on reading an opponent.

Behind the box, the wholesale plumbing is installed the way a second entrant into a proven category needs it to be. The game is listed on RangeMe, the sourcing platform retail buyers browse, with dealer and rep agreements in motion. Carton orders ship direct to courses through self-distribution, while Amazon and golowgohome.com carry the consumer side, with Fulfillment by Amazon handling multi-channel orders.

The demand case rests on who does the buying. The National Golf Foundation counts roughly 13 million core golfers, and they account for more than 90 percent of all golf spending. They also spend through the holidays: the NGF puts the average core golfer’s holiday gift spending near $934, close to 50 percent above the typical American shopper. Against a number like that, a $19.99 box is a rounding error in the basket, which is the whole logic of an add-on at the counter. The company sizes its commercial reach at 40,000 accounts, from course shops to resorts to tournament operators, against the NGF’s estimate of roughly 136 million golf-engaged Americans on the consumer side. For scale underneath all of it, more than four billion decks of cards sell in the United States every year, by the company’s count, and a category leader already proved golfers buy them themed to the game they love.

The calendar makes the decision current rather than theoretical. Beran opens holiday pre-orders in the coming weeks, aimed at the gifting quarter, and exhibits at the PGA Buying Summit in Frisco this Sunday through Wednesday, where the season’s wholesale orders get written. Play Nine already earned its spot on the counter. The question this weekend is whether it keeps that spot to itself.

What struck me first was the range of venues doing it. This wasn’t one niche of the market behaving oddly. It ran from high-volume commercial sites — Chelsea Piers, Dobson Ranch, Clermont National — to facilities whose whole standing rests on golf credibility, the kind elite players judge without mercy: Bethpage, Boca West. When venues at both ends of that spectrum start moving the same way, it stops reading as coincidence and starts looking like a trend that needs explaining. And one more thing tied the moves together: in nearly every case, the venues were converging on the same replacement — Inrange.

So I went looking for the explanation. It turns out to have very little to do with how well any of these systems tracks a golf ball.

The ceiling most operators never see

Start with a number almost no operator ever writes down: the revenue ceiling. A range’s revenue is the product of two things — how many people come through the door, and how much each of them spends. Both are capped, long before any pricing or marketing decision, by one design choice that usually gets made without anyone noticing it was a choice at all: who is this facility actually built to serve?

For most ranges, the honest answer is the serious golfer. The technology is chosen for them, usually on a head pro’s recommendation; the experience is shaped around them, and for years that looked like discipline — know your customer, serve them well. The trouble is that the serious golfer is a slice of the people who might be standing in those bays, not the whole room. The newcomer who’s never had a lesson, the four friends out for the evening, the company hosting its team, the family looking for something to do on a Saturday: each one is a visit and a spend that a golfer-only facility is structurally unable to capture. Build only for the loyalist and you don’t get focus. You get a glass ceiling.

It gets worse, because that same choice quietly hands your best customers to someone else. Put a casual group in front of a golfer-only range and they have two options: practise here, or pay a lot more for a night out at Topgolf. Without meaning to, the operator has used their own technology to build that fork in the road, and pushed the most social, highest-spending visitors straight toward a competitor’s door. The golfers will love the setup. But it was never going to make the venue anything more than a range, and the numbers say so.

This is the part legacy practice tech can’t fix, because it isn’t a bug in the software. It’s what the software was built for in the first place. A system designed to measure a swing does that well and has nothing to offer the person who didn’t come to practise. The commercially-minded operators I spoke to had all reached the same conclusion: the old model isn’t underpowered, it’s capped — and they’d stopped being willing to live under the cap.

The case for staying put

Switching is not an obvious call. Ripping out a system that still works is expensive and disruptive: new hardware in every bay, staff to retrain, weeks of transition at a venue that cannot afford to go dark. The incumbents earned their position, too — Trackman and Toptracer set the measurement standard this industry trusts, and plenty of facilities run their kit without complaint. For some, a golfer-only setup remains exactly the right buy. A lesson-led academy, a private club whose range exists to serve its members: if serious golfers are the whole room, there is no ceiling to lift.

The operators who switched don’t dispute any of that. Their answer is narrower, and harder to argue with: their growth depended on customers the old system was never designed to serve. Once they had done that maths, the transition stopped looking like the expensive option. Staying put was.

The migrations — and what they actually prove

What the switchers bought is software designed for the whole room rather than one seat in it — the avid golfer grinding on their Inrange Handicap, the beginner, the social group playing Bay vs. Bay, and the corporate client who never thought of a range as a place to host anything. That breadth rests on three things, and each one maps onto a different line of the operator’s P&L. The tracking is reliable enough for the customer who’ll forgive nothing: the non-golfer, who simply never returns if the system feels broken. The customer-data analytics let a venue actually see its segments and market to them on purpose, instead of hoping the right people wander in. And the API integrations into the systems an operator already runs (POS, booking platforms, ball dispensers) collapse a pile of manual workarounds into a single operation. Put together, that’s the distance between a venue that has screens and one that’s genuinely tech-enabled.

What convinced me it was real wasn’t the spec sheet. It was that the same product has had to clear two very different bars at once. At the high-volume commercial end — Chelsea Piers, Dobson Ranch, Clermont National — it holds up under exactly the social, high-throughput traffic golfer-only systems were never built for. At the premium practice destinations, where the serious player’s verdict is everything — Bethpage, Boca West — it has to satisfy operators who cannot afford to look like they’ve gone soft on golf. Legacy providers have never had to clear both. And the list doesn’t look finished: the talk in operator circles is that more marquee venues are weighing the same move.

One operator put it more plainly than I can.

“Inrange transformed our business model. We’re earning more, attracting new audiences, and hosting events we never could before. And Inrange’s support is night and day compared to Toptracer’s.”
— Joe Dahlstrom, Owner & CEO, Palm Beach National

Read that again. The vocabulary is all business model: new audiences, events he couldn’t host before, and a support comparison he calls night and day.

What comes next

Step back and the market is starting to split into two groups. One is still running setups built for a single kind of customer, performing exactly as designed — like a range, no more. The other has decided its facility should earn from everyone who walks in, and gone looking for the technology to make that true. The first group still thinks the question is whether their tracking works. The second has already moved on to a better one: was any of this ever built for the whole market — golf and entertainment, not just golf — or only for the part we already had?

That’s the shift I set out to understand. Having traced it, the open question isn’t about one disruptor anymore; it’s about everyone else. It will be fascinating to see how established players like Trackman and Toptracer look to evolve along with the macro trend Inrange has created — because the operators voting with their installations have already told us which way the market is heading.

HOW TO PARTNER WITH US: If you are interested in contributing to and strengthening our content offering as a partner, company, or institution, we would be pleased to hear from you at newsroom@golfbusinessreview.com.

Hello GBR community,

Today’s GBR reflects how new technology, partnerships and commercial alliances are reshaping different parts of golf.

GOLF.AI is launching a conversational platform designed to simplify the planning and booking of golf trips, while a separate market forecast expects global golf tourism to grow from $69.1 billion in 2024 to $98.7 billion by 2035. Elsewhere, ZEN Golf and Karl Morris are expanding their coach education partnership around performance psychology and adaptable practice, Hawaii’s leading resorts have formed a new tourism alliance, and the Asian Tour is preparing to establish closer pathways into the DP World Tour and PGA Tour ecosystem.

Writing this in late July, it seems strange to think that this year’s major season is over. Did anybody have Aaron Rai and Ryan Fox down as major winners this year?

After the U.S. Open, I commented that Sam Burns was somebody I thought would be in with a shout of winning The Open, and that looked good on Saturday evening. Alas, we’ll have to wait till next April to see if he can finally win his first major.

Enjoy today’s edition of GBR.

GOLF.AI LAUNCHES GOLF.AI TRAVEL: THE GOLF TRIP BECOMES A CONVERSATION

“Plan me a six day golf trip to Ireland next September for four golfers. We want links golf, luxury accommodation, a hire car, one hidden gem the locals love, and a budget under US$6,000 a head.”

For twenty years, that request has meant a dozen browser tabs and days of work. Search the destinations. Compare the courses. Check tee times, price the hotels, sort the flights, the transfers, the restaurants, the group, the budget. Then hope nothing changes.

Over the next five years, golf travel will move from searching to a single conversation. GOLF.AI Travel is built to answer it in seconds. Its AI concierge compares thousands of courses, hotels, flights and local experiences. It knows the group’s handicaps, preferred course styles, budget and past trips. It coordinates the party, books the golf, manages changes, reserves the dinners and finds sightseeing for whoever came along without clubs. The booking process turns invisible. The conversation is the interface.

The starting point is different from a travel website with a chatbot bolted on. The platform begins with intent: where you want to go, who is coming, what kind of golf you enjoy, what you want to spend. Then it assembles the parts into one plan, and it stays live after the deposit clears. It recommends courses by handicap, reshuffles the itinerary when the weather turns, books a lesson with a local pro, adds a fourth round midweek. The effect is closer to traveling with a companion who knows every course, and everyone in the group.

Where the specialists fit

The world’s golf tour operators, destination specialists and resorts have spent decades building supplier relationships and local knowledge, and the customer trust that comes with both. No technology replicates the judgment of a specialist who knows which courses are worth the detour, where a group should stay, how much driving a day can absorb, and how to rescue a trip when plans fall apart.

AI does not replace that expertise. It amplifies it.

That is the model behind the launch. GOLF.AI builds the conversational intelligence, the orchestration tools, the global golf data and the AI itself. Partners bring destination expertise, inventory, supplier relationships and the service that makes a trip memorable. The company says it has no interest in becoming another online travel agency. The ambition is the intelligent infrastructure underneath the next generation of golf travel.

An open door — including to sellers

GOLF.AI is inviting conversations with tour operators, travel agencies, destination specialists, resorts, hotel groups, tourism bodies, airlines, transport providers, travel technology companies and entrepreneurs building new golf travel products. The models on the table run from strategic partnerships and technology licensing to joint ventures, distribution deals and commercial collaborations.

And where the strategic and cultural fit is right, acquisition. Golf travel remains deeply fragmented, full of strong businesses built around a single destination or a single kind of customer. The stated objective is to connect that expertise through one global conversational platform, while partners keep the relationships and local knowledge that make their businesses valuable.

The size of the prize

The timing tracks the market. Market Research Future values golf tourism at $69.1 billion in 2024 and expects it to climb from $71.37 billion in 2025 to $98.67 billion by 2035 — a compound annual growth rate of 3.29%. The firm credits the growth to improved international connectivity, specialist golf travel companies, personalized packages, digital booking platforms, AI-led travel recommendations, mobile apps and virtual course previews, with sustainability — water conservation, renewable energy, biodiversity protection and eco-friendly resort development — emerging as a competitive factor.

The demand is spread across every region. North America remains a major market on the strength of its golf culture, professional tournaments, corporate events and resort network; Europe leans on heritage courses and cultural tourism; Asia-Pacific is growing through investment in Japan, South Korea, China, Thailand and Australia; and the Middle East and Africa are expanding through luxury resorts, international events and destination golf. It is a large, fast-moving, deeply fragmented market — the kind that rewards whoever can organize it.

The vertical AI thesis

The most valuable AI companies will pair powerful models with deep knowledge of one industry. Golf is unusually well placed for it. The sport connects travel, hospitality, tee times, resorts, transport, coaching, tournaments, retail and experiences in a single global market. The winners will build better trips, and the edge will belong to whoever offers the most intelligent and most trusted way of planning one.

The next great golf trip will start with a sentence.

• Golfers can start that conversation now at golf.ai.

• Operators, resorts and destinations interested in building it: Clive Mayhew is taking partnership conversations directly at clive@golf.ai.

• And any course or resort ready for an agent of its own can build one at courses.golf.ai.

ZEN GOLF AND KARL MORRIS BUILD COACH EDUCATION PARTNERSHIP

ZEN Golf and performance coach Karl Morris have announced an expanded coach education partnership built around performance psychology, representative practice design and ZEN Golf’s patented Active Terrain Technology.

The collaboration, which includes educational content, guided player experiences and the forthcoming ZEN Master Coach Certification program, will use ZEN’s programmable Green Stage and Swing Stage to help coaches create practice environments shaped by slope, lie, target, pressure, decision-making and adaptability rather than repeated technique from flat, predictable surfaces. Morris, whose principles were evident in Ryan Fox’s Open Championship victory at Royal Birkdale, said “the search for a perfect state is a myth” and that players must learn to “return to the present” by asking, “What is the task right now?” ZEN Golf founder Nick Middleton said performance comes from a golfer’s ability to “see the situation, select a shot and commit to it”, adding that Morris can help golfers develop that capability while ZEN creates “the stage on which they experience it”.

Coaches, academies and performance centers are now being invited to register interest in the certification program, online broadcasts, live ZEN Stage experiences and early education partnerships through ZEN Golf.

59CLUB CONFIRMS TPC SAWGRASS EDUCATION AND NETWORKING EVENT

59club will host its Education & Networking Event at TPC Sawgrass on Tuesday, August 11, 2026.

The complimentary morning session is open to club managers, golf professionals and hospitality leaders, with up to two free delegate places per club, limited availability on a first-come, first-served basis and additional places available at $50 per person. The featured 59club masterclass, Customer Service & Operational Excellence, will examine “what truly separates a good club experience from a great one”, using mystery shopping data from golf operations, food and beverage, and retail to highlight service standards, common gaps, upselling opportunities and practical steps to improve member satisfaction, team performance and commercial results.

Guest speakers will include Bryant Shuford of Turtleson on intentional experiences and customer loyalty, PGA Master Professional John Mousley, appearing as a Power Tee guest, on the changing role of practice facilities, and Rachel Carter of the NGCOA on the Golf Business Pulse Report, with the program running from registration at 8.30 am to departure at 1.30 pm before further USA roadshow venues and dates are announced.

HAWAII RESORTS FORM PLAY HAWAII GOLF TOURISM ALLIANCE

Twelve resort golf facilities across Hawaii have launched Play Hawaii Golf. The alliance is designed to promote the state as a global golf destination, support local communities and raise funds for junior golf programmes, with founding members including Mauna Lani Golf, Waikoloa Beach Resort Golf and Mauna Kea Golf Course on Hawaii Island; Po‘ipū Bay Golf Course, Princeville Makai Golf Club and the Ocean Course at Hōkūala on Kaua‘i; Manele Golf Course on Lana‘i; Kapalua Golf, Ka‘anapali Golf Courses and Wailea Golf Club on Maui; and Ko Olina Golf Club and Turtle Bay Golf Course on Oahu. Kapalua Golf general manager Alex Nakajima said Hawaii has “more than 70 golf courses” with Pacific Ocean backdrops, volcanic landscapes and tropical settings, adding that recent PGA Tour and state legislature decisions could affect the golf community and economy. “Play Hawaii Golf was formed to promote this incredible golf destination, our courses and all the good golf does for the Aloha State,” he said.

The initiative will be funded through annual contributions from participating resorts and supporting partners. The Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau is backing the group in 2026 by funding content capture and broadcast production for television, digital storytelling and paid social media, with the aim of keeping Hawaii’s golf offering in front of a national audience. Play Hawaii Golf represents 315 holes across the islands and will use digital campaigns, public relations, influencer partnerships, broadcast media, events and traditional marketing to promote golf travel in the U.S., Asia and beyond. The wider economic case is also clear, with golf contributing an estimated $3.4 billion annually to Hawaii’s economy, including more than $1 billion from golf tourism and related retail spending.

INDOOR GOLF ALLIANCE TO FEATURE GOLF COAST, INDOOR OPERATOR

The Indoor Golf Alliance will continue its weekly Interview with an Operator podcast and webinar series on Wednesday, July 22, at 8 am PT.

The free session will feature Steve Deffenbaugh, owner of Golf Coast Indoor, a one-year-old, 24-hour unmanned indoor golf facility with a partially staffed pro shop, and will cover his experience launching the business, first-year lessons, and strategies for building a sustainable indoor golf operation. The series is aimed at existing indoor golf facility owners, prospective operators, golf entertainment venues, simulator investors, PGA professionals, instructors and hospitality leaders, with topics including startup planning, simulator selection, membership growth, marketing, staffing, leagues, food and beverage, revenue diversification and long-term profitability. “Operators are looking for more than just equipment recommendations—they want real operational insight from people who have actually built successful facilities,” said IGA president Phil Immordino, adding that the series is designed to provide practical knowledge, honest discussion and strategies to help operators avoid costly mistakes.

PROAGENDA TO POWER TRUMP TURNBERRY ACADEMY BOOKINGS

ProAgenda has agreed a new partnership with Trump Turnberry. The golf academy management and booking software provider will support the resort’s Golf Academy booking systems, covering golf lessons, covered driving range bays, Trackman Range facilities and Trackman iO simulators.

The move is designed to give members and visiting guests a more streamlined digital booking process, whether reserving PGA tuition, using the interactive range or playing simulated versions of the Ailsa course and King Robert the Bruce. ProAgenda CEO Jordy Hagedooren called the partnership “an incredible milestone” and said the platform would help Turnberry “deliver a frictionless booking journey”, while academy manager Alistair Kyle said the rollout would make it easier for golfers to access the resort’s coaching, range and simulator facilities through a technology partner that understands the needs of a modern golf academy.

FORETHOUGHT GOLF REVIVES YES! PUTTER BRAND

Forethought Golf has announced the return of YES! putters. The relaunched line brings back the brand’s familiar shapes while retaining Arc Face® Technology, which is designed to promote faster forward roll, reduce skid after impact and improve distance control, accuracy and putting consistency. The new range is aimed at golfers from amateur to professional level, with models built around feel, stability, alignment and roll performance. “YES! putters have always been about making better putting possible for golfers of every level,” said Tom Rath, owner of Forethought Golf. “We’re excited to bring the brand back with classic YES! designs combined with modern performance.”

ASIAN TOUR SET TO REJOIN PGA TOUR AND DP WORLD TOUR ECOSYSTEM

The Asian Tour is set to enter a formal partnership with the DP World Tour and PGA Tour.

The agreement, expected to be announced on Tuesday evening after talks during The Open at Royal Birkdale, will include at least two co-sanctioned Asian Tour and DP World Tour events in each of the 2027, 2028 and 2029 seasons, plus pathways from the Asian Tour Order of Merit to the DP World Tour and HotelPlanner Tour.

Players who progress to the DP World Tour will then be able to compete for one of 10 PGA Tour cards available through the existing Strategic Alliance, while the move also means the Asian Tour will no longer serve as LIV Golf’s effective second tier through the International Series, which had been central to LIV’s promotion and relegation system. Asian Tour CEO Cho Minn Thant said “the timing is just right now” and that “pathways to different tours are very important for our members”, with the agreement also reducing LIV’s ability to use Asian Tour events in future investor proposals or as a second-tier structure for Official World Golf Ranking accreditation. Evin Priest’s full article for Golf Digest Australia can be read here.

