Callaway is today announcing a partnership with indoor simulator chain Five Iron Golf that will bring back each Five iron golf location at a Callaway Certified Assembly Center.
Five Iron Golf is a city-based chain of indoor golf and entertainment centers offering simulators, practice times, lessons, food and beverage. It had been offering brand agnostic gear, but will now be exclusively Callaway.
Starting today, all Five Iron Golf coaches will be certified fitters by Callaway and, according to the press release, will provide a “premium, tournament-level fit experience” to Five Iron members and customers. present It should be noted that Callaway maintains a minority ownership position in Five Iron Golf.
That, friends, is what Callaway was hoping for when it teamed up with Topgolf in 2021.
The details
Five iron golf it is part of the golf entertainment complex, part of the learning center equipped with golf coaches. Think of it as Golftec with burgers and beer.
“Five Iron and Callaway share the same vision of making golf accessible to everyone and enhancing the enjoyment of the game while truly helping players improve,” says Five Iron Golf Co-Founder and CEO Jared Soloman. “Callaway Touring Equipment Will Reshape The Way Golfers Are Geared Up.”
Fitting services will cost $99 per hour and will be open to Five Iron Golf members and walk-in customers. Five iron carts will offer the entire line of Callaway ironwoods, irons and wedges, as well as Odyssey irons.
There are 29 Five Iron Golf locations across the US equipment book online.
What is Five Iron Golf?
Founded in 2017 by Soloman and partners Nora Dunnan and Mike Doyle, Five Iron Golf is an amalgamation of golf simulators, Golftec and your favorite neighborhood pub. You can rent simulator bays for group fun or serious practice, and you can sign up for long-term instruction packages with on-staff trainers who also offer custom fitting services.
Each location also has a bar, food, pool and other table games, plus big screen TVs.
Each one Five iron golf the center is located in the center of the city. There are four locations in Chicago, six in New York City and two each in Philadelphia, Detroit and Seattle. There are single locations in Pittsburgh, Oklahoma City, Minneapolis, Louisville, Las Vegas, Indianapolis, Washington DC, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Baltimore and Boston
Callaway bought a $30 million minority stake in Five Iron Golf in November 2021. That was just 10 months after its merger with Topgolf was completed.
This is what Topgolf was supposed to be
It doesn’t take a degree from Harvard Business School to see that this is what Callaway had in mind when it teamed up with Topgolf in January 2021. Assembling and selling Callaway clubs at full retail at Topgolf locations seemed like a no-brainer. mind However, several challenges prevented this.
First, golfers looking for convenient services tend to see Topgolf as an entertainment center, not a practical, convenient facility. Second, Topgolf is designed for gamification. Devices with low-end capabilities are likely to be a logistical nightmare. Third, building Topgolf venues is expensive, requiring land, parking and access infrastructure. The fastest way to recoup these expenses is to focus on what drives revenue: gaming, food and drink.
That’s not to say that Topgolf won’t eventually find a way to provide convenient services. It could very well still happen. However, when Topgolf Callaway announced last fall, it would happen divided into two separate entitieshe cited, among other reasons, a “lack of synergy.” This is one of those synergies that never materialized.
Five Iron Golf, on the other hand, is an indoor, urban facility that requires no land, parking or infrastructure. It offers memberships, lesson packages, locker rooms and clubhouse storage for players who may not otherwise have easy access to practice facilities and is already set up for equipment.
For more information on Five Iron Golf’s Callaway Certified Fitting program, visit Five Iron Golf website.
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