In Montreal this week, temperatures stayed in the single digits.
Bertrand Quentin would like to keep his handicap so low. But this is difficult to do in the Canadian city where he lives.
Montreal winters are long. of golf season it is short.
“It’s a cycle,” Quentin told GOLF by email. “I’ll be fighting my way up to a single-digit handicap by October, only to wake up as a 12 handicap when the season finally opens in May. This six-month break is a real momentum killer.”
How do you keep your mojo going when you live in a cold climate? Some golfers install simulators in their homes. Others fly south for the winter.
Quentin has come up with another solution.
Enter: Megalodome.
Not to be confused with a megalodon, Megalodome Golf is indoor golf on a grand scale, set within a series of connected domes, on an actual artificial turf course designed to bounce and roll like real grass. Plans call for it to open outside of Chicago in late 2027.
Word of the project went viral on social media this week, complete with renderings and details that seemed straight out of a sci-fi future: Arizona style design, decorated with palm trees, cacti, water hazards and sandy wastes, located in the village of Oswego, about an hour west of downtown Chicago, in a location Quentin said he could not yet reveal.
Indoor golf already exists, of course, the most famous in SoFi Center in Florida, which hosts the TGL, the technology-advanced league backed by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. But TGL is simulation golf.
Quentin describes the Megalodome as something completely different.
“Simply put, there is nothing else like it in the world,” he said.
The design calls for four massive interconnected domes. Three will house an executive 9-hole course — six par-3s and three par-4s, playing to a par of 30 — designed by Montreal-based Huxham Golf Design. The fourth dome will contain a practical structure. There will also be a clubhouse, with views that Quentin said will stretch “900 feet to the Megalodome golf course on one side and another 900 feet to the practice facility on the other.” The practice facility will include a short game area and 50 stalls, with a range stretching more than 275 metres.
“The scale is truly unprecedented,” Quentin said.
Quentin, a 65-year-old forest engineer, said the seed for his Megalodome dream was planted by a friend seven years ago. “Since then, it’s been an intense journey,” he said.
If the plans sound ambitious, so does the timeline. All this finished by the fall of 2027? But Quentin said he and his partner, Alain Desrochers, are “in a very healthy position to execute our current roadmap”. They are set to launch a $50 million investment fund and, Quentin said, are in “advanced discussions with major financial groups.”
They chose the Chicago area, he said, for its large market and shortened golf season. But they also have their eyes on other places down the line.