LIV GOLF SUED OVER UNPAID TECHNOLOGY FEES

LIV Golf has been sued by Mobii Systems Group Ltd. in U.S. District Court in Miami.

The Canada-based technology company, which supplied LIV’s “Any Shot, Any Time” broadcast feature, is seeking about $1.13 million, including an $820,600 licensing fee, a $104,500 usage fee and $209,531 in lost revenue after LIV said it would stop using the product for the final six events of the 2026 season. The lawsuit says LIV had paid all 2025 fees under a two-year agreement due to run until Dec. 31, 2026, but Mobii sent a demand for payment on May 8 before LIV senior vice president of technology Nick Connor notified the company on May 25 that the league would discontinue the service, starting with its South Korea event. “We recognize that delays in payment have caused strain in our relationship,” Connor wrote, while adding that the decision was “not reflective of the quality of work or services provided”; Mobii terminated the agreement the same day. Lead Story by Mark Schlabach at ESPN.

TITLEIST ADDS MORE FORGIVING GTS300 MINI DRIVER TO LINEUP

Titleist has introduced the GTS300 mini driver. The new 305cc model, available in golf shops worldwide from July 23, was shaped by tour feedback from players including Justin Thomas and Cameron Young and is designed to offer more forgiveness than the GT280 while retaining performance from the turf.

The larger footprint, deeper center of gravity and composite crown help increase inertia by about 15-20%, while the club keeps the same face height as the GT280, uses a forged L-Cup face with an ATI 425 titanium insert to protect ball speed on low-face strikes, and includes a dual-weighting system to fine-tune launch and spin. “The main goal in development was to make GTS300 a more forgiving mini driver,” said Stephanie Luttrell, Titleist’s Senior Director of Metalwood Development, with the club offered in 13 degrees, right- and left-handed options, and priced at $549 with feature shafts or $749 with premium shafts.

HOW TO PARTNER WITH US: If you are interested in contributing to and strengthening our content offering as a partner, company, or institution, we would be pleased to hear from you at newsroom@golfbusinessreview.com.

Hello GBR,

Today's edition reflects an industry investing in its future from multiple angles. ZEN Golf's latest installation at Celtic Manor shows how technology is expanding beyond performance into participation and wellbeing, while Topgolf is turning its audience into a media business, Five Iron continues its international growth, and the PGA Tour is already winning sponsor backing for its new competition model. We also take a closer look at the business of The Open, examining what the Championship's headline economic impact figures really tell us, and, perhaps more importantly, what they don't.

Enjoy your weekend.

CELTIC MANOR ADDS ZEN GREEN STAGE THROUGH WOMEN’S GOLF LEGACY FUND

Celtic Manor Resort has acquired a ZEN Golf Green Stage through the Women’s Golf Legacy Fund, with the project supported by Welsh Government funding delivered through Sport Wales and linked to Wales Golf’s wider strategy for participation, performance, and inclusion.

ZEN Golf will support Celtic Manor and Wales Golf in using the active-terrain putting platform for player performance, women’s and junior pathways, disability golf, beginner activity, and future wellbeing-led initiatives, with the Green Stage recreating real-course slopes and contours indoors and future ZEN Eye putting analysis, augmented reality, and famous-putt experiences, including Graeme McDowell’s decisive putt on the 16th at the 2010 Ryder Cup.

“We believe this is a world first, and the beginning of a new model for golf,” said ZEN Golf founder Nick Middleton, describing technology as “shared infrastructure” that can support participation, player development, wellbeing, and healthier communities. Brian Duncan, Head of Golf, Spa and Leisure at Celtic Manor Resort, called the installation “a significant investment in the future growth, accessibility and inclusivity of golf,” while Gareth Jenkins, Pathway and High Performance Director at Wales Golf, said year-round access to quality indoor putting technology would help squad players “refine our techniques across a variety of breaks” and also support beginner sessions.

59CLUB LAUNCHES USA EDUCATION AND NETWORKING ROADSHOW

59club has launched a USA Education & Networking Roadshow for club managers, golf professionals, and hospitality leaders, with the first complimentary event taking place at TPC Sawgrass on Tuesday, August 11, 2026.

The series is open to golf and hospitality professionals, whether or not their club works with 59club, and will focus on customer service, operational excellence, commercial performance, and practical benchmarking insights drawn from 59club’s mystery shopping program across golf operations, food and beverage, retail, and wider club operations. The opening session, Customer Service & Operational Excellence, will use real-world examples, service frameworks, and industry data to examine what separates good clubs from great ones, supported by 59club partners and guest speakers from across the golf industry.

“These events aren’t sales presentations, they’re about sharing best practices, global insight, and creating meaningful conversations that help raise service standards,” said 59club co-founder Mark Reed, with attendance at TPC Sawgrass complimentary for up to two delegates per club, additional places available at $50 per person, and further USA venues and dates to be announced.

SHOT SCOPE SURVEY SHOWS GOLFERS COMBINING GPS AND LASER DATA

Shot Scope survey data shows golfers are increasingly using both GPS devices and laser rangefinders to support course management, confidence, and scoring, with 80% of respondents using GPS, 51% using a laser rangefinder, 41% using both, and 88% checking a device on every hole.

The findings suggest players value the different roles of each technology, with GPS devices such as the Shot Scope V5 watch providing fairway views, hazard distances, and front, middle, and back green yardages, while rangefinders give precise distances to visual targets such as the pin. Respondents also use the Shot Scope mobile app to review shot performance and on-course statistics, with the survey showing technology adoption is not limited to younger or low-handicap golfers: 64% of respondents were aged 55 or older, and 50% were mid-handicap players between 10 and 19. Accuracy was the main priority for 88% of golfers and ease of use for 84%, while lower- and mid-handicap players were more likely to prefer a multi-device setup and higher-handicap golfers tended to favor the simplicity of GPS alone.

FIVE IRON GOLF TO OPEN ABU DHABI VENUE AT YAS BAY WATERFRONT

Five Iron Golf will open its latest international venue at Yas Bay Waterfront on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi in mid-August 2026.

The site will span nearly 30,000 square feet and include 12 Trackman-powered simulators, multiple bars, and private event spaces. It will also feature a 12,000-square-foot waterfront terrace with lawn games and a terrace bar. The venue will offer lessons, leagues, practice, dining, corporate events, celebrations, and live entertainment, with founding memberships currently on sale in limited numbers.

Located near Yas Marina Circuit, Etihad Arena, Ferrari World Abu Dhabi, Yas Links Golf Course, and future attractions including Disney and Sphere projects, the opening adds to Five Iron’s growing presence across North America, the Middle East, Europe, and beyond. “Five Iron has always been about making golf more accessible while creating places people want to spend time,” said co-founder and CEO Jared Solomon, while Five Iron Golf UAE partner Matt Csillag said the Yas Island opening was “an important milestone” in the company’s plans to reshape golf and social entertainment across the Middle East.

TOPGOLF LAUNCHES MEDIA NETWORKS DIVISION FOR BRAND PARTNERS

Topgolf has launched Topgolf Media Networks, a new sponsorship, media, and licensing division. The business gives brands a single entry point to reach more than 42 million annual Topgolf guests through in-venue experiences, more than 28,000 digital screens, first-party audience data, owned digital channels, original content, branded entertainment, and licensing opportunities.

The platform spans more than 100 venues, including a presence across 24 of the top 25 U.S. media markets, and is designed to connect physical visits with digital engagement before, during, and after each experience. “Topgolf has become much more than a place to play golf,” said CEO David McKillips, adding that the new division allows brands to build measurable partnerships around real consumer engagement, with the company pointing to average visits of nearly two hours as a key advantage over more passive sports sponsorship models.

NGF DATA SHOWS GOLF GROWING AT BOTH ENDS OF THE AGE SPECTRUM

NGF research shows golf’s growth is being driven by both younger players and Baby Boomers. While the number of on-course golfers under 35 is up 20% compared with 2019, the 65-plus cohort is also expanding as around 10,000 Baby Boomers reach 65 each day, a trend that began 16 years ago and is expected to continue through 2029. The number of Americans aged 65 and over rose from 49.2 million in 2016 to 64.6 million in 2025, a 31% increase, while the number of on-course golfers in that age group has nearly doubled over the same period. Despite that “Boomer influx”, the overall share of 65-plus golfers has remained relatively stable because younger participation has grown in parallel, with the average age of on-course golfers edging down from 44.6 in 2019 to 44.1 in 2025, suggesting the industry is widening at both ends rather than facing an abrupt “Boomer cliff”.

TAYLORMADE OPENS FIRST KINGDOM FITTING VENUE OUTSIDE THE US

TaylorMade Golf and The Grove have officially opened The Kingdom at The Grove in Hertfordshire.

The 8.5-acre performance and custom-fitting facility, open to the public since May 15, 2026, was formally launched on July 2 with Team TaylorMade athletes Tommy Fleetwood and Charley Hull taking part in a Q&A and range demonstration. Located an hour northwest of London, the venue includes three fitting bays, TrackMan 4, Foresight GC Quad Max, GEARS motion capture, Quintic putting analysis, a 7.4-acre 320-yard grass range, an 850-square-meter teeing area, a 4,000-square-meter short-game complex, more than 1,800 fitting shafts, and 56 Kingdom-exclusive shaft options.

Joel Westwell, Director of Golf at The Grove, said the facility strengthens the resort’s UK golf destination status, while David Silvers, Vice President and Managing Director EMEAP at TaylorMade Golf EMEA, said the first Kingdom venue outside the United States was “a major step” in giving more golfers access to tour-level fitting insight, precision, and care.

TEEGO SECURES SEVEN-FIGURE BACKING FOR UK INDOOR GOLF EXPANSION

TeeGo has secured a seven-figure investment from Middleton Enterprises. The funding will support the indoor golf simulator operator’s plan to grow from six London sites to 20 UK venues within two years, with target cities including Birmingham, Manchester, and Nottingham. TeeGo currently operates in Putney, Hampstead, Angel, Balham, Battersea, and Hackney Wick, and recorded 6,000 indoor rounds over the past year, up 155%, as demand for urban simulator golf continues to grow. “In a year’s time, we predict that more people will be playing golf indoors than on a traditional course outside,” said TeeGo CEO Jay Patel, citing cost, time, and course availability, while adding that TeeGo players can choose from more than 400 virtual courses and complete 18 holes in 30 minutes.

PGA TOUR SPONSORS RESPOND TO 2028 TWO-SERIES MODEL

The PGA Tour is seeing early sponsor support for its 2028 competition overhaul. Chief commercial officer Dhruv Prasad said the new structure gives partners more consistency after an old model in which “some dates were meaningfully better than others”, creating uncertainty over the value of tournament investments.

The new 15-event Championship Series will feature 120-130 top players and 72-hole cuts, with 10 tournaments already confirmed and two more sponsor confirmations understood to be close, while likely candidates include several current Signature events such as Pebble Beach, Genesis, Arnold Palmer, RBC Heritage, Truist, Memorial and Travelers, alongside potential additions in markets including New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver and possibly New Jersey. The 20-event Challenger Series will have roughly 144-player fields, with 13 events running opposite Championship Series weeks and promotion available through performance, including immediate elevation for two wins; Prasad said the format would create “stories of competitive consequence”, while adding that existing sponsor contracts will be handled individually as the Tour moves toward roughly 47 events across the Championship, Challenger, and fall Last Chance series. Josh Carpenter, Sports Business Journal.

WHO REALLY WINS THE OPEN?

The economic impact of golf’s oldest championship is routinely measured in hundreds of millions of pounds. The more difficult question is what those figures actually represent—and whether they tell us enough about the lasting value of hosting one of the world’s biggest sporting events.

Every July, once the Claret Jug has been presented and the galleries have dispersed, another figure begins to dominate the conversation surrounding The Open. This year, Liverpool City Region expects the Championship at Royal Birkdale to generate around £200 million ($269 million) in economic benefit. Royal Portrush reported more than £280 million ($377 million) following the 2025 Championship. Royal Troon generated £303.3 million ($408 million), while St Andrews exceeded £300 million ($404 million) when it hosted the 150th Open. Read in isolation, those numbers present a compelling story. Hosting The Open appears to deliver an economic return measured not in tens of millions, but in hundreds.

Yet the consistency of those headline figures invites a different question. What exactly do they measure?

Economic-impact studies have become an increasingly important part of the business case for staging major sporting events. Governments, tourism agencies, and host destinations rely on them to justify investment, demonstrate value, and showcase the commercial significance of global events. In golf, few tournaments carry greater prestige—or greater economic expectations—than The Open. The Championship is promoted not simply as four days of elite competition, but as a catalyst for tourism, inward investment, and international profile. Those ambitions are entirely understandable. The difficulty lies in understanding where measurable economic activity ends, and broader estimates of future value begin.

Read more

HOW TO PARTNER WITH US: If you are interested in contributing to and strengthening our content offering as a partner, company, or institution, we would be pleased to hear from you at newsroom@golfbusinessreview.com.

Good morning, GBR community,

• Newton Golf turned $2.3 million of debt into preferred stock this week. The instrument never matures, pays 10%, and can pay that 10% in paper whenever the company prefers. The purpose is not growth: it is to manufacture enough stockholders’ equity to satisfy Nasdaq before the compliance clock runs out. TruGolf ran the identical play last year and is still listed. Two of golf’s listed manufacturers, one financing method, one reason — and if you supply, distribute or lend to either of them, that is the week’s biggest open question.

• We also return to LIV Golf, because the paperwork arrived, and paperwork carries dates. The WARN notice went in on 8 July, which starts a 60-day clock expiring around 6 September — with four events still to play, no schedule for 2027, and a claim of up to $630 million now on the record in London.

• Plus: Golf.AI on the day the golf trip gets planned by an agent instead of a person, Forest Hill enters administration with a TrackMan range and a gym already built, Gedling Borough Council counts a 120-year-old club as 750 houses, and Chipotle buys attention inside a video game.

THE LEAD

WHEN AN AI PLANS A FOUR-DAY TRIP TO SCOTLAND, DOES IT PUT YOUR COURSE IN THE ITINERARY?

Powered by GOLF.AI

“Plan me a four-day golf trip to Scotland for eight players in September. Mix famous links with hidden gems, keep travel times short, include great dinners, and make sure the handicaps work for each course.”

One sentence. In the time it takes to read it back, an AI agent returns a complete itinerary. Four courses in. Every other course in Scotland out.

It books the hotel. It holds the table for eight at nine o’clock. It splits the bill eight ways and collects the money before anyone lands, which is the part the man who organises these trips has been dreading since March. And when the group reaches the first tee, the same agent is in their pocket, reading them the line on a green they have never seen.

No Pro Shop was called. The eight players will fly in, play their rounds and go home, and the courses that were considered and dropped will never know it happened.

The assembly layer

A golf trip has always been an assembly job, and a miserable one. Search for courses. Read the reviews. Check availability. Compare hotels. Find the restaurants. Book the vans. Herd the WhatsApp group. Call the Pro Shop and wait. Hope the weather holds. Hope everybody pays.

Somebody does that work today. A tour operator in Edinburgh, or the one man in the fourball who volunteers and then regrets it for four months. What the professionals sell is knowledge that exists nowhere in writing: which club takes eight visitors on a Saturday, which hotel says twenty minutes from the first tee and means fifty, which restaurant seats a group of eight at nine in high season.

Defensible knowledge, for as long as it stayed in their heads.

An agent assembles from what it can read, in seconds, for free. The operators who treat that as a competitor will be quoted against and undercut by a system that never took anybody to lunch. The ones who come through will do the obvious thing and put twenty years of it into the machine, because that knowledge is worth more as training data than as memory.

Which makes golf travel the next vertical to move. A fragmented market of small, knowledge-rich intermediaries sitting directly on top of the highest-margin transaction in golf.

What a slot in the itinerary is worth

A place in a golf trip is worth several rounds. Four green fees, eight sets of hire clubs, lunch for eight and whatever follows it at the bar. Then the return visit in three years, because these groups come back, and they come back to the courses that made the list the first time.

For a course or a resort that lives on visitors, the touring group is the highest-yield round on the sheet, and it arrives in a handful of weeks a year. Lose three of them across a season and you are into the maintenance budget.

A machine cannot recommend what it cannot read

Ask an agent to build that Scotland trip and it goes looking for green fees, visitor access windows, group size limits, handicap requirements, buggy policy, drive times, and whether four visitors can get out before nine on a Thursday in September.

Most courses cannot answer those questions in any form a machine can process. The green fee is seasonal and lives inside a PDF. The visitor policy sits on page four of a members’ handbook. Availability is behind a phone line that stops being answered at six.

An agent that cannot confirm your terms will not put you in the itinerary. It will put in the course that published them.

Four things to get ready

• Your data. Every green fee, including the visitor rate that currently requires a phone call to discover. Group sizes, days, times, handicap limits. If a society of eight cannot get out on a Saturday, say so, because an agent forced to guess will guess against you.

• Your availability. A tee sheet an agent can query and hold, and a payment it can take. A contact form that lands in an inbox until Monday is invisible to a machine working in seconds. And a group that has already paid is a group that turns up.

• Your services. Minutes from the airport. Buggy policy. Caddies and how far ahead to book them. Hire clubs, and which brand.

• Your story. Who designed the course and when. What the signature hole asks of you. Why it justifies the extra forty minutes in the van. A model retrieves facts, and a fourball spending four hundred pounds a head is buying something no stock photograph has ever once conveyed.

Then answer the phone at eleven at night, because the golfer typing that prompt is sitting in Atlanta and it is four in the afternoon where he is. That is what GOLF.AI has been building toward. A Pro Shop line that gets answered every time, in the caller’s language, whether the caller is the golfer or the golfer’s agent.

The silent rejection

For twenty years a course could tell when it lost a group. The operator stopped calling. The block booking failed to reappear. There was a person to take to lunch and a conversation to have about it.

Nobody is going to tell you now. Your course was read, weighed and left out of an itinerary in the time it takes to boil a kettle, and nothing arriving in your inbox tomorrow will mention that it happened.

The itinerary is being assembled while your Pro Shop is closed.

→ Tour operators and travel specialists: GOLF.AI is building the travel layer and looking for partners in it. Come and build it, at GOLF.AI.

M&A & EARNINGS

The small end of golf manufacturing is not raising money to grow. It is rebuilding its balance sheet to stay listed — and the same trade has now been made twice.

NEWTON GOLF SWAPS DEBT FOR A PERPETUAL 10% — AND TRUGOLF ALREADY RAN THIS PLAY

Newton Golf has entered a $5.0 million senior secured revolving facility maturing on 1 July 2028, and exchanged roughly $2.3 million of convertible notes, accrued interest included, for 24,092.61 shares of a new Series A Convertible Preferred. Read as financing, it is unremarkable. Read as what the company says it is for — materially improving stockholders’ equity so the Nasdaq-listed maker of the Motion shaft can meet the exchange’s minimum requirement inside its compliance review period — it is something else. Newton’s announcement is not a growth story. It is a listing rescue.

The company’s release puts the initial conversion price at $1.00 a share. The economics of the instrument turn up somewhere else — in a director’s Form 4, lodged the following day: the preferred is perpetual, pays 10% a year, and lets Newton settle that dividend in cash, in kind by increasing the stated value, or by simply letting it accrue — at the issuer’s sole discretion. Newton has not retired the cost of its capital. It has made it deferrable, and moved it ahead of the common. The same filing shows who took it: one of Newton’s own directors swapped notes for 3,246.66 preferred shares through a revocable trust and 2,164.44 through an LLC on 8 July — 5,411.10 in all. The release highlights record 2025 net sales, up 136%. It says nothing about the first quarter of 2026: revenue down 18% to $1.0 million, and a net loss of $2.7 million.

The sharper point is that this is the second time. TruGolf Holdings, the other Nasdaq-listed golf technology company of its size, ran the identical play. TruGolf’s 2025 accounts show notes payable exchanged into equity, total liabilities cut from $21.8 million to $15.9 million, and a $4.6 million stockholders’ deficit turned into positive equity of $4.3 million. Repairing the equity line was only half the defence: TruGolf announced a one-for-ten reverse split on 25 March, effective two days later — its second in under a year. Nasdaq tests the share price as well as the balance sheet, and TruGolf spent last year answering both. The listing survived. The growth TruGolf now sells is a franchised venue network, leased by its regional developers — not by TruGolf. More on that below.

If you supply, distribute, license to or carry receivables from the small end of golf manufacturing, your counterparty’s capital structure has changed shape. The revolver is senior and secured. The preferred sits ahead of the common and can accrue instead of paying cash. The facility matures in 2028; the Nasdaq clock runs faster. By its own account, Newton has shafts in OEM evaluation programmes and a Korean distributor. The product is not the problem. The paper behind it is. SGB Online has the fullest account of the transactions. And on the sell side, the tell is in Newton’s own paperwork: the release announcing Emerging Growth Research’s May note — a reiterated Buy, a $3.00 target, the FY:26 forecast cut to about $10.9 million — went out over the wire with Newton Golf named as the source, and described the revolving facility as under discussion “to support future growth initiatives.” Six weeks later the company told the market what it was really for. If your customer’s equity had to be manufactured, what are your terms in 2027?

TOURS & POWER

LIV’s question is no longer whether it survives. It is that a statutory clock, a sale process and a nine-figure claim are now all running at once.

LIV FILED THE NOTICE — WHAT A 60-DAY CLOCK DOES TO A SALE PROCESS

Friday’s edition carried the news: LIV Golf has told employees to expect potential layoffs as it hunts for the capital the PIF will no longer provide. What deserves a second look is the paperwork, because paperwork turns a report into a deadline.

LIV notified staff in the United States and the United Kingdom on Wednesday 8 July that it is filing a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice. WARN obliges employers with more than 100 people to give 60 days’ warning of mass layoffs; the UK has its own equivalent, and LIV has more than 300 employees split between New York and London. Sportico, which broke the filing, has also seen the investor deck, and it corrects the number everyone has been repeating: the league is seeking $250 million to $350 million, not a round $300 million. The plan it is selling is a ten-event season reaching profitability in year three, on the back of a claim that revenue doubled from 2024 to 2025 and is on pace to add another $100 million this year. LIV’s public line is that nothing has changed yet — no changes to workforce, operations or schedule at this time.

Now do the arithmetic. Sixty days from 8 July expires around 6 September. LIV’s next event is 23–26 July in England and four remain on the calendar, so the legal window in which the league may cut its corporate staff closes while the season is still being played. And the liability column got heavier. ESPN’s Mark Schlabach obtained the court records showing that World Golf Group and Premier Golf League filed a claim in London’s Commercial Court on 16 April seeking between $210 million and $630 million from LIV, the PIF and Golf Saudi, alleging breach of confidence and unlawful means conspiracy. Whoever buys a league buys its litigation. At the top of that range, the claim is roughly twice the entire raise.

So if you hold a LIV contract that runs into 2027 — a venue, a sponsorship, a supply agreement, a player deal — you are now pricing three things at once: a counterparty with an owner it does not yet have, a calendar cut from fourteen events to ten, and a contingent claim that could exceed the money being raised to fund the whole thing. The pitch asks investors to buy a growth story and a pile of tax losses in the same breath. Would you underwrite that receivable at your current terms? Front Office Sports maps what is still unresolved across the 2027 landscape, and Golf Digest adds the governance detail — the independent board LIV assembled in late April, after Yasir Al-Rumayyan stepped down as chairman of it.

COURSES & REAL ESTATE

Three ways to stop running your own club: insolvency, a landlord with a housing target, or a management contract. Forest Hill and Mapperley are living the first two; a Florida daily fee has just signed the third.

FOREST HILL DID EVERYTHING RIGHT AND WENT INTO ADMINISTRATION — WHAT THE BUYER IS ACTUALLY BIDDING FOR

Forest Hill Golf Club — 140 acres inside the Leicestershire National Forest, opened in 1991, more than 600 members — appointed administrators from FRP Advisory on 26 June. The business is still trading under their control, still accepting new members, and will be brought to market and offered for sale. No reason for the insolvency has been given. The Golf Business, which reported it, has the administrators’ statement.

What makes the file instructive is that this was not a bare eighteen holes waiting to die. By the club’s own description, the site carries a floodlit 20-bay driving range running TrackMan, a three-bay simulator suite, an 18-hole adventure golf course, a gym and studio, and a bar and restaurant. That is the diversification playbook, executed in full: weather-proof revenue, off-course revenue, non-golfer revenue, food and beverage. It is precisely what every consultant in Britain has been telling clubs to build. It did not carry the company.

Which means the administrators are not selling a golf business. They are selling 140 acres, ten minutes from junctions 21A and 22 of the M1 and twenty minutes from the centre of Leicester, with a going concern sitting on top of it. Leicester City tried to buy the site in 2017 for £2.2 million and turn it into a training ground. The club more recently tried, and failed, to get a 98-bedroom hotel approved. Both are the same instinct: the land wants a different job. And it is the mirror image of the analysis carried in Tuesday’s edition, which found that the land under golf’s great courses holds its value because the golf stays. At the top of the market, the golf protects the land. At Forest Hill, nothing is protecting it.

If you own a UK club, or lend against one, this is the file to read this month. It says the revenue diversification you were sold — the range, the sims, the gym, the food — can be fully built and still not service the debt. It says a 600-member roll is not a covenant. And it says that when the business fails, what clears is the ground. So: what is your club worth if the golf stops? And is there anyone in your borough who has already run that number?

• GEDLING BOROUGH COUNCIL HAS EARMARKED MAPPERLEY GOLF CLUB FOR 750 HOMES. The 120-year-old club leases the ground from the council on a lease expiring on 27 May 2030, and no decision has been taken on renewal. Government targets lifted Gedling’s requirement from 460 to 638 homes a year in December 2024, and the borough must now find 11,484 by 2043. The Golf Business has the council’s statement and the campaign against it. Carl Froch is why you have heard about this one; the lease is why it matters — municipal ground is the cheapest golf land in Britain and the easiest to take back.

• KEMPERSPORTS HAS TAKEN OVER EVERY OPERATION AT THE FLORIDA CLUB IN STUART. KemperSports’ announcement lists what changes hands at the Dick Gray-designed Martin County daily fee: golf, agronomy, hospitality, food and beverage, sales, marketing and events — the whole P&L, not a slice of it. The firm powers more than 200 properties by its own count, and it no longer only manages them: through a subsidiary it bought Streamsong and 7,000 surrounding acres for $160 million in 2023 — the operator across town now has a national purchasing book and a balance sheet behind it.

TECH & AI

The club software stack keeps thickening, and the golfer never sees the joins.

• HOWDIDIDO AND INTELLIGENTGOLF HAVE FOLDED PIN VISION’S GPS INTO THEIR SCORING APPS. Live pin positions, updated by greenkeepers every time a hole is moved, plus hazard yardages, pace-of-play data, club notifications and course updates now sit inside the app members already open to enter a card. The partnership announcement sells it to clubs as one less system to run. The fact worth holding is the ownership: HowDidiDo and intelligentgolf both belong to ClearCourse Sports & Leisure — and every layer the group absorbs is a layer an independent supplier can no longer sell into the British club market.

BRANDS & PLAYERS

Golf’s brand money is moving to where the golfer already is, and it is not the golf course: a burrito chain buying attention inside a video game, and a TGL franchise installing simulators in a public school.

• CHIPOTLE HAS BUILT A CUSTOMER-ACQUISITION FUNNEL INSIDE PGA TOUR 2K25. Chipotle’s announcement puts 80,000 free-entrée and double-protein codes on the table for the first players to finish the in-game quest, with that claim window closing on 29 July or sooner if the codes run out. The codes themselves must then be redeemed at participating locations, on digital orders in the Chipotle app, before 30 September. Skill in a golf video game, converted into an app download and a first-party customer record, at the cost of a burrito. Marketing Dive places it inside the wider shift into in-game advertising — EA launched its own brand platform in June. Golf’s audience is being monetised somewhere you do not own.

• BOSTON COMMON GOLF HAS LAUNCHED COMMON GROUND, AND FULL SWING IS PAYING FOR THE HARDWARE. The Fenway Sports Group-owned TGL franchise has turned its community work into a platform, with two $5,000 New England PGA Foundation scholarships alongside Keegan Bradley — and founding partner Full Swing donating three simulators to the City of Boston, one permanently installed at Boston Latin School. Read it as philanthropy if you like. It is also a simulator manufacturer buying shelf space inside a public school system, days after agreeing to sell itself to a broadcaster for $530 million.

THE DEMAND SIDE

Two demand stories pulling in opposite directions: a simulator maker taking a lease in a shopping centre, and a national federation buying tournament starts for players who can no longer afford to enter them.

• TRUGOLF LINKS HAS SIGNED A LEASE FOR A 5,000 SQ FT FLAGSHIP IN A ROMEOVILLE SHOPPING CENTRE. Premium simulator bays, an upscale restaurant, a full bar, opening this autumn. The announcement lets the landlord explain the logic better than the tenant does: a revitalised retail centre needs a reason for people to come back regularly. The machinery underneath is franchising — regional developers take territories of a million-plus people, and TruGolf is targeting as many as 70 locations in Chicagoland alone. The retail property trade covered it as a leasing story, which is exactly what it is. The listing was saved at the top of this edition; this is what the reprieve is being spent on. Rent.

• ENGLAND GOLF SAYS PLAYERS ARE QUITTING EVERY WEEK BECAUSE THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO CONTINUE. Performance director Nigel Edwards told Golf Monthly that talented amateurs and young professionals are dropping out for lack of money, which is why the federation launched its Professional Development Programme in late June: 50 competitive starts on the HotelPlanner Tour and 35 invitations on the LET Access Series through 2026, plus coaching and facilities at Woodhall Spa. The programme does not fund careers, it buys starts — a governing body absorbing a cost the professional game has always pushed down onto the players.

WHAT WE ARE READING

• Huddle Up argues that the record $9.6 billion paid for the Seattle Seahawks has less to do with football than with the tax code: American sports franchises remain the most efficient shelter a billionaire can buy, and Vinod Khosla is about to have a very large gain to shelter when OpenAI goes public. Read it directly against LIV’s pitch, which is selling billions in net operating losses as an asset in its own right. Same mechanism, different sport.

• Golf Monthly’s interview with Nick Faldo is filed as an equipment story and is really a manufacturing one. His objection to the ball rollback is commercial, not aesthetic: retooling costs the makers hundreds of thousands, and nobody has yet explained how you market a ball that flies 15% shorter than last year’s. His alternative costs $100 and fits in a pocket. With the rollback now paused to at least 2030, this is the argument the equipment industry will keep making.

• Golf Digest’s reported piece on indoor club economics, from May, is still the best thing written on why simulator venues work and why they fail, and it belongs next to the TruGolf item above. The line to keep is from Golfzon America’s chief customer officer: the successful ones are bar and restaurant businesses that happen to run on golf simulators, and the franchises that collapse are the ones that thought they were in the golf business. The National Golf Foundation numbers underneath — roughly $45,000 to build a bay, $55 of simulator and $40 of food per session — are the entire model in two figures.

HOW TO PARTNER WITH US: If you are interested in contributing to and strengthening our content offering as a partner, company, or institution, we would be pleased to hear from you at newsroom@golfbusinessreview.com.

Good morning GBR community,

The Saudi PIF is walking away from LIV Golf at the end of this season, after $6 billion since 2022 — and the league is now hunting for $300 million while bracing employees for layoffs, deciding what exactly is for sale: team equity, billions in tax losses, or a smaller league altogether. That is the week’s biggest open question.

We also return to Versant’s $530 million Full Swing deal, because three days on the sharper story is clear: a television company just bought the place indoor golf is played.

Plus: 7 Mile Beach hands its entire visitor operation to Currents, the governing bodies pause the ball rollback, Tiger adds a third design in Cabo, and a family-run English resort outranks Turnberry.

THE LEAD

THE VISITOR TEE SHEET, SOLVED: HOW CURRENTS RUNS THE FRONT DOOR AT 7 MILE BEACH

One of the most talked-about new courses in the world spent fifteen years getting built. It handed its visitor operation to a company far younger than that.

7 Mile Beach opened in Hobart, Tasmania, in December 2025, founded by Mat Goggin and designed by Clayton, DeVries & Pont. It is public, aiming for the top tier of global destinations, with a second eighteen and a membership programme on the way. It also lands in the middle of Tasmania’s rise as a golf destination, alongside Barnbougle, Cape Wickham and Ocean Dunes, a cluster now pulling international players a long way south. In June 2026 the club chose Currents Golf to run its visitor tee sheet from end to end: eligibility, tee-time requests, and payment in one place, without the visitor leaving the club’s own environment.

The reason is familiar to any operator handling visitor and reciprocal demand. At most leading clubs, a visitor booking still means a letter of introduction, a handicap certificate, and a run of emails before a time is held and payment taken. Every booking costs staff hours, and no one has a single view of who is coming in. Platforms built for public volume were never designed to carry it, because on a municipal course the visitor and the member are the same person.

Currents Passport, the company’s visitor module, was built for the opposite end of the market, starting with a request from The Royal Melbourne Golf Club. It keeps the etiquette and bespoke rules that define a private club, does the administrative work underneath, and by the company’s account has saved clubs hundreds of staff hours. Reciprocal play between clubs, a high-value slice of demand most systems ignore, runs inside the same software.

“The booking process is the first point of contact with many players,” says Will Kay, General Manager of 7 Mile Beach. “We wanted an online experience that matched the natural experience we provide on site, and Currents made sure this was the case.”

What should hold an operator’s attention is the decision. A brand-new, globally ambitious course, with no legacy process and demand arriving from overseas, concluded that the booking is the first thing a visitor touches, and that keeping it inside the club’s own environment is worth paying for. Currents now works with many of the leading clubs across Australia and New Zealand, and will shortly expand into the U.K. and Europe. For operators still running visitor bookings out of an inbox, it is a fair question how long that holds.

→ Read the full story on GBR.

M&A & EARNINGS

The simulator just became a media asset. Below, the deal that proves it — and venture money finding golf’s edges, from premium footwear to turf enzymes.

FULL SWING, ONE LEVEL DEEPER — WHY A BROADCASTER WANTS TO OWN THE HARDWARE

Tuesday’s edition carried the news: Versant, the publicly traded Comcast spin-off, is buying Full Swing from George Pyne’s Bruin Capital for $530 million in cash — its third acquisition this year, after Free TV Networks and StockStory. What deserves a second look is the price, and the logic behind it. Bruin paid $160 million for the business in 2021, so it exits at 3.3x in five years; Tiger Woods, an investor since 2015 with a reported voice in product decisions, holds between 1% and 2% — a stake worth up to roughly $10.6 million at the new valuation — and the deal should close in the second half of the year. The headline was the number. The story is what a television company thinks it is buying.

Versant already reaches the golfer three ways. Golf Channel carries the broadcast, GolfNow sells the tee time — CEO Mark Lazarus calls it “an OpenTable for tee times,” Sportico notes, with 40 million bookings last year — and GolfPass, the McIlroy-backed subscription platform, collects the recurring revenue. Full Swing adds the machine: the PGA Tour’s official licensed simulator, already woven into Golf Channel programming since 2019, with studio kits retailing between $11,500 and $15,000, a $5,000 launch monitor, and an endorsement roster running from Jordan Spieth and Xander Schauffele to Patrick Mahomes and Steph Curry. The Carlsbad company has changed hands repeatedly since its founding in 1986, and every owner has sold it for more. Watch, book, subscribe — and now play — inside one company.

The sharper angle is TGL. Full Swing’s technology powers the Woods–McIlroy indoor league, played on a 53-foot screen at the 1,500-seat SoFi Center, which completed its second season in March and is now negotiating its next media deal after the expiry of ESPN’s initial two-year contract. Golf Channel has been floated as a potential bidder for TGL, or for WTGL, the women’s league launching later this year. If Versant bids, it would sit on both sides of the table: the network buying the rights, and the owner of the platform the league is played on.

The lesson for operators sits in Bruin’s exit, not Versant’s entry. Off-course golf is no longer marketing for the on-course business; it is an asset class with its own multiples, and it just printed 3.3x in five years. Your customer is a golfer fifty-two weeks a year. How many of those weeks does your business actually see him? CNBC places the deal inside the Lazarus acquisition playbook, and Hollywood Reporter explains why golf is Versant’s “model home” — the one vertical already earning half its revenue outside pay TV.

• ALMA MATER HAS CLOSED A FUNDING ROUND BACKED BY THE ATHLETES WHO WEAR ITS SHOES. WWD, which broke the story, reports the premium golf-footwear start-up’s new investors include current and former professionals — more capital flowing into golf’s high-end lifestyle category.

• ZYMECO HAS CLOSED A $4 MILLION SERIES A FOR ITS ENZYME-BASED TURF SOLUTIONS. The maker of ThatchZyme announced the raise — venture money still finding its way into course-supply and agronomy technology.

TOURS & POWER

Everyone is repricing at once: LIV against life without the PIF, the Tour against its own 2028 reset, the governing bodies against the equipment market.

LIV GOLF SHOPS FOR $300M — WHAT IS ACTUALLY FOR SALE WHEN THE PIF WALKS

The Saudi PIF is pulling LIV’s funding at the end of this season, after total spending projected to pass $6 billion since 2022, and the league is hunting for $300 million in new capital — one large check or several smaller ones. This week added a harder data point: Sports Business Journal reported that LIV has told employees to expect potential layoffs as part of a right-sizing effort — and it lands alongside Jon Rahm’s admission, covered in Tuesday’s edition, that he would not rule out investing in the league himself once he sees a business plan. The question has moved on from whether LIV survives. It is what, exactly, is being sold.

The pitch, laid out in detail by Front Office Sports, has three parts. Equity — in the league or in any of its 13 teams, which LIV executives were valuing at $1 billion apiece as recently as January; a league-level investor would take 60–70% of every team, and family offices have explored tickets of $25–50 million. Losses — net operating loss carry-forwards CEO Scott O’Neil describes as running into the billions across the U.S. and U.K., a tax asset for the right buyer. And a smaller league — LIV 2.0 would cut 2027 from fourteen events to ten, five of them team majors in markets where the league has traction, such as Australia and South Africa, with purses falling from $32.3 million per event to around $10 million. The adviser roster tells its own story: AlixPartners on finance, Ducera as investment banker, Gibson Dunn as counsel, and two new independent directors — Gene Davis and Jon Zinman — whose CVs run heavy on structured bankruptcies.

When sovereign money leaves, the price of a sports property is set by the next buyer, not the last one. Every contract written against the PIF’s balance sheet — venue deals, sponsorships, player money — reprices with it. If you have commercial exposure to LIV, your 2027 counterparty may have a different owner, ten events instead of fourteen, and a third of the purse. Would your deal still clear at that number?

• TOURNAMENT ORGANIZERS ARE DOING THE MATH ON THE TOUR’S 2028 SPLIT. Golf Business Technology gathered first reactions from the events facing Challenger-tier status, where top players will not be allowed to enter: Valspar’s Tracy West concedes the second tier “will be challenging, at least in the beginning,” the John Deere Classic professes business as usual, and every host community and title sponsor is now recalculating what a designation without the stars is worth.

• GOLF’S GOVERNING BODIES HAVE PAUSED THE BALL ROLLBACK UNTIL AT LEAST JANUARY 2030. The full joint statement from the USGA, R&A, PGA Tour and DP World Tour sets out the reasoning: industry feedback favored a single 2030 implementation, and the Tours doubt the updated testing standard would deliver, so the interim goes to testing alternatives that slow elite-level distance with less disruption to the wider equipment market. ESPN’s report captures the stakes: the updated standard was designed to trim roughly 15 yards off elite drives, and USGA CEO Mike Whan insists the 2030 ball stays on the table. For manufacturers, the pause buys roadmap time — and stretches out the uncertainty.

• SEVEN ACTIVE LIV PLAYERS ARE PLAYING A PGA TOUR-SANCTIONED EVENT FOR THE FIRST TIME. Jon Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton, David Puig, Laurie Canter, Tom McKibbin, Adrian Meronk and Victor Perez entered the $9 million Genesis Scottish Open after paying outstanding fines to keep their DP World Tour memberships — the co-sanctioning arrangement that opened the door dates back to 2022. A LIV winner would take $1.62 million plus exemptions into The Open and the 2027 Masters, but no Tour card; the détente is advancing through commerce faster than through institutions.

COURSES & REAL ESTATE

Capex keeps flowing into dirt: a Washington acquisition, a third Tiger design in Cabo, a Vermont rebuild, and an English independent outranking Turnberry.

• ESCALANTE GOLF HAS ACQUIRED TUMBLE CREEK, A TWO-COURSE PROPERTY IN WASHINGTON STATE. The purchase, reported by Golf Course Industry, adds 36 holes to the multi-site operator’s portfolio — course-ownership consolidation keeps rolling.

• TIGER WOODS WILL DESIGN A THIRD COURSE AT DIAMANTE CABO SAN LUCAS. The first details of the private Legacy Course place it alongside his El Cardonal and Oasis Short Course at the resort — design-as-business and Los Cabos premium real estate continuing to feed each other.

• STOWE COUNTRY CLUB HAS UNVEILED ITS FULL 18-HOLE REDESIGN BY BEAU WELLING. Golfdom’s course-of-the-week feature walks through the multi-year rebuild — new greens and tees, Better Billy Bunkers, full regrassing, new irrigation and drainage — that anchors owner Mt. Mansfield Company’s push to position Stowe, together with The Mountain Course at Spruce Peak, as a 36-hole New England destination. More than 200 new members have joined across the two clubs since the transformation was announced.

• TEWKESBURY PARK HAS CRACKED GOLF WORLD’S NEW TOP 100 LUXE RESORTS EUROPE LIST. The family-run, 93-room Gloucestershire resort ranks ahead of La Manga, Celtic Manor and The Belfry — and ahead of Trump Turnberry for accommodation quality — on the back of £9.5 million invested across two waves since the McIntosh family took ownership in 2014. In a European golf-travel market now worth over $8 billion, roughly 30% of global golf tourism, it is a case study in independent, affordable luxury holding its own against the corporate mega-resorts.

TECH & AI

The theme is delegation: AI answering the pro shop phone, robots mowing the slopes, a GPT coaching the coaches.

• ZEST GOLF AND COURSEREV.AI HAVE PAIRED TEE-TIME DISTRIBUTION WITH AN AI OPERATIONS LAYER. Zest’s single API pushes live inventory, rates and booking conditions to tour operators and OTAs across more than 20 tee-sheet integrations, while CourseRev.ai answers the phones, manages waitlists and books directly into the same tee sheet in multiple languages. The joint announcement sketches where this is heading: courses structured to be queryable by the AI agents that will increasingly plan and book golf trips on the golfer’s behalf, starting across EMEA.

• KRESS HAS LAUNCHED EYEPILOT, A VISION-AI ROBOTIC MOWER LINE BUILT FOR 40-DEGREE SLOPES. Kress’s spec sheet makes the labor case: commercial-grade, RTK-guided machines that navigate without boundary wire, process ten images a second for centimeter-level accuracy even without signal, and claim double the mowing efficiency of traditional autonomous units — robotics aimed squarely at the maintenance budget’s biggest line.

• PROPONENT GROUP HAS PUT A CUSTOM GPT IN FRONT OF ITS 500-PLUS MEMBER COACHES. Proponent says usage has climbed steadily since the mid-May beta launch of the tool, which sits front and center on the group’s member site and runs enterprise-only search across twenty years of the network’s proprietary teaching-business IP — applied AI arriving in the instruction-services business.

• BLUE TEES GOLF IS WIRING AN AI LAYER THROUGH ITS ENTIRE DEVICE ECOSYSTEM. The brand’s platform announcement explains how GAME AI knits launch-monitor data from its Rainmaker together with GPS, scoring and shot tracking to feed personalized club recommendations and an AI caddie — platform lock-in logic applied to consumer golf tech. The GAME App is live on iOS and Android, and the full lineup gets its trade showcase at the PGA Buying Summit in Frisco, where Blue Tees is the event’s official rangefinder and speaker sponsor.

• TOPTRACER WILL TURN THE 154TH OPEN INTO ITS BIGGEST SHOWROOM YET. Toptracer’s announcement details the Royal Birkdale footprint: exclusive tracing of the global broadcast, live shot data via QR codes on practice-round tees, and ten simulators at The R&A’s Swing Zone plus machines across the grounds. Behind the activation sits a business of 1,450 sites in 38 countries, by the company’s own count, with 45 million hours played in 2025 and a pitch to operators of at least 50% revenue growth in year one — a major as a B2B sales channel.

BRANDS & PLAYERS

Where the brands spent their week: endorsements, licensing and launches.

• PING HAS SIGNED WYNDHAM CLARK TO AN EXCLUSIVE SCOTTSDALE TEC PUTTER DEAL. PING’s announcement leans on the numbers: the 2023 U.S. Open champion set the PGA Tour’s Strokes Gained: Putting record — more than 12.5 shots gained in a week — with the Ally Blue Onset model at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson. Terms were not disclosed; the validation for the eye-tracking-inspired alignment technology PING launched in April was the point.

• PADRAIG HARRINGTON’S U.S. SENIOR OPEN DEFENSE EXTENDS ONE OF GOLF’S LONGEST EQUIPMENT MARRIAGES. The Irishman won by four at Scioto — his fourth senior major, playing the Wilson irons and wedges he has carried since 1998 — and Wilson’s celebration of the milestone lands a week before he returns to Royal Birkdale, site of his 2008 Open win.

• SUNDAY GOLF HAS LICENSED THE BOB MARLEY ESTATE FOR A LIMITED-EDITION BAG LINEUP. Sunday Golf’s launch pairs three designs in the Marley family’s colors with lion logos and the singer’s signature, selling direct at $139 to $389 while supplies last, as the fastest-growing U.S. bag maker — previous collaborator with 7-Eleven and Whataburger — keeps chasing younger, lifestyle-driven buyers through cultural licensing.

• UPSWING GOLF HAS LAUNCHED GALAXY, A JUNIOR CLUB LINE BUILT SPECIFICALLY FOR GIRLS. UpSwing’s launch materials detail the engineering: shafts half an inch shorter than the boys’ sets with re-tuned kick points, on the brand’s adjustable UpTech platform that lengthens as the player grows. Sets run £449 to £899 direct from the brand, chasing an underserved demographic and tomorrow’s participation numbers.

• SUN MOUNTAIN HAS BROUGHT MILITARY-GRADE BALLISTIC NYLON TO ITS NEW MATCHPLAY STAND BAGS. Sun Mountain’s spec sheet covers the details — 1680D weave, polyurethane coating, matching rain hood, eight pockets — with the 4-way and 14-way bags selling direct at $425–435, aimed at the durability end of the accessories market.

• IMPERIAL HAS BUILT ITS 2027 HEADWEAR COLLECTION AROUND A NEW PROPRIETARY FABRIC. Imperial’s collection preview leads with Lodestar — 100% recycled, natural-look, moisture-wicking, UPF 50+ — from the brand voted #1 headwear supplier to private and resort shops nine years running, whose customers include the U.S. Open, PGA Championship and Ryder Cup; the full catalog lives at imperial1916.com.

• TAYLORMADE HAS PLANTED ITS FIRST KINGDOM FITTING FLAG OUTSIDE THE U.S. The opening announcement featured Tommy Fleetwood and Charley Hull at The Kingdom at The Grove in Hertfordshire: three bays with TrackMan 4, GC Quad Max, GEARS and Quintic, more than 1,800 shafts and an on-site build workshop across 8.5 acres of a Troon-managed five-star resort. Premium fitting as a retail strategy for the UK and Europe — fittings are already bookable through The Grove.

THE DEMAND SIDE

Where the golfer’s money goes: a 3,000-player amateur field, golf-travel dealmaking in Mexico, and a $30 door into the game.

• THE MYRTLE BEACH WORLD AMATEUR HAS FILLED ALL 3,000 SPOTS. The organizers’ field breakdown: entrants from 49 states and 17 countries, 95% from beyond 50 miles, ages 20 to 93, playing 72 holes across the Grand Strand plus the nightly “World’s Largest 19th Hole” at the 120,000-square-foot convention center. Destination-amateur economics at full capacity — an alternate list is open at the tournament site.

• IAGTO TOOK ITS NORTH AMERICA GOLF TOURISM CONVENTION TO MEXICO FOR THE FIRST TIME. IAGTO’s wrap-up from the Riviera Maya covers the 254 delegates from 32 countries who did two days of pre-scheduled golf-travel dealmaking — meetings over 90% booked — between World Cup matches, in a Mexican market that the association has tracked from $270 million in 2003 to $400 million a decade later.

• COLIN MONTGOMERIE OPENED HARBOR SHORES’ NEW WEE COURSE WITH BACK-TO-BACK HOLES-IN-ONE. The resort’s opening-day report has the theatre; the economics underneath are the story: nine holes across five acres, $30 a round, kids under 12 free, leagues and junior programs already filling the tee sheet at the Michigan resort built on $900 million of golf-driven regeneration.

MOVERS

Scotti Corley joins Bobby Jones Links as Director of Business Development after 23 years at the NGCOA — an expansion signal from the 35-property boutique manager. Andrew Lamie returns to Turtleson as territory manager for Tennessee and Kentucky, deepening the apparel brand’s Southeast push. Ryan Dotters, Full Swing CEO, will join Versant when the deal closes, reporting to digital chief Will McIntosh, per Deadline.

WHAT WE ARE READING

• Variety frames the Full Swing deal as a media-industry pattern: the New York Times has games, Disney has theme parks — and Versant has golf.

• SportsPro looks at the deal from the seller’s side: George Pyne’s Bruin Capital banks its 3.3x fresh off raising a $1 billion sports fund and buying into Matchroom.

• Stand Up For Southport carries The R&A’s economic research as Birkdale week arrives: the 153rd Open at Portrush generated £280 million in combined economic and media benefit — the number Southport’s businesses are now chasing.

Securing a round at a leading private club has long carried a paper trail. A letter of introduction. A handicap certificate. A chain of emails and calls to confirm who is eligible and settle what they owe. Every one of those bookings pulled a staff member off other work, with no single screen showing who was due to arrive or what they had paid.

Premium clubs absorbed that cost because nothing built for them existed. Tee-time software was made for public and municipal volume, where filling slots quickly matters more than screening who plays. Private clubs and destination courses work from a different starting point. They need to know who is on the course, honour reciprocal agreements with other clubs, and hold the standards that define them.

7 Mile Beach ran into that reality on day one.

The course opened in December 2025 in Hobart, Tasmania, fifteen years in the making, to wide critical acclaim. It joined a short list of Tasmanian courses now pulling international golfers a long way south, alongside Barnbougle and the King Island pair, Cape Wickham and Ocean Dunes. Founded by Mat Goggin and designed by Clayton, DeVries & Pont, the course is open to the public and aims to rank among the world’s premier destinations. A second eighteen, the North Course, is already planned, which would take the site to thirty-six holes. A membership programme is set to follow.

Tasmania’s pull is what makes the booking matter. Golfers do not fly to the bottom of Australia for a single round. They come for a trip, stringing several courses into one itinerary, planning months out, arriving as complete strangers to the club at the far end. That kind of demand rewards the courses that are easy to get onto and punishes the ones that are not. A destination competes on the strength of its holes and on how quickly an overseas visitor can confirm a time, prove eligibility, and pay before boarding a flight.

A brand-new course feels all of this from the first week. There is no legacy process to lean on and no back office built up over decades, yet the course has to look the part from the first booking. Demand arrives from overseas, in different time zones, from players the club has never met. Get the front end wrong and the first impression of a fifteen-year project is a clumsy email exchange.

In June 2026, 7 Mile Beach chose Currents Golf, the Melbourne technology company, to run its visitor tee sheet from end to end. Golfers confirm their eligibility, request a time, and pay in one place, without leaving the club’s own environment. The club sees every request, every arrival, and every payment in one view.

“The booking process is the first point of contact with many players, so making this as seamless as possible was something Currents brought with their platform. We wanted an online experience that matched the natural experience we provide on site, and Currents made sure this was the case.” Will Kay, General Manager, 7 Mile Beach

Currents did not begin as a general booking tool. It started with a request from The Royal Melbourne Golf Club, which wanted to handle heavy visitor and reciprocal demand without the manual load that came with it. The club needed to move faster inside its own operation while giving visitors an arrival that matched its standing.

The result was Passport (the visitor module built by Currents), software shaped around what private and destination clubs actually require. Before it, visitor bookings ran on long email threads, letters of introduction, handicap certificates, and document checks before a time was confirmed and payment taken. Currents Passport moved that online and cut the steps out. Currents built it alongside club teams and made it configurable to each club’s rules. By the company’s account, it has saved hundreds of staff hours while giving clubs a clear view of visitor demand and firmer control over it.

The harder part sits in the detail. Leading clubs run on etiquette, tradition, and the bespoke arrangements that mass-market platforms tend to strip out for the sake of speed. Currents Passport keeps them in place and does the administrative work beneath. Reciprocal play is the clearest case. Members of one club playing another under a standing agreement is a specific, high-value slice of demand, and most tee-time systems never built for it, because they were built for public play, where the visitor and the member are the same person. For a destination course, the same discipline covers the international visitor who belongs to a club overseas and expects that courtesy to travel with them.

There is a build-or-buy question underneath all of this, and new courses feel it sharply. A destination course can pour capital into design, agronomy, and the clubhouse, then run its bookings on a spreadsheet and a shared inbox. Building software in-house solves that, slowly and at cost. Off-the-shelf booking tools are quick to switch on, but they treat a world-ranked course like a municipal range. Currents Passport sits in between: software already built for this type of club, configured to the course’s own rules.

The mix only gets more complex from here. When the membership programme arrives and the North Course opens, 7 Mile Beach will be balancing members and public visitors across thirty-six holes. Sorting that out on the system the club already runs is easier than retrofitting it once the volume is there.

Keeping the visitor inside the club’s own environment brings a benefit operators tend to undervalue. The club owns the relationship the whole way through, from first enquiry to booking, pre-arrival contact, and the day of play itself. Every point of contact reinforces the entire experience the club has spent years building.

Currents Golf now works with many of the leading clubs across Australia and New Zealand, and will shortly be expanding into the U.K. and Europe. 7 Mile Beach gives it a public destination with global ambition and a second course on the way. For a club setting out to compete with the best in the world, the decision to run its front door on Currents says a great deal about where it thinks the visitor experience starts.

• Booking — confirm eligibility, request a tee time, and pay through the club’s own booking page, book.7milegolf.com.au, the visitor system built by Currents.

• More info — 7milegolf.com.au.

HOW TO PARTNER WITH US: If you are interested in contributing to and strengthening our content offering as a partner, company, or institution, we would be pleased to hear from you at newsroom@golfbusinessreview.com.

Hello GBR,

Today’s edition of GBR looks at the many different ways golf is trying to turn attention into revenue. Golf.AI starts with the most basic point of contact, the pro-shop phone, and asks what happens when every call, booking attempt, and missed opportunity becomes visible. Noteefy’s acquisition of Metolius takes that same idea into course data, forecasting, and operator decision-making.

Elsewhere, Versant’s $530 million deal for Full Swing brings simulator technology further into golf’s media and engagement economy, while ClubGrub’s latest report shows how food and beverage expectations are changing on course. We also look at Scotland’s £6.3 million support for the Genesis Scottish Open, which I’m pleased to see since I have a home less than 10 minutes from The Rennaisance Club, and have played the course on a few occassions, PGA Tour ratings ahead of future media talks, and what some of golf’s most famous courses could be worth as land.

Enjoy today’s GBR.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS IN THE FIRST THIRTY DAYS OF AN AI CONCIERGE?

Powered by GOLF.AI

Most course technology takes months to prove itself, and even then, the proof is buried in a report nobody opens. An AI Concierge is different. The change is visible in days, and it builds week by week. Here is what the first month tends to look like once a course switches on.

• Week one: the phone stops running the shop. Every call gets answered, at any hour, including the ones that never needed a person: what time is sunset, is it raining, are the carts out today? The Pro Shop notices the quiet first. Not fewer golfers, fewer interruptions.

• Week two: the after-hours bookings appear. Tee times start landing at 10 pm, at 6 am, on a Sunday night, in the windows that used to be dead air because no one was there to pick up. None of this demand is new. It was simply never captured.

• Week three: the staff gets their job back. Freed from the switchboard, the team goes back to being hosts: selling in the shop, greeting players, running the floor. The repetitive volume is absorbed, and human attention moves to where it actually matters.

• Week four: the course can finally see itself. For the first time, every call and every booking attempt is captured. The missed calls, the abandoned bookings, the after-hours demand, the leaks that were always there but never measurable, all become visible. Thirty days in, the operator isn’t looking at a new tool. They’re looking at their own course clearly for the first time.

What the month is really showing you

The headline is not that a machine answered the phone. It is that a course discovers how much it was losing without ever knowing. The calls that rang out after closing, the golfer who tried twice and gave up, the booking that went to whoever answered first: none of it showed up on any report, because the course was never on the other end to record it. An AI Concierge does not just add capacity. It turns invisible loss into something an operator can see, and once it is visible, it can be captured.

That is the work the AI Concierge is doing in the background from day one: answering every call, handling bookings, managing inquiries, and selling memberships around the clock, in a voice as composed at three in the morning as at three in the afternoon. The first thirty days are not a trial period. They are the moment a course stops guessing at its demand and starts answering it.

• GBR readers only: Sign up at GOLF.ai this week for your chance to win a free annual AI Concierge subscription, and let Sir Nick Faldo answer every call from day one, whether it comes from a golfer or a golfer’s AI.

SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT COMMITS £6.3M TO GENESIS SCOTTISH OPEN

The Scottish Government has announced £6.3 million ($8.4 million) of funding over three years to support the continued development of the Genesis Scottish Open at the Renaissance Club in North Berwick through to 2028.

The co-sanctioned event between the PGA Tour and DP World Tour attracted a record crowd of nearly 90,000 last year, while independent analysis estimated the 2024 tournament generated £19.2 million for the economy and supported 234 jobs. Business Minister Richard Lochhead said the investment would help the event “continue to go from strength to strength” while delivering economic and tourism benefits, with Genesis Scottish Open Director Rory Colville saying the support from the Scottish Government and VisitScotland was “incredibly important” in showcasing Scotland as a global sporting destination.

VisitScotland’s Rob Dickson said the tournament plays a key role in growing the visitor economy and raising Scotland’s international profile, while East Lothian Council chief executive Laurence Rockey said the event had delivered a major boost to the region and helped promote East Lothian as Scotland’s Golf Coast.

VERSANT TO BUY TIGER-BACKED FULL SWING IN $530M DEAL

Versant Media Group, owner of Golf Channel, GolfNow, and GolfPass, has agreed to acquire Full Swing for about $530 million in cash, subject to customary adjustments.

The simulator and sports technology company is expected to join Versant’s Digital Platforms and Ventures portfolio after the deal closes in the second half of 2026.

Full Swing, based in Carlsbad, California, is backed by Tiger Woods, who invested in 2015 and remains an ambassador, with other golf ambassadors including Jordan Spieth, Xander Schauffele, Jon Rahm, and Dustin Johnson; the company is also the Official Licensed Simulator of the PGA Tour and an Official Technology Partner of TGL. Versant said the acquisition will add immersive simulation, launch monitors, virtual greens, integrated software, and performance data to its golf business, creating opportunities across content, commerce, training, venues, and fan engagement. “Sports are becoming more interactive, more data-driven and more connected,” said Versant chief executive Mark Lazarus, while Full Swing CEO Ryan Dotters said joining Versant gives the business “the scale and distribution to bring our technology to even more golfers, athletes and fans.”

ATHENS GOLF CENTER ADDS POWER TEE RANGE TECHNOLOGY

Athens Golf Center, Lexington, Kentucky, has completed a technology upgrade with the installation of Power Tee’s automated teeing system, strengthening its practice offer for golfers in the Lexington area.

The installation gives Athens Golf Center a more modern range offer, improving the practice experience for regular players while aligning the facility with technology used at leading golf venues worldwide. “Our goal has always been to create a welcoming golf experience for players of all abilities,” said Toni Schuck, co-owner of Athens Golf Center. “By adding Power Tee, it helps us make practice more fun for golfers. Plus, it helps grow the game.”

Athens Golf Center said the upgrade reflects its commitment to improving the local practice experience through better technology, service, and facilities.

NOTEEFY ACQUIRES METOLIUS GOLF TO BUILD UNIFIED REVENUE PLATFORM

Noteefy has acquired Metolius Golf, combining its demand and revenue management tools with Metolius’s AI-powered course data intelligence platform to serve roughly 1,500 golf courses.

The deal brings together Noteefy’s products for tee time demand management, booking confirmations, no-show reduction, AI pro shop support, and lead management with Metolius’s daily reporting, revenue forecasting, merchandising insights, and weather-adjusted performance benchmarking. Ross Liggett, founder of Metolius and No. 25 on Golf Inc. Magazine’s 2025 Most Powerful People in Golf list, will join Noteefy as Vice President of Data, with Noteefy CEO and co-founder Jake Gordon saying the acquisition puts the company in a position to help operators turn AI “into real revenue”.

Liggett said the combined platform will help operators consolidate data from across their business, flag anomalies, answer questions in plain English, and recommend revenue, staffing, and marketing actions, giving smaller operators access to decision-support tools previously associated with larger hospitality businesses.

VITBIO LAUNCHES WEARABLE AI BIOMECHANICS SYSTEM FOR GOLFERS

VITBIO has launched OmniGmot AI Golfer, an integrated golf biomechanics system that combines full-body AI motion capture with dynamic plantar pressure analysis through wearable smart insoles and full-body motion sensing.

Developed using VITBIO’s proprietary patented technologies, the system is designed to deliver laboratory-grade biomechanics data outdoors by synchronizing ground reaction force, movement patterns, and swing mechanics through AI algorithms. Spanish professional golfer Juan Salama, a former No. 1-ranked golfer in Spain, will demonstrate the technology at SPORTEC Tokyo, which starts tomorrow and runs to July 10 at Tokyo Big Sight, showing how it can support course-specific swing optimization and quicker adaptation to unfamiliar playing conditions. “OmniGmot AI Golfer gives my coach and me a completely new level of performance insight,” Salama said, with the system also recognized by the Global Sports Innovation Center, powered by Microsoft, and named a winner of the 2025 ISPO Product & Service Award.

CLUBGRUB REPORT SHOWS GOLFERS MOVING BEYOND THE HOT DOG AT THE TURN

ClubGrub’s 2026 Mid-Year Golf Food & Beverage Trends Report, based on tens of thousands of mobile orders placed in the first half of the year, shows golfers shifting away from traditional halfway house staples toward made-to-order food, premium drinks, and on-course delivery.

Hot dogs appeared in only 3.86% of ClubGrub orders, down 14.9% year on year, while flatbreads, sliders, chicken tenders, margaritas, Surfside canned cocktails, fried chicken sandwiches, shrimp tacos, fish tacos, quesadillas, and breakfast burritos were among the faster-growing items. The largest single on-course mobile order reached $357 and included six Transfusions, six lobster rolls, four John Dalys, and two flatbreads, while clubs using ClubGrub recorded an average 15.5-minute improvement in pace of play by reducing time spent waiting at the halfway house.

“Golfers no longer view food and beverage as a quick stop at the turn—they expect it to be part of the overall hospitality experience,” said ClubGrub founder Spencer Potter, whose GPS-powered platform supports mobile ordering and delivery across golf courses, practice facilities, pools, beaches, grab-and-go markets, and residential communities.

WHAT GOLF’S GREATEST COURSES COULD BE WORTH AS LAND?

Golf Digest has examined the hypothetical land value of several leading golf courses, using modeling by strategic asset manager Frazer Rice based on zoning restrictions, comparable sales, and the highest legally permissible use of each property.

Indian Creek Country Club in Florida, a 1929 William Flynn design at the centre of the 294-acre Indian Creek Village near Miami Beach, was estimated at $3bn-$5bn, ahead of Los Angeles Country Club at up to $2.6bn, Pebble Beach Golf Links at $880m, The Olympic Club at $750m, Wynn Golf Club at $520m, Seminole Golf Club at $437m, Maidstone Club and Maroon Creek Club at $300m each, Winged Foot at $252m and Medinah at $130m. Rice said Indian Creek’s “exclusivity and ultra-luxury residential context” gave it the highest per-acre estimate in the analysis, while Dan Spiegel of Coldwell Banker said LACC’s land would be “snatched so darn fast” because of its commercial potential.

The article’s broader conclusion is that elite golf land is valuable not simply because it could be developed, but because surrounding property values often depend on the course remaining untouched, with golf developer Bert Guy saying: “The land is valuable because of the golf, not the other way around.”

TROON USES FAMILY GOLF MONTH TO SUPPORT FIRST TEE

Troon has named July as Troon Family Golf Month, with Family Golf Day taking place on Sunday, July 26, at Troon-managed and affiliated facilities worldwide as courses host family-focused instruction, events, and tournaments for players of all ages and abilities.

The programme will also support First Tee, with Troon and Member For A Day running a July 15-29 charity auction featuring golf rounds and stay-and-play packages at venues including Tubac Golf Resort & Spa, Hammock Beach Golf Resort & Spa, Monster Golf Club and Resorts World Catskills, Bay Creek Golf Club, El Conquistador Tucson, Gamble Sands, Monarch Beach Golf Links, Torreon Golf Club and Cimarron Hills Golf & Country Club. Participating Troon facilities will also promote First Tee through signage, digital campaigns, and donations, while Troon’s year-round family golf offer includes free junior golf after 3 p.m. with a paying adult, complimentary Callaway junior rental clubs at participating locations, and free junior instruction when taking a lesson with a paying adult.

Troon has also partnered again with Next Round, allowing facilities to run used equipment donation drives, with Next Round valuing donated clubs and directing 100% of that value to First Tee.

PGA TOUR SIGNATURE EVENTS SHOW RATINGS GROWTH AHEAD OF MEDIA TALKS

The PGA Tour’s eight signature events averaged 3.44 million final-round viewers this season. The seven comparable events were up 8.8% on 2025, giving the Tour a stronger ratings story as it prepares to move to its new Championship Series and Challenger Series model in 2028.

The strongest audiences came from the RBC Heritage at 4.35 million, the Travelers Championship at 4.2 million, the Truist Championship at 3.382 million, the Memorial Tournament at 3.339 million, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Arnold Palmer Invitational at 3.3 million each, the Genesis Invitational at 3.27 million, and the new Cadillac Championship at 2.151 million.

Front Office Sports noted that direct year-on-year comparison is complicated by Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel methodology, but the numbers matter because most signature events are expected to become Championship Series tournaments, with $20 million-plus purses, average fields of 120 players, and 36-hole cuts. The ratings picture will also feed into future media-rights talks, with CBS Sports, NBC Sports, Versant, and ESPN currently paying a combined $700 million annually under deals running through 2030, while Amazon Prime Video and Netflix could also explore bids.

RAHM SAYS LIV INVESTMENT QUESTION DEPENDS ON BUSINESS PLAN

Jon Rahm said he would not rule out investing his own money in LIV Golf, but added that any decision would depend on seeing a clear business plan from league leadership.

Speaking ahead of the Genesis Scottish Open at the Renaissance Club, Rahm said he had not been asked to contribute financially and remained focused on playing, with the event marking his return to a PGA Tour co-sanctioned tournament through the DP World Tour. LIV is seeking outside investment after the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s decision to end funding after 2026, with Rahm’s comments following earlier remarks that he was not involved in investor meetings and did not see business pitching as his role. “I don’t think he would ask anybody to buy into anything without giving us a business plan first,” Rahm said previously of LIV chief executive Scott O’Neil, while adding that anything beyond that would be “speculation”.

HOW TO PARTNER WITH US: If you are interested in contributing to and strengthening our content offering as a partner, company, or institution, we would be pleased to hear from you at newsroom@golfbusinessreview.com.

Good morning, GBR family.

On the eve of America’s 250th anniversary, we stepped back from the week’s deal flow to read the game through the numbers of its largest market. The full analysis — participation, access, capacity, and where the money actually goes — is reserved for our paid subscribers. But first, this week’s moves across the industry.

TWO VETERANS TAKE THE REINS OF SUMMIT GOLF BRANDS' GLOBAL SALES (WITH A HOLLYWOOD CAMEO DRESSING EDWARD BURNS' GOLF COMEDY)

Summit Golf Brands Names McHugh, McFarlane Global Sales Co-Heads (and Suits Up Edward Burns’ New Golf Comedy)

Summit Golf Brands made two announcements this week:

• Brendan McHugh and Matt McFarlane — previously co-heads of the Americas — have been promoted to SVP, Co-Heads of Global Sales, taking charge of the company’s wholesale operation across more than 25 countries and 3,500 clubs, resorts, and corporations. Both report to President Jack Lessing and retain oversight of domestic green-grass regions alongside their new international remit. The company cited record revenue performance alongside the promotions. Summit’s decoration and fulfillment run in-house, with 200+ embroidery heads across 75,000 square feet of manufacturing in Wisconsin.

• Separately, Summit outfitted the cast of Finnegan’s Foursome, the golf comedy written, directed by, and starring Edward Burns, which premiered at Tribeca in June ahead of a Republic Pictures digital release. Burns’ plot — a family honoring a late father on the courses he loved — parallels a chapter in the life of B. Draddy founder and Summit creative director Billy Draddy. Filming took place at Carne Golf Links in Ireland, where changing weather conditions tested Zero Restriction outerwear on set.

Full stories on GBR:

• Summit Golf Brands Elevates Brendan McHugh and Matt McFarlane to SVP, Co-Heads of Global Sales

• Summit Golf Brands Outfits Edward Burns’ Passion Project Finnegan’s Foursome

WHY THE GENERAL MANAGER ROLE NEEDS BETTER UNDERSTANDING

In the latest article from Golf Business Review’s educational partnership with 59club, we look at one of the more difficult questions in club management: why does the general manager role appear to carry a shorter tenure than many other senior positions?

This is not only a recruitment issue. The modern club GM is expected to understand the boardroom, the tee sheet, the food and beverage operation, the staff room, the member experience, and the wider commercial pressures facing the club.

Yet much of the work that holds a club together is difficult to see, measure, and reward. While specialist roles can often demonstrate expertise in obvious ways, the GM’s value is frequently found in leadership, judgment, communication, and problem-solving — precisely the areas clubs rely on most when expectations rise, and operating conditions become more complex.

59club’s latest insight explores why this matters and why clubs may need to think more carefully about how they support, assess, and value the people charged with leading the whole operation.

Why is tenure lower in GM roles than in other positions?

Managers of golf clubs are often under-appreciated. Perhaps that is why they change jobs more frequently than other club employees, says 59club’s Managing Partner for Canada, Ryan Tracy

LeBron James recently surpassed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the most points in NBA history, yet many still hesitate to crown him the Greatest Of All Time (GOAT).

This debate, while entertaining, highlights a broader issue: the undervaluation of generalists. LeBron’s versatility in the game may not be fully appreciated in a world that tends to value specialists over generalists.

This lack of appreciation extends beyond sports, especially to roles like the club general manager (GM).

While specialists in any field – whether a PhD academic, a gold-medal Olympian, or a software programmer – garner immediate respect for their mastery, generalists struggle to command the same admiration.

This is because specialization is tangible and easily recognized, whereas generalist skills like leadership, though essential, are more difficult to quantify or observe.

Specialised generalists

A club GM is, at heart, a generalist. While they may specialize in leadership, this skill is intangible and harder for others to appreciate. We conducted a study on management positions in clubs from October 2021 to December 2024 and found that GM turnover is among the highest. This suggests that the value of the GM role might not be fully understood.

A GM’s work, whether educating board members or resolving staff conflicts, lacks the immediate, awe-inspiring impact of, say, a chef crafting a meal or a PGA professional demonstrating their skills.

A club’s board or members might gain a deeper respect for a CFO after reviewing financials or for a greenkeeper after hearing about turf management science, but the GM’s contributions are often less visible. Ironically, many club GMs begin their careers as specialists before becoming generalists at the top of the staffing hierarchy.

The shifting golf club environment

Club GMs operate in a constantly shifting environment, and are often told they need to be more visible and adaptive. As generalists, they must juggle numerous responsibilities. GMs are frequently called to step outside the office, with some spending up to half their time on the floor, yet this can still be deemed insufficient.

They possess a breadth of knowledge across many areas but lack the easy, identifiable expertise that specialists display. As a result, GMs might not receive the same recognition or respect, which could contribute to shorter tenures in the role. Some describe the GM’s position as akin to the narrow center of an hourglass, with the board above and staff below, and it can be isolating. A 2023 survey of GMs revealed that the most important skills for success were broad and non-technical, emphasizing the diverse demands of the role.

Key takeaway

While it is anecdotal to claim that the short tenure of general managers is solely due to their being specialized generalists, it is worth reflecting on how they juggle multiple roles, whether as an executive, a parent, a sibling, or a volunteer – often without the recognition they deserve.

It’s time to acknowledge and applaud their efforts.

The wider lesson for clubs is not simply to recognize the pressure on general managers, but to create a leadership environment in which their contribution is properly understood.

Clearer communication between boards, managers, staff, and members can help clubs move beyond short-term judgment and better appreciate the full range of responsibilities the role now carries.

59club helps clubs see their operation through the eyes of members, guests, and visitors, using mystery shopping, surveys, benchmarking, and best-practice insight to identify where performance can be strengthened.

For venues looking to improve service standards, support leadership teams, and build more sustainable operational performance, 59club’s data-led approach offers a practical starting point.

• To learn how 59club can support your venue, contact the 59club team here: www.59club.com.

NORTH AMERICAN CAPITAL DRIVES SCOTTISH GOLF INVESTMENT MOMENTUM

Scottish firm Thorntons Solicitors corporate partner Robbie Francis says Scottish golf remains in “sustained market momentum” as the Genesis Scottish Open returns next week to The Renaissance Club in North Berwick.

Thorntons are active both in advising overseas buyers looking at golf and hospitality assets and supporting Scottish clubs and resorts seeking to expand facilities or strengthen visitor appeal. Francis said North American involvement has increased “noticeably” across asset categories over the past two years, pointing to US-backed construction at Feddinch near St Andrews, overseas investment at Carnoustie, Cabot’s opening of Old Petty on the Moray Firth, and Royal Dornoch’s new £13.9m clubhouse as evidence of rising transaction volumes and values.

He said investors are prioritizing assets with multiple revenue streams, including golf plus accommodation, property development or multi-course models, while areas such as St Andrews and East Lothian retain scarcity value as “trophy” locations. Francis added that Scotland’s premium golf product has some protection against global travel volatility, but clubs must balance visitor revenue with member access by managing finite tee-sheet inventory, using better visitor data and modern booking systems, while also protecting the culture, tradition, and public-access model that remain central to the country’s appeal. Kristy Dorsey’s Q&A with Robbie Francis appears in The Herald and can be read in full here.

TRUMP’S SCOTTISH GOLF RESORTS REPORT £30M-PLUS REVENUE

Donald Trump’s two Scottish golf resorts generated more than £30 million ($40 million) in revenue last year, according to his latest 927-page financial disclosure filing released by the US Office of Government Ethics.

Trump Turnberry in Ayrshire recorded £23,640,577 in “hotel and golf related revenue” in 2025, slightly below the £24.2 million turnover reported to Companies House for 2024, while Trump International Golf Links at Menie in Aberdeenshire reported £6,738,799, up from £4.47 million in 2024.

Both properties were valued at more than $50 million, or about £38 million, in the US filing, although the disclosure does not provide a full profit-and-loss picture. UK accounts for 2024 showed both resorts made losses that year, with Turnberry posting a pre-tax loss of £631,779 after depreciation and Menie recording total losses of £937,693 despite a reported £1.25 million profit figure in its accounts. Amy Watson, The Scotsman.

AUSTRALIAN GOLF CLUBS FACE GOVERNANCE GAP

The 2026 National Club Governance Report has found that Australian golf clubs need to strengthen boardroom performance.

The report surveyed 1,139 leaders across more than 600 clubs in a sector covering 1,300-plus clubs, 470,000 members, 1.8 million round players, 11,000 volunteer directors, and 30,000 jobs. Only 57% of leaders said directors clearly understand where board responsibilities end, and management begins, while 44% of boards remain focused on day-to-day operations, 63% believe their boards have the skills needed for future strategy, and women made up just 20% of respondents. The report also found 80% of directors rated their board effective, compared with 70% of managers, with professionally managed clubs scoring well ahead of fully volunteer-run clubs on strategic balance.

Golf Australia CEO James Sutherland said boards are “consistently overestimating” their performance, while AICD CEO Mark Rigotti said good governance “doesn’t happen by accident,” following a governance program pilot that trained 775 participants from more than 360 clubs.

Additional reading: Australian Golf Digest’s Tim Lele’s article can be read here.

ARCCOS PARTNERS WITH META ON AI GLASSES INTEGRATION

Arccos Golf has announced a partnership with Meta to bring hands-free game tracking and analysis to golfers through Meta AI glasses, combining voice-led recommendations with Arccos data during a round.

The integration gives players audible, real-time guidance on areas including distance adjusted for wind and weather, safe-miss zones, shot patterns, score, club selection, and yardage to the pin, with members able to connect their Arccos account through the Meta AI app at no extra cost with an active game-tracking subscription. The feature is compatible with Arccos Air, Arccos Smart Sensors, and Smart Grips, and is built on Arccos’ dataset of 1.5 billion tracked shots, 25 million rounds, and AI trained on 4 trillion data points. “This integration with Meta takes sports wearables to the next level in player performance and game tracking,” said Sal Syed, CEO and co-founder of Arccos Golf, with PGA TOUR Studios also producing a 1v1 match featuring Min Woo Lee and D’Angelo Russell using Meta AI Glasses and Arccos Air.

FUJIKURA LAUNCHES LIMITED-EDITION VENTUS TR SHAFT FOR FOLDS OF HONOR

Fujikura has launched a limited-edition Ventus TR USA 250th Anniversary shaft in support of Folds of Honor, marking the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence with a red, white, and blue design. The shaft features patriotic stars and stripes on a white base with a subtle blue tint, alongside the Folds of Honor logo, a commemorative 250 mark, blue Ventus branding, and a red TR accent. Offered in Blue or Black profile, the release uses Fujikura’s VeloCore+ technology, which is designed to improve clubhead stability, center-face contact, dispersion, control, and ball speed.

The shaft will be available through select Fujikura Charter Dealers, with the release continuing Fujikura’s support for Folds of Honor and its work providing educational scholarships to families of America’s military members and first responders.

It’s not just Fujikura that is honoring the 250th anniversary.

Callaway and TaylorMade are among the manufacturers selling limited-edition clubs at premium prices. Callaway’s USA 250 Collection includes drivers, putters, and wedges, with its Odyssey Ai-DUAL USA 250 Freebird Cruiser putter priced at $429.99 compared with $349.99 for the standard Jailbird model, while TaylorMade’s Americana MG5 wedge set sells for $750, and its Americana Spider ZT putter is priced at $649.99, both above standard models.

Other products include balls, headcovers, hats, apparel, and accessories from multiple brands, including a $125 Swag Golf George Washington putter headcover, a $495 PXG Stars and Stripes golf bag, and official America250 golf merchandise, while PGA Tour Superstore said sales were especially strong in the Northeast and Golf Galaxy said USA 250 was one of its top trending online themes. “The response from golfers exceeded even our highest expectations,” Callaway VP of global marketing Nick McInally told Front Office Sports, while PGA Tour Superstore’s Ben Helmrath said he “could have quadrupled the inventory” in some markets.

AMERICA AT 250: WHAT THE US GOLF ECONOMY TELLS US ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THE GAME

With Independence Day tomorrow, and America marking 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, golf has its own long-established place in the country’s sporting and leisure landscape.

The organized American game is often traced back to the late 19th century, when clubs such as Saint Andrew’s in New York helped lay the foundations for what became the world’s largest golf market. From Bobby Jones and Ben Hogan to Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods, the US game has since shaped golf’s competitive, cultural, and commercial identity.

That history matters because the current US golf market did not appear suddenly. It has moved through club formation, public-course growth, television expansion, the Tiger Woods effect, overbuild and correction, and a post-pandemic surge.

The numbers remain strong. The latest industry data puts total US golf participation at 48.1 million people aged six and above, including 29.1 million on-course golfers and 19 million who participated only through off-course formats such as driving ranges, indoor simulators, and golf-entertainment venues.

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NEW YORK, NY — Summit Golf Brands, parent company of premium apparel brands B. Draddy, Fairway & Greene, and Zero Restriction, announced the promotions of Brendan McHugh and Matt McFarlane to SVP, Co-Heads of Global Sales. In their expanded roles, they will oversee the company’s global wholesale business, directing sales strategy and partner relationships across a distribution network spanning more than 25 countries and 3,500 premier golf clubs, resorts, corporations, and universities.

Previously serving as SVP, Co-Heads of Sales for the Americas, McHugh and McFarlane will now lead Summit Golf Brands’ worldwide wholesale organization. Both will report to President Jack Lessing and continue to play leadership roles in brand development, product planning, and cross-functional collaboration.

“Brendan and Matt thrived as Co-Heads of our Americas business and are integral to what we are building at Summit Golf Brands,” said Jack Lessing, President of Summit Golf Brands. “Both are world-class sales leaders who care immensely about our team, brands, and wholesale partners.”

The promotions come as Summit Golf Brands continues to deliver record revenue performance while expanding its global footprint and deepening relationships with wholesale partners worldwide, reinforcing the company’s green-grass-first philosophy.

McHugh joined Summit Golf Brands in 2012 as an Account Executive and has advanced through multiple sales leadership positions, most recently serving as SVP, Co-Head of the Americas. He has helped develop key industry partnerships including the PGA Tour, PGA of America, LPGA, New York Giants, and Metropolitan Golf Association, and will now lead the company’s international markets while continuing oversight of key domestic green-grass regions as well as the Collegiate, Licensing, and Corporate divisions.

“In my time at Summit Golf Brands, I do not believe there has ever been a more exciting time to be part of our company,” said Brendan McHugh, SVP, Co-Head of Global Sales. “Relationships are the bedrock of the golf industry, and I am thankful for the support of our wholesale partners who put their trust in us and our brands. I’m grateful to Jack for the opportunity, and proud to carry that same partner-first commitment to our next phase of growth alongside Matt and our team.”

McFarlane joined Summit Golf Brands in 2016 and most recently served as SVP, Co-Head of the Americas after progressing through regional and national sales leadership roles. With 20+ years of golf industry experience spanning both the buy-side as a PGA Professional and the sell-side in golf apparel sales and management, he will help guide the company’s global wholesale strategy while assuming additional geographic responsibilities within domestic green-grass, including oversight of management groups and multi-property destinations.

“The opportunity to be a part of the growth of Summit Golf Brands the last 10 years has been incredibly rewarding,” said Matt McFarlane, SVP, Co-Head of Global Sales. “Most importantly, I am proud of our team and what our company stands for within the game of golf.”

About Summit Golf Brands

Summit Golf Brands is a leading provider of premium golf and lifestyle apparel, renowned for its commitment to quality, innovation, and style. With a portfolio of iconic brands including B. Draddy, Zero Restriction, and Fairway & Greene, Summit Golf Brands continues to set the standard for performance-driven, fashion-forward golf apparel. Their wholesale distribution network extends across 25 countries and encompasses over 3,500 premier clubs and resorts worldwide. Summit Golf Brands stands out for its vertical integration, ensuring unparalleled fulfillment and product decoration capabilities. This is made possible through the utilization of over 200 embroidery heads, housed within their expansive facilities spanning more than 75,000 square feet, located in both Madison and Barneveld, Wisconsin.

• For more information, visit bdraddy.com, zerorestriction.com, and fairwayandgreene.com.

• You can also follow their brands on Instagram: @bdraddy, @bdraddywomen, @zerorestriction, and @fairwayandgreene.

NEW YORK, NY — Summit Golf Brands, parent company of B. Draddy, Zero Restriction, and Fairway & Greene, proudly outfitted the cast of Finnegan’s Foursome, the new golf comedy written, directed, and starring filmmaker Edward Burns.

Premiering at the Tribeca Festival on June 7, 2026, before its U.S. digital release on June 19 through Republic Pictures, Finnegan’s Foursome follows two Irish-American brothers and their children—fiercely competitive golfers—who travel to Ireland to honor their late father by playing the courses he loved most.

The film grew out of Burns’ own introduction to golf after the passing of his mother, when he began playing the game as a way to spend more time with his father.

“Two years into my golf journey, I figured I had to make it a bigger part of my life,” said Burns. “I wanted to find a way to combine my passion for golf with filmmaking, so I started writing a screenplay about a family that was as passionate about the game as my dad was. That ultimately became Finnegan’s Foursome.”

As Summit Golf Brands learned more about the project, the partnership quickly felt like a natural fit. Burns’ screenplay centers on an apparel designer who returns to Ireland to spread his father’s ashes at beloved golf courses—a storyline that closely mirrors a personal experience of B. Draddy founder and Summit Golf Brands Creative Director Billy Draddy.

“Getting involved with Finnegan’s Foursome was a perfect fit,” said Draddy. “When Ed and I started talking about the project, we realized there were all these connections that had never been put together before. There was a real authenticity to the story and a family atmosphere that felt very familiar to our brands, which made the partnership feel natural from the start.”

Working closely with the film’s costume designer, Rosemary Lepre Forman, Summit Golf Brands supplied apparel from all three of its brands, helping bring the characters to life through a combination of classic golf style and performance-driven outerwear.

The production provided an ideal proving ground for Zero Restriction. Filmed at Ireland’s renowned golf course Carne Golf Links, the cast and crew encountered rapidly changing weather conditions that showcased the performance capabilities of the brand’s outerwear.

“Anyone who has played golf in Ireland knows the weather can change in an instant,” said Burns. “There were days during filming when we experienced all four seasons in a matter of hours, so it was very easy to integrate Zero Restriction apparel into the film.”

As golf continues to grow in popular culture, Finnegan’s Foursome brings the game to the big screen through a story of family, competition, and connection, with Summit Golf Brands helping outfit every step of the journey.

About Summit Golf Brands

Summit Golf Brands is a leading provider of premium golf and lifestyle apparel, renowned for its commitment to quality, innovation, and style. With a portfolio of iconic brands including B. Draddy, Zero Restriction, and Fairway & Greene, Summit Golf Brands continues to set the standard for performance-driven, fashion-forward golf apparel. Their wholesale distribution network extends across 25 countries and encompasses over 3,500 premier clubs and resorts worldwide. Summit Golf Brands stands out for its vertical integration, ensuring unparalleled fulfillment and product decoration capabilities. This is made possible through the utilization of over 200 embroidery heads, housed within their expansive facilities spanning more than 75,000 square feet, located in both Madison and Barneveld, Wisconsin.

• For more information, visit bdraddy.com, zerorestriction.com, and fairwayandgreene.com, and follow their brands on Instagram: @bdraddy, @bdraddywomen, @zerorestriction, and @fairwayandgreene.

HOW TO PARTNER WITH US: If you are interested in contributing to and strengthening our content offering as a partner, company, or institution, we would be pleased to hear from you at newsroom@golfbusinessreview.com.

Hello GBR,

Today’s edition starts with a simple question: What happens when golfers begin solving their own problems before clubs, venues, and operators do it for them?

From Golf.AI’s look at members building their own AI caddies to Inrange’s role inside Barena’s new premium Bordeaux venue, the same signal keeps appearing: golfers want faster answers, better experiences, and more reasons to come back.

Elsewhere, we also look at Toptracer taking Royal Birkdale global ahead of The Open, the growing visibility problem created by AI search, Carnoustie’s £10.3m investment in its championship ambitions, and why the Tour Championship could become a very different commercial product from 2028.

The common thread is not technology for its own sake. It is whether golf can turn changing expectations into service, spend, and repeat demand.

Enjoy today’s edition of GBR.

WHEN YOUR MEMBERS START BUILDING THEIR OWN AI CADDIES, IS THAT A THREAT — OR A TEE SHEET FULL OF DEMAND?

Powered by GOLF.AI

Somewhere this week, a golfer sat down at his kitchen table and built himself a caddie. Not bought one. Built one. He opened a chatbot, fed it the yardage book for his home course, the local rules, and the way the 7th green runs away from the lake. Within an hour, he had a personal caddie who could talk him around all eighteen holes. It cost him nothing but an evening. And he is not alone. Across the major AI platforms, golfers are quietly building their own caddies, their own club-selection tools, their own hole-by-hole strategy assistants. Building a credible golf agent used to take a software team. Now it takes a single rainy night.

For an operator, the easy reaction is to see members routing around the course and read it as a threat. It is the wrong reading. When your best members build their own tools, they are not walking away. They are telling you the gap between how they live and how your course operates has grown wide enough that they are closing it themselves. They live AI-native: they ask, they don’t dial; they expect an answer at 11 pm; they settle things in a sentence. Then they call your Pro Shop and get a busy signal. The homemade caddie is what that frustration looks like once it finds a tool.

What the kitchen-table caddie can’t do

But here is its ceiling. The personal caddie cannot see your live tee sheet. It cannot confirm a booking. It cannot pick up when forty golfers call on a Saturday morning about tee times and pricing. It cannot serve the other 800 members, only its builder. And it dies the moment that the builder loses interest or switches courses. A personal GPT is a map drawn by one golfer, for one golfer. It is not the territory, and it cannot run a golf course.

This is the distinction most operators miss. Two different things are being built, and they are not the same. One is the personal caddie a golfer makes for himself: strategy, yardages, and a companion for his own round. The other is the operational agent, a course that runs for everyone: the one who answers, books, confirms, and never sleeps. The first is a hobby. The second is infrastructure. And the first is the clearest possible proof that the second is wanted.

Why the DIY wave is good news

Every member who builds a personal agent is quietly recalibrating what they expect from golf itself. Once a golfer has talked to an AI about their game, waiting on hold to reach a Pro Shop starts to feel like sending a fax. That expectation does not stay inside their chatbot. It arrives at your first tee, your booking page, your phone line. The DIY wave is manufacturing demand for AI-native golf, and it will be captured by whoever can deliver it across the whole operation, not one player.

That is where the two part company for good. A course-grade agent holds the tee sheet, takes the booking, answers every call, and treats all 800 members the way the homemade version treats its one. GOLF.AI argues this is the natural endpoint of the shift — not golfers replacing the course’s systems, but courses finally meeting the expectation those golfers now carry onto the property.

Your members have already told you what they want. They built it themselves to prove it. The only question left is whether your course hands them the real thing — or leaves them on hold.

• GBR readers only: Sign up at GOLF.ai this week for your chance to win a free annual AI Concierge subscription, and give your members the one caddie they can’t build at home: the one that answers.

INRANGE LANDS IN FRANCE INSIDE BARENA, BORDEAUX’S NEW PREMIUM GOLF DESTINATION — AND THE REVENUE MODEL BEHIND IT

Inrange arrives in France this week as the platform behind Barena, a new premium golf destination opening in Bordeaux on 30 June. A 1,600m² building across two levels, with a restaurant, a panoramic rooftop, and 44 bays, designed by a Paris architecture studio and run by a chef whose CV passes through Yannick Alléno’s Dior restaurants and One&Only Dubai. The brief, from co-owner Antoine Olive, was a single image: a bay that could pass for a terrace in Milan, a rooftop in New York, or a beach club in Ibiza. For operators, the spend isn’t the point. The bet underneath it is, and the platform Barena chose to carry that bet is the part worth your attention.

The standard entertainment model runs on footfall and turnover — fill the bays, move the crowd, repeat. Barena is wagering the opposite: that a venue genuinely worth returning to earns more from each guest, across more visits, than one that exhausts its novelty in a single night. Every decision follows that logic, including the technology. Evaluating the market, Barena passed over Toptracer as dated and judged Trackman too narrowly built for professional performance alone, settling on Inrange for being strong at both ends of the room at once — serious shot tracking and data for the players who want it, and a social experience that keeps mixed groups coming back. Skill-rebalancing lets a first-timer and a low handicapper compete in the same game, so the table stays together and the evening holds; bay-vs-bay booking lets the operator hand a whole facility to a single corporate group. None of that is novelty. It’s repeat revenue, designed in.

Here’s the line operators should sit with. Novelty fades on a fixed schedule; returnability compounds. The venues that win the next decade won’t be the ones with the loudest opening night — they’ll be the ones a guest chooses again in six weeks, and brings four people to in three months. Barena built its entire model on that conviction, down to the platform it installed: Inrange. So before the next fit-out decision, the question that outranks the spec sheet is the one this venue already answered: are you building footfall, or a reason to come back? The operators who can’t tell the difference will keep paying to refill the same bays. The ones who can will own the evening.

• You can read the full story on Golf Business Review here.

• For more information on Inrange® Golf, visit their website and follow them on LinkedIn for the latest news and product innovations from their team.

NEXT ROUND NAMED FIRST TEE’S NATIONAL TRADE-IN PARTNER

Next Round, the trade-in platform serving golf retailers, fitters, and private clubs, has been named First Tee’s national trade-in partner, turning a relationship built over several years into a nationwide fundraising program for local chapters.

The new program, now live through First Tee’s website, allows golfers to trade in old clubs and equipment online, with 100 percent of the trade-in value going directly to the selected First Tee chapter and no service or processing fees deducted. Next Round will also donate an additional 50 cents to First Tee for every dollar generated through the initiative, up to $50,000 a year, while chapters can either collect clubs locally and ship them using prepaid labels or allow individual supporters to complete the mail-in process themselves.

“This partnership changes that,” said Steve Stoloff, Founder and President of Next Round. “It gives golfers an easy way to clear out old equipment while creating real impact in their own communities,” while Brent Schneider, CEO of First Tee – Greater Richmond, said the platform helps keep quality equipment in use while converting “the generosity of the wider golfing community into life-changing opportunities for our youth.”

TOPTRACER ADDS ROYAL BIRKDALE AHEAD OF THE 154TH OPEN

With the final major of this year just over two weeks away, Toptracer has announced the addition of Royal Birkdale, host venue of The 154th Open, to its virtual golf platform.

Royal Birkdale’s roster of winners includes the likes of Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Tom Watson, and Jordan Spieth, who won in 2017 when the course last hosted The Open, and will allow players at Toptracer-powered facilities worldwide to experience one of championship golf’s most recognized venues from their local driving range.

To mark the launch, Toptracer is partnering with The R&A to stage The 154th Open Global Challenge from July 13-19, with golfers competing in a closest-to-the-pin contest on Royal Birkdale’s new par-3 15th hole, a 241-yard test expected to play a key role during championship week. Every shot hit through Toptracer during the challenge will count towards a global leaderboard, with prizes from The Open and a grand prize of two Sunday tickets to The 155th Open at St Andrews in 2027, plus the chance to play the Old Course the following day.

“Royal Birkdale is one of the most recognisable and respected courses in the world and we’re thrilled to give golfers the opportunity to experience it through Toptracer,” said Scott Blevins, President and GM of Toptracer, adding that the global competition gives players “across the world” the chance to compete on the same hole that will challenge the best golfers on the planet.

GOLF SIMULATORS MARKET FORECAST TO REACH US$4.3BN BY 2033

The global golf simulators market is forecast to grow from US$1.6 billion in 2024 to US$4.3 billion by 2033. The headline figures form part of a report by Verified Market Reports, with the report also citing an 11.8 percent CAGR for 2026-2033 as indoor golf expands across commercial entertainment venues, premium residential installations, and sports training academies.

Growth is being driven by higher investment in indoor sports infrastructure, urban leisure spending, simulator lounges, franchised indoor golf centers, luxury home installations, and software-based revenue models built around subscriptions, coaching modules, AI swing analytics, and virtual tournaments. North America remains the leading revenue market, supported by golf participation, disposable income, and entertainment infrastructure, while Asia-Pacific, led by South Korea, Japan, and China, is described as the fastest-expanding region, with Europe also growing as indoor sports venues gain traction in urban markets.

The report says institutional investors are increasingly treating golf simulators as a hybrid of sports technology, gaming infrastructure, and experiential retail, although it also notes potential risks from semiconductor, display, and precision optics supply chains, currency volatility, and pressure on discretionary spending in luxury recreation.

AI SEARCH RESULTS CREATE NEW VISIBILITY PROBLEM FOR GOLF CLUBS

Golf clubs may be increasingly exposed to how AI assistants describe and recommend venues, after a new study by AI Score found that course recommendations can vary sharply depending on whether a golfer uses Perplexity or ChatGPT.

The company tested four UK multi-site operators, The Club Company, Crown Golf, Mytime Active and Get Golfing, using buyer-style prompts including “best golf club near Sevenoaks” and “best golf club in Cornwall,” with results showing that St Mellion Estate did not appear on Perplexity for the Cornwall search but ranked fourth on ChatGPT, while Redlibbets Golf Club was absent on Perplexity but ranked fifth on ChatGPT with a positive description.

Orpington Golf Center was the weakest performer, appearing only as an afterthought on Perplexity and not appearing on ChatGPT, while Nizels Golf & Country Club appeared on both platforms but ranked last each time behind other nearby clubs. AI Score said the findings show that clubs can perform well on Google but still be missing or misrepresented when prospects use AI assistants, with founder David Mullins warning: “Most clubs are testing nothing and assuming AI treats them the way Google does. It doesn’t.”

The full story by Alistair Dunsmuir appears in The Golf Business and can be viewed here.

CARNOUSTIE INVESTS £10.3M IN OPEN RETURN AMBITION

Carnoustie Golf Links is delivering a major investment program aimed at strengthening its position as a leading global golf destination and supporting its ambition to bring The Open Championship back to the venue, which has hosted the championship eight times, most recently in 2018.

Since its acquisition by international investor consortium MIJH Ltd in 2023, £10.3 million has been spent on acquisitions and infrastructure improvements across hospitality, heritage preservation, hotel redevelopment and course quality, including the £500,000 purchase and reopening of local venue Maxi’s, formerly Maxibells, and the takeover of Simpsons Golf Shop, the world’s second-oldest golf shop, with plans submitted to turn the Grade C listed building into a heritage centre by late 2026 or early 2027.

Carnoustie has also invested £2.2 million in John Deere greenkeeping equipment, completed irrigation improvements across all three courses, and strengthened hospitality staffing, including a new Head of Food and Beverage, while assessing plans to upgrade and extend its existing hotel rather than pursue a new-build development. Ross Blackadder, CGL’s Chief Operating Officer, said Maxi’s was “a local institution” that the group wanted to support and revive, while Links Superintendent Kevin Stott said investment in new machinery and irrigation was central to maintaining “championship quality conditions” and supporting future championships.

More on the plans for Carnoustie can be found in John Turnbull’s story in Bunkered.

GOLF CHANNEL TO AIR INAUGURAL LIBERTY CUP ON JULY 4

Golf Channel will broadcast the inaugural Liberty Cup from Liberty National Golf Club on July 4, with the two-hour special airing from 3-5 p.m. ET as part of celebrations around America’s 250th anniversary.

Created through a partnership between Liberty National Golf Club and the Veteran Golfers Association, the match-play event will feature five service branch teams made up of top VGA players representing the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard, with coverage and storytelling from Brandel Chamblee, Damon Hack, and Jimmy Roberts. The event will also include military tributes, fireworks against the Manhattan skyline and Statue of Liberty backdrop, and appearances from sports figures including Urban Meyer, John Smoltz, Gary Sheffield, Josh Donaldson, Ron Harper, and John Starks. VGA President and CEO Josh Peyton said the Liberty Cup is “more than a golf tournament” and reflects how golf creates “connection, purpose and belonging” for Veterans, while the VGA now serves more than 46,000 Veterans and family members through more than 2,500 local tournaments each year.

QUEENSLAND CLUBS RECEIVE CYCLONE RECOVERY FUNDING

More than $800,000 (AUD) in government funding is supporting recovery and resilience work at two Queensland sports clubs following cyclone-related damage, through the Sport and Recreation Recovery Grant program under Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements jointly funded by the Australian and Queensland governments.

Redcliffe Golf Club in south-east Queensland has received more than $306,000 to upgrade cart paths after ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred caused extensive flooding and course damage in March 2025, with the all-weather paths intended to improve access, help members and visitors return to play sooner after heavy rain, and reduce future weather-related damage. “These upgrades will make a significant difference to the long-term viability of our club,” said Redcliffe Golf Club general manager Damon Lonnie, who thanked both governments for the grant outcome. Stratford Bowls Club in Cairns has also received just over $500,000 for recovery works following Tropical Cyclone Jasper and flooding in December 2023, including clean-up, roof repairs, electrical upgrades, ceiling modifications, kitchen, amenities, and dining refurbishment, plumbing improvements, and new sewer connections to replace damaged septic systems. Aimee Chanthadavong’s story for Club Management Australia can be read here.

PGA TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP COULD BECOME HIGH-END VIP PRODUCT

The season-ending Tour Championship hasn’t been the most electrifying of tournaments in recent years. Different formats have been tried, but the end product has struggled.

After last week’s announcement from the PGA Tour’s CEO, Brian Rolapp, a reworked Tour Championship could become one of golf’s most valuable premium hospitality products when the new two-series structure begins in 2028, with Rolapp confirming that the season finale will introduce match play and rotate among prestigious venues, including courses the Tour has not previously visited.

While no future sites have been named, some highly ranked private clubs such as Pine Valley, Cypress Point, and Seminole, as well as destination venues such as Bandon Dunes, are already being discussed by fans as possible fits, even though their limited infrastructure may require a smaller, more exclusive on-site model closer to the Walker Cup than a standard PGA Tour event. PGA Tour chief commercial officer Dhruv Prasad said the Tour was excited by both the drama of match play and “the opportunity to get onto courses that fans may not have seen on the PGA Tour in the past,” adding that conversations with potential venues and commercial partners had been positive.

Prasad said a different on-site format “might make more sense” for these courses, while partner enthusiasm was described as “off the charts,” raising the prospect of higher-value tickets, corporate hospitality, and stronger TV interest around a championship that has been played at East Lake since 2004 and last year produced a $10 million winner’s prize from a $40 million purse.

David Rumsey’s article for Front Office Sports gives a breakdown of how the Tour Championship could look in the future, which can be read here.

ADDITIONAL READING: For a refresher on what the 2028 season will look like, the PGA Tour provides a full breakdown of the schedule and the new format, which you can find here.

You don’t expect to find it here. Between the châteaux and the vineyards, in a city that has spent centuries perfecting the art of a good evening, a new kind of golf venue is taking shape. Bordeaux has always known that the best experiences aren’t rushed, that the right setting, the right food, the right company can turn an ordinary day or night into something worth remembering. Barena, opening 30 June was built on exactly that instinct.

The design brief was a single image explained by co-owner and operator Antoine Olive: “When you are in the bay, it’s a driving range bay for sure, but it can also be a good terrace in Milano, a nice rooftop in New York or a beach club in Ibiza.”

That image drove every decision.

• A Paris architecture firm to design the build.

• Custom-built fittings throughout.

• A 1,600m² building across two levels, with restaurant and panoramic rooftop.

• 44 hitting bays with market-leading technology.

Not a warehouse with aspirations, a destination that happens to have bays.

The specifications follow the same logic. Srixon one-piece white balls, a chef, Patrice Schildowski, whose CV runs through the Dior restaurants by Yannick Alléno in Paris and One&Only The Palm in Dubai. At night, video projectors mounted on 30-metre pylons map immersive graphics across the 9,000m² playing field. The range becomes a production.

The typical entertainment model runs on footfall and turnover. Barena is making a different bet: that a venue genuinely worth returning generates more revenue per guest, across more visits, than one that exhausts its novelty in a single evening.

The technology reflects the same thinking. After evaluating the market, Barena chose Inrange, dismissing Toptracer as dated and Trackman as built only for professional performance. Inrange stood out for being best in class across both serious golf and social play. Serious shot tracking and data for the players who want it. An entertainment experience that keeps mixed groups coming back.

The platform’s skill-rebalancing means beginners and experienced players compete on equal terms in the same game. Groups stay together, the evening holds.

The social suite goes further, more games than any other platform on the market, and a bay vs bay feature that lets the operator run whole facility bookings for a single group. The kind of format that turns a corporate evening into a full Barena production.

• For more information on Inrange® Golf visit their website, and follow them on LinkedIn for the latest news and product innovations from their team.

HOW TO PARTNER WITH US: If you are interested in contributing to and strengthening our content offering as a partner, company, or institution, we would be pleased to hear from you at newsroom@golfbusinessreview.com.

Hello GBR,

Today’s GBR should fill you with cheer as we head into the weekend.

There are no signs of a slowdown in the number of people entering or regularly participating in golf. The R&A’s 112.2 million participation figure is naturally the headline figure from their 2025 edition of the Global Participation report.

But to focus on that number does a disservice to the rest of the report, and it gets us thinking about the harder commercial question: who is actually turning participation into repeat customers? You can read our full analysis of the report in our big read today.

Elsewhere, another record-setting month is recorded in the number of rounds played for May in the U.S., which is offset by data showing a 14.5% fall-off in rounds played in the U.K. for the first quarter.

In a full Friday edition, we’ll also feature two stories that show how golf technology is moving beyond the spec sheet. Inrange’s role in helping Swing & Tonic turn nervous first-timers into repeat range customers, and ZEN Golf’s active-terrain installation at The Belfry, both point to the same commercial lesson: the best technology does not just measure golf, it changes how people experience it.

Enjoy today’s GBR, and have a good weekend.

HOW ONE SWING & TONIC NIGHT OF 8 WOMEN IN DUBLIN BECAME 300 ACROSS 8 RANGES IN 4 COUNTRIES — WHEN YOUR CUSTOMERS GROW YOUR BUSINESS FOR YOU

Eight women who barely knew each other turned up at a Dublin range one evening. None came for the technology. Within an hour, they were a team, chasing each other up a leaderboard and booking the next night before they’d left. That single evening is now a series running across eight venues in four countries, with close to 300 women competing on the same leaderboards on the same nights. The operator takeaway isn’t the headcount — it’s the cause. The range didn’t grow because it bought clever tech. It grew because the tech got out of the customer’s way and let her build something the venue could never have programmed on its own.

That customer was Suzanne Thompson, who launched Swing & Tonic to fix a problem most ranges quietly tolerate: the bay is built for the solo, male, regular golfer, and intimidating to everyone else. Running on Inrange, her venue handed her the platform, the bays, and the F&B, then stepped back. Team plays, and bay-vs-bay competition meant the nervous first-timer was never alone on the line, and a whole cohort could be pulled in at once — across venues, on one shared leaderboard. For the operator, that isn’t a softer story about inclusion. It’s repeat visits, fuller bays, F&B spend, and a recurring event that fills the calendar. And the market math is hard to wave away: the NGF puts the growth of the female golfer pool at 45% in six years, the fastest-moving segment in the game. The women are arriving. Most ranges still aren’t built to keep them.

Here’s the line operators should sit with. Most range technology is bought to keep traditional golfers happy. The venues that win the next decade will run tech that serves the golfer and the entertainment customer — and, better still, hands the best of those customers the tools to grow the business for them. Inrange didn’t manufacture the Swing & Tonic series; it made it possible, then got out of the way. So before the next technology decision, one question outranks the spec sheet: does the tech you’re installing empower your customers to grow your business for you? The ranges that can answer yes won’t be chasing the fastest-growing segment in golf. They’ll already have it.

• You can read the full story on Golf Business Review here.

• For more information on Inrange® Golf, visit their website and follow them on LinkedIn for the latest news and product innovations from their team.

THE BELFRY UNVEILS ACTIVE-TERRAIN PERFORMANCE SUITE WITH ZEN GOLF

The Belfry Hotel & Resort has unveiled what is believed to be Europe’s first active-terrain golf performance suite, combining ZEN Golf’s dynamic playing surfaces with Trackman integration inside the VIP Studio at The PGA National Golf Academy.

The installation brings together a new ZEN Green Stage with the Academy’s existing ZEN Swing Stage, allowing coaches, fitters, and players to work across breaking putts, uneven lies, and changing slopes within a single performance environment. By linking ZEN Golf’s programmable terrain technology with Trackman ball-flight analysis, the facility is designed to narrow the gap between practice and on-course performance, with Zen Eye and the Putting Index also set to be added to create a wider system of active terrain, launch monitor data, putting analysis, and immersive player feedback.

Chris Reeve, Director of Golf and Leisure at The Belfry, said the VIP Studio had become “a truly unique coaching environment” where players can experience conditions closer to those found on the course, while Dan Warwick, Head Professional at The PGA National Golf Academy, said the two stages allow coaches to “coach more of golf, more naturally, within a single environment.” David Colclough, Head of Coaching & Sport Science at The PGA of Great Britain & Ireland, said the installation creates “an exciting environment where coaching, research and innovation come together,” while ZEN Golf founder Nick Middleton said The Belfry is showing how indoor golf is moving beyond measuring ball striking towards recreating “the conditions under which every shot is actually played.”

U.S. GOLF ROUNDS STAY AHEAD OF RECORD 2025 PACE

U.S. golf rounds were up 5.6 percent nationally in May 2026 compared with the same month last year, according to the latest National Rounds Played Report from Golf Datatech and the National Golf Foundation.

Year-to-date play through May is now 5.4 percent ahead of 2025’s record-setting pace, helped by more golf-friendly temperatures and precipitation after a wetter, cooler May last year, when national rounds fell nearly 2 percent. The strongest May gains included Iowa and Missouri at 28.7 percent, New Jersey at 16.1 percent, Pennsylvania at 12.6 percent, New York at 12.0 percent, New England at 11.7 percent, Illinois at 11.0 percent, and the Maryland, Delaware, and Washington, D.C. region at 11.0 percent.

GOLF ROUNDS FALL FROM RECORD 2025 LEVELS ACROSS THE UK

Golf rounds played per course across Great Britain fell 14.5 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2026, according to Sporting Insights, although the comparison was against a record-breaking 2025, and Q1 activity remained slightly ahead of 2024.

March 2026 offered a more encouraging signal, ranking as the second strongest March of the past five years, with participation still building into the traditional golf season and supported by continued growth in golfer numbers. Sporting Insights noted that year-round engagement is also being helped by indoor simulator venues and technology-enabled driving ranges, which are reducing the impact of poor weather on parts of the golf ecosystem. “2025 was a record year for rounds played, so some drop off was not unexpected, especially given long spells of wet weather,” said John Bushell, managing director of Sporting Insights, adding that the March figures were “solid” ahead of half-year data due in July.

GOLF TRAINING AIDS MARKET FORECAST TO REACH US$1BN BY 2032

The global golf training aids market was valued at US$782.2 million in 2025 and is forecast to reach US$1.0 billion by 2032, growing at a compound annual rate of 3.8 percent, according to new market analysis by ResearchAndMarkets.com.

Growth is being driven by wider access to golf analytics, online coaching, virtual lessons, home-practice products, e-commerce, and direct-to-consumer brands, with AI-powered swing analyzers, smartphone-linked tools, motion tracking, and sensor-enabled devices making training aids more interactive and data-led. The swing trainer segment is expected to reach US$358.6 million by 2032 at a 3.3 percent CAGR, while hitting nets are forecast to grow at 3.0 percent, supported by demand from amateur golfers, junior academies, driving ranges, golf academies, corporate wellness programs, and players seeking portable, multi-function practice products.

Regionally, the U.S. market was valued at US$242.0 million in 2025, while China is projected to grow at a 6.9 percent CAGR to US$238.4 million by 2032, with further growth trends identified across Japan, Canada, Germany, and the wider Asia-Pacific region.

TGR DESIGN TO BUILD NEW CHAMPIONSHIP COURSE AT TRIBUTER RESORT

Tributer Resort, the golf and residential destination being developed by Reef Capital Partners on Virginia’s Lake Anna, has announced plans for a new private 18-hole championship course designed by Tiger Woods’ TGR Design.

The course will be the resort’s second championship golf experience, joining Cutalong Golf Club, and will measure 7,310 yards from the championship tees while being routed through rolling farmland, hardwood forests, and pine groves overlooking the lake. TGR Design said the layout will use generous fairways, strategic hazards, and undulating greens to challenge elite players while remaining playable for a wider range of golfers. “Lake Anna provides a remarkable setting for championship golf, and we’re excited to see this design come to life in a way that fully reflects its sense of place,” said Bryon Bell, President at TGR Design, while Cutalong Golf Club was recognized by Golf Digest in 2023 as one of the Top 5 Best New Private Courses in the United States.

KPMG WOMEN’S PGA ADDS AI TO PERFORMANCE DATA AND BROADCAST COVERAGE

The 2026 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Hazeltine National Golf Club is being positioned as the most technology-driven event on the LPGA Tour, with KPMG adding AI-enhanced player reels, real-time shot-level data for media, and a live outcome prediction engine to KPMG Performance Insights.

KPMG CHAMPCAST will use ShotLink Pro technology for the third consecutive year, offering 3D imagery, radar data, shot trails, green views, and individual shot video highlights, while nearly 100 hours of live, streaming, and ancillary coverage will run across NBC, Golf Channel, and Peacock, with expanded Featured Groups powered by T-Mobile and several caddies mic’d up for the first time. The field, which is playing for the highest recorded purse of $13 million this week, includes all top 100 players in the current Race to CME Globe rankings, with 156 players competing at Hazeltine, which will become the first American course to host the Ryder Cup twice when it stages the event again in 2029.

Tim Walsh, KPMG U.S. Chair and CEO, said the Championship is combining “a record purse with technology that gives players better, real-time insight into their performance,” while PGA of America CEO Terry Clark and LPGA Commissioner Craig Kessler said the event reflects continued investment in women’s golf through prize money, technology, broadcast coverage, and one of the strongest fields of the year.

112 MILLION PEOPLE ARE PLAYING GOLF. NOW COMES THE HARD PART

The easiest thing to do with The R&A’s latest global participation report is to celebrate the headline number.

Across The R&A’s affiliated markets, excluding the USA and Mexico, 112.2 million adults and juniors are now playing golf in some form. That is up from 108 million in 2024 and represents another year of growth for a sport that continues to enjoy a post-pandemic participation tailwind.

For golf’s governing bodies, that is an encouraging number. For the wider industry, it should also be a challenging one.

Because the most important question raised by the report is not whether golf is growing. It is who is actually benefiting from that growth.

Look more closely, and the report tells a more complicated story. Of those 112.2 million participants, 43.9 million are 9- or 18-hole golfers. Only 8.7 million are registered golfers. Total adult participation stands at 65 million, while total junior participation has reached 47.1 million. The gap between those numbers is where the business story sits.

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The first night, eight women turned up to a range in Dublin who barely knew each other. Most had never stood on a driving range without feeling watched. Within an hour they were a team: competing across the bays, chasing each other up on the leaderboard, planning the next one before they’d even left.

None of them came for the technology. That’s exactly the point.

Suzanne Thompson didn’t start Swing & Tonic to show off software. She started it because the range, like most of golf, is quietly built for someone else: male-dominated, solo, and intimidating to anyone breaking in for the first time. And that “someone else” problem is getting more expensive to ignore. The NGF reports the female golfer pool has surged 45% in six years the fastest-growing segment in the game. The women are coming. Most ranges still aren’t built to keep them.

Suzanne’s fix was simple: make the first step easy. No solo spotlight, no scorecard shame. Inrange+ Teams let her players compete using the bay-vs-bay feature, as a team, so the nervous first-timer was never out there alone. The technology wasn’t just for the regulars, it could pull a wider group in. Multiple bays, multiple countries, all on the same leaderboard, on the same night.

What started as one night in Dublin is now a series of events across 8 ranges in 4 countries. Nearly 300 women have walked into their local Inrange venue on the same evenings, competing on the same leaderboards, and making connections across continents. In the latest round, they were playing for tickets to the Solheim Cup.

Here’s the part operators should sit with. Suzanne built all of that. Swingyard, running on Inrange, gave her the platform, the venue and the F&B, then got out of her way. The range didn’t grow because it installed clever technology. It grew because the technology let a customer chase her own ambition, and pulled the business along with her.

Most ranges buy technology aimed primarily at making traditional golfers happy. The ranges that win the next decade will be the ones whose tech serves both the golfer and the entertainment customer. The top performers won’t just accommodate the Suzannes in their community, they’ll hand them the tools to build something, and grow their business while they do.

So before your next technology decision, one question is worth more than the spec sheet: Does the technology I’m putting in empower my customers to grow my business for me?

• For more information on Inrange® Golf visit their website, and follow them on LinkedIn for the latest news and product innovations from their team.

HOW TO PARTNER WITH US: If you are interested in contributing to and strengthening our content offering as a partner, company, or institution, we would be pleased to hear from you at newsroom@golfbusinessreview.com.

Hello GBR,

We have a new member of the two majors club after Wyndham Clark captured his second U.S. Open at Shinnecock on Sunday evening.

The club of twice-a-major-champion includes the likes of Xander Schauffele, Jon Rahm, Justin Thomas, and Bryson DeChambeau. Did I nearly forget Dustin Johnson as well?

Who will break out of that group at The Open or beyond? How long will Scottie have to take to complete his grand slam? Will Sam Burns get better luck next year, or will he break his major duck before then? If the weather is good, I like him for next month’s test at Birkdale.

PGA Tour CEO Brian Rollap has now given us the full breakdown of the 2028 two-tier tour season. Like it or loathe it, we provide the details as we know them from Rollap’s press conference today at River Highlands.

It feels funny to think that The Travelers is the last signature event of this season already, in the same way that we are three weeks away from the last major of 2026. Is it just me, or does the season seem really compressed now?

Elsewhere, today’s GBR looks at the systems behind the game, the ones golfers see, the ones they barely notice, and the ones that may soon decide where they play before they even open an app.

From AI agents booking tee times and data-led coaching platforms to global staffing pipelines, benchmarking studies and indoor golf venues built around premium technology, the direction of travel is clear: golf is becoming more connected, more measurable and more operationally demanding.

If there is a common thread running through today’s edition, maybe it’s change.

Across the stories in today’s GBR, that change shows up in different ways, in how golf is booked, measured, staffed, funded and structured. The practical question is whether operators, brands and rights holders are building for the way the game used to work, or for the way it is about to be found, booked, played and paid for.

Enjoy, and we’ll catch up again on Friday.

When A Golfer’s Personal Ai Comes Looking For A Tee Time, Will It Find Yours?

Today, a golfer still does the work of booking. They search, they compare, they click, they enter their details, they confirm. Even the fastest of them is still the one holding the phone. That is about to change. The next wave of golf technology is not another booking website or another mobile app. It is the personal AI agent, and before long, it will not help a golfer book a tee time; it will book the tee time for them.

From “the golfer books” to “the golfer’s agent books”

Picture a golfer who never opens an app and never visits a website. They simply tell their personal AI: “Find me the best tee time for four players this Saturday morning within twenty minutes of home.” From there, the golfer does nothing. The agent does everything:

• It searches. The agent checks availability across every course in range, in seconds, without the golfer comparing a single screen.

• It compares. Price, distance, conditions, tee-time windows — the agent weighs the options against what it already knows the golfer prefers.

• It books and pays. The agent confirms the tee time, processes payment, and drops the booking straight into the golfer’s calendar.

• It never goes on hold. No phone queue, no closed pro shop, no after-hours dead end. The booking happens the moment the golfer asks.

This is not a shift unique to golf. The same thing is moving through consumer technology everywhere: agents that shop, schedule, and transact on behalf of the people who own them. Golf will not be the exception. It will be one of the markets they reach.

The course needs an agent of its own

Here is what this means for the operator, and it is the part most courses have not yet considered. If a golfer’s AI agent is doing the searching, then the course it books has to be reachable by that agent. A tee sheet buried inside a website the agent cannot read, or a phone answered only when staff happens to be free, is invisible in this new kind of transaction. The booking goes to the course that can answer.

That is the role of the AI Concierge. On the course’s side of the conversation, GOLF.AI’s agents already answer calls, handle bookings, manage inquiries and sell memberships around the clock. As consumer agents arrive, that same course-side agent becomes the point of contact — the thing a golfer’s AI talks to. The result is a future where AI agents deal directly with AI agents. The golfer’s AI requests a tee time. The course’s AI Concierge confirms availability and completes the booking. Humans still play golf. The agents handle the administration.

That future is arriving faster than most people in the industry expect. The courses preparing for it now are not buying a booking tool. They are making sure that when the golfer’s agent comes looking, there is something on the other end of the line ready to say yes.

GBR readers only: Sign up at GOLF.ai this week for your chance to win a free annual AI Concierge subscription — and let Sir Nick Faldo answer every call, whether it comes from a golfer or a golfer’s AI.

59CLUB OPENS 2027 INTAKE FOR GLOBAL GOLF INTERNSHIP PROGRAM

59club and Global Talent Solutions have opened registrations for the 2027 intake of the 59club Academy Global Internship Initiative, a three-year rotational program designed to help golf and hospitality venues address seasonal staffing shortages while developing future management talent.

The initiative combines international placements, operational training, leadership development, and industry certifications, with 18 young professionals already working in Golf Operations departments at The Belfry Hotel & Resort, The Dutch, Foxhills Club & Resort, The Hawthorn by Galway Bay, Royal Dornoch Golf Club, Saadiyat Beach Golf Club, Yas Acres Golf & Country Club, and Yas Links. Interns complete six international placements across “Home Club” and “Away Club” settings, supported by 59club Service Excellence training, operational certifications, leadership development from Robincroft Consultancy, and additional education through The PGA and the League Managers Association, with expansion planned across Golf Operations, Agronomy, Food & Beverage and Leisure.

“This has already had, and will continue to have, a very positive effect on the supply of our current and future staffing requirements,” said Phil Helsby, Managing Director of The Dutch, while Andy Siddall, Co-Founder of Robincroft, said the programme is helping develop “leaders who will shape the future of the industry,” and Royal Dornoch Golf Club home intern Flynn O’Callaghan said it had given him “a clear pathway into world-class venues and future management opportunities within golf.”

GREENLIGHT ADVISORS EXPANDS 2026 U.S. GOLF STUDY

Greenlight Advisors has expanded its 2026 U.S. Golf Study through the GolfClubBenchmarks.com intelligence platform, introducing a new benchmarking framework built around four performance pillars: financial performance, operational performance, capital asset stewardship and player experience.

The study, which builds on earlier municipal benchmarking work, is now open for early registration to municipal, public daily fee and resort golf facilities across the United States, with participating operators set to receive performance intelligence, benchmarking insights and study deliverables designed to support data-led decision-making.

The enhanced framework will include metrics covering pace of play, repeat play loyalty, recommendation strength, staffing effectiveness, facility utilization, and player satisfaction trends, supported by industry organizations including the PGA of America, National Golf Foundation, National Golf Course Owners Association, and International Association of Golf Administrators. “Golf facilities today need more than traditional benchmarking,” said Michael A. Suglich, CPA, Founder and CEO of Greenlight Advisors, adding that the 2026 study is being developed to help operators understand how “financial performance, operations, capital asset stewardship, and player experience work together to drive long-term success.”

PGA BUYING SUMMIT ADDS EVENING EVENTS TO FRISCO EVENT

This year’s edition of the PGA Buying Summit returns to Omni PGA Frisco Resort & Spa from July 26-29. Alongside exhibits, education sessions, product discovery, and ONE2ONE buying appointments, the event will feature a full evening networking program.

Open to registered attendees, the schedule includes a Welcome Reception sponsored by the Association of Golf Merchandisers on Sunday, July 26, from 4:30-6 p.m. in the resort’s Library and Lobby Bar; the 2026 Summer Jam on Monday from 7-10:30 p.m. in the PGA District, featuring live music, golf contests, an outdoor golf vendor marketplace and access to dining and retail venues; and a Tuesday social mixer curated by Troy Aguila and the Gwop Meet team from 4-5:30 p.m. in the Ryder Cup Ballroom Atrium. The Tuesday program continues with the Fashion Show & Reception from 5:30-7 p.m. at Panther Creek Pavilion, showcasing Spring 2027 apparel and accessory collections and including a People’s Choice Award vote, before concluding with the Summer Shootout, a team best-ball competition at The Swing with tee times from 7:45 p.m.

“Some of the most valuable conversations at industry events continue beyond the meeting room or exhibit hall,” said PGA Shows Event Director Lisa Langas, adding that the special events are designed to help PGA of America Golf Professionals, buyers, manufacturers, industry leaders, influencers and media build relationships, exchange business perspectives and gain insights that inform future decisions.

AVA GOLF BEGINS ONBOARDING EARLY ADOPTERS

AVA Golf has begun onboarding early adopters to its subscription platform, which connects data from tools including simulators, launch monitors and on-course performance trackers to create personalized instruction video playlists for golfers.

The platform uses machine learning to identify the patterns most affecting scoring and performance, then delivers three- to seven-minute coaching videos matched to each golfer’s game from tee to green, with launch content filmed for AVA Golf and featuring instructors including Cheryl Anderson, Mike Malizia, Jason Birnbaum, PGA TOUR Golf Academy coaches and other professionals. The system currently supports data from Arccos and Garmin sessions, with additional integrations planned, while companies collecting swing and game data can apply to connect their platforms to AVA Golf and receive compensation. “Golfers have access to more data than ever but are confused and frustrated because they don’t know what the data means or how to best use it,” said JR Charles, Founder and CEO of ParOne, AVA Golf, Inc.’s parent company, while AVA Golf Director of Engineering Aron Schüler said the platform gives players “mastery without guesswork” by turning performance ambiguity into clear, actionable instruction.

BROOKE MANAGEMENT GROUP TAKES OVER PINE RIDGE GOLF COURSE

Brooke Management Group, the New York-based golf operations company led by LPGA Professional of the Year Kelley Brooke, will assume management of Pine Ridge Golf Course in Coram, New York, extending its presence across Long Island and the wider New York metropolitan region.

The company plans a multi-phase transformation of the public facility, including a technology-enhanced driving range with covered bays and food and beverage service, GPS-equipped golf carts, clubhouse and bar renovations, irrigation and course conditioning upgrades, Pinehurst-style waste bunkers, expanded Golf Channel Academy with Kelley Brooke instructional programming, and a limited Founding Membership offering preferred pricing and long-term benefits. Brooke Management Group already operates or manages Golf Channel Academy with Kelley Brooke locations across Long Island, Harbor Links Golf Course in Port Washington, golf operations at Bethpage State Park, Montauk Downs and The 9@Merrick Golf Course, and instructional programming at LIDO Golf Course. “Our goal is always the same — to elevate public golf while making the sport welcoming and accessible to everyone,” Brooke said, adding that the plan is to create “a modern golf environment that blends the feel of an upscale private club with the accessibility and energy of public golf.”

FORESIGHT SPORTS EUROPE COMPLETES INDOOR GOLF INSTALLATION AT THE 19TH MADRID

Foresight Sports Europe has completed a major indoor golf installation at The 19th Madrid, a new premium venue in the Spanish capital.

The venue is built around seven simulator bays, each powered by Foresight Sports’ ceiling-mounted Falcon launch monitors. The venue combines high-performance simulation with hospitality and social space, offering practice, coaching, competition, corporate events and casual play, with each bay designed to deliver precise ball flight, club delivery, gapping and dispersion data while keeping the environment clean and uncluttered.

Pablo de la Peña, founder of The 19th, said Foresight was “the only technology that truly matched the level of quality, precision, and credibility we wanted,” adding that members and coaches “trust the numbers completely,” while Carlos Cerdán, Foresight Sports Europe’s sales representative for Spain, said the project showed how well-designed indoor venues supported by “best-in-class technology” can change how golf is played and experienced in urban settings. The integrated system is also intended to support reliable day-to-day operations, allowing staff to maintain service standards during peak use while giving golfers of all abilities access to a Tour-level training environment.

PGA TOUR APPROVES TWO-SERIES COMPETITION MODEL FOR 2028

The PGA Tour boards have approved recommendations from the Future Competition Committee to introduce a new two-series structure from the 2028 season, built around promotion and relegation between the PGA Tour Championship Series and PGA Tour Challenger Series.

The Championship Series will run approximately from February to August and feature around 23-24 events, including The Players Championship, the majors and international team events, with regular-season events carrying purses of at least $20 million, fields of about 120 players, no alternate list, no sponsor exemptions, 72-hole formats and a 36-hole cut to the top 65 and ties.

The Challenger Series will serve as the main route into the top tier, with at least 20 events, purses of at least $4 million, fields of around 144 players, and separate points, while at least 20 players will earn promotion each year, and the top 90 finishers from roughly 130 Championship Series players will retain full exemption. The model also includes a reworked postseason with match play, a rotating Tour Championship, possible elevated fall international events in partnership with the DP World Tour, immediate promotion routes for multiple Challenger Series wins or a major championship victory, a four-to-six-event fall “last chance” series and continued Q-School access, with PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp saying the new system is “grounded in meritocracy” and designed to create “clearer pathways, higher stakes and more consistency when the best players compete together.”

Additional Reading:

In his press conference at TPC River Highlands, Rolapp added that the 2028 competition changes were developed to reflect “the voice of our players and the expectations of our fans,” after bringing the players up to speed before making the finalized plans public. Tiger Woods, chairman of the Future Competition Committee, said the work was “bigger than any one player or person” and focused on building the strongest version of the TOUR for future generations, while the committee also included Patrick Cantlay, Maverick McNealy, Keith Mitchell, Adam Scott and Camilo Villegas, alongside strategic business advisers Joe Gorder, John Henry and Theo Epstein. Several details remain unresolved, including future exemption categories for tournament winners, medical extensions, career milestones, DP World Tour players and PGA Tour University graduates, with developmental pathways such as the Korn Ferry Tour, PGA Tour Americas and PGA Tour University still viewed as central to identifying and preparing future players. Gorder, chairman of the PGA Tour Boards, said the process had been “thorough and highly collaborative,” adding that Rolapp and his team had delivered a player-driven response to the changing sports landscape. Mark Schlabach, ESPN.

LIV GOLF COURTS AUSTRALIAN BACKERS FOR GLOBAL FUNDING PUSH

LIV Golf chief executive Scott O’Neil has said the league is seeking to raise US$300 million for 2027 and beyond. The funding process is already underway, with private equity firms, family offices, and professional sports team owners among the groups approached. Rather than seeking a single backer, LIV is looking to build a broader international investor base.

Rather than relying on one major backer, O’Neil said LIV wants a global ownership group that reflects its 57 players from 21 countries and the five continents on which it stages events, with Australia identified as a priority market following the success of Ripper GC and annual crowds of more than 100,000 in Adelaide. “My hope is that as we continue this journey and that we can find investors on the five continents where we play,” O’Neil told Australian Golf Digest, adding that interest had included groups asking whether LIV would accept investments of US$25 million or US$50 million rather than the full US$300 million. O’Neil said the process was only two weeks old but had already generated nearly 20 meetings, and argued that LIV’s future investor base could help spread risk, open regional opportunities and give key markets a direct role in the league’s next stage, saying: “When you get in the rollercoaster line, you can’t expect a carousel.”

Brad Clifton’s full piece for Golf Digest Australia can be read here.