SportTechie visited Topgolf's El Segundo, Calif. location which includes a new 10-hole par 3 golf course and 102-bay driving range, both integrated with interactive technology.

Golf has evolved from chip shots to...RFID chips.

This isn’t your grandfather’s sport anymore, at least if Topgolf has a say in the matter. The Callaway-owned company just opened a marquee location seven weeks ago near the beach in Los Angeles that is littered with technology, micro-chipped golf balls and a driving-range LED screen the size of Rhode Island.

If that’s not enough, there is a first-of-its kind 10-hole course adjacent to the complex where golfers are filmed on the final hole with the same tracing technology used on PGA Tour broadcasts. All the golfers need to do is snap a picture of a QR code with their smart phone, and they can post a Rory McIlroy-type video of their carry, their ball speed and their flight distance on social media.

The El Segundo Topgolf location is unique in that it offers a driving range and a 10-hole course for visitors.

“That’s not what you think of when you think of golf,’’ says Scott Lovejoy, Topgolf’s VP of Technology. “But, then again, this is modern golf, right?’’

In its purest form, Topgolf is a gamified driving range that is leveraging technology to attract nouveau golfers. And of their soon-to-be 81 locations around the planet, none is more of a technological test-case than the venue in West L.A.

Located just off of the PCH in El Segundo, all 102 driving bays contain a Top Tracer ball dispenser with augmented reality functions to go with a camera-based triangulation system that provides players with every analytic under the sun. For seasoned golfers, they can find out if their metrics are comparable to tour players. For the beginners, they can play an AR golf version of Angry Birds.

“One of my favorite things at the facility is to walk up and tell people, ‘Oh, you just hit that 120 miles an hour,’’’ Lovejoy says. “And what does that do? People get another ball and say I can hit it harder than that. At that point, they don’t care about hitting the targets or knocking down the target for Angry Birds, right? So we have gamified this experience far more than having it be a driving range is on its own.’’

Toptracer is an advanced ball-tracing technology available at Topgolf's El Segundo location.

If nothing else, Topgolf would be nothing without the passive RFID — Radio Frequency Identification — chips that are the size of a lead pencil and embedded in the golf balls. Every ball that a player lofts into  a target area is catalogued by an antenna, allowing the Topgolf tracing machines to correlate the ball to the player who hit it and record their score.

The big maintenance issue, according to Lovejoy, is that each time a ball is struck, its “signal strength degrades a little bit’’—leading Topgolf to develop a complex testing system that takes a ball out of commission once its RFID chip falls below a certain threshold.

Technology doesn’t end there. The company’s top tracer screens provide players with the virtual reality capability to play actual courses such as Pebble Beach, Spanish Bay and St. Andrews. The company also has a partnership with Golf+ that allows players at home to play either Topgolf games or actual courses while wearing an Oculus headset. In other words, a person can not only play Topgolf at home through Golf+, they can be in Santa Monica and play a virtual round at Pebble Beach alongside someone else in Schenectady.

Topgolf's three-level, arcade-style driving range offers 102 driving bays for golfers.

“We actually use [Golf+] in separate parts of the company for meetings,’’ Lovejoy says. “I had a meeting with someone in the San Jose area while I was in Dallas. We were at a virtual Topgolf, hitting the ball, but talking about what was going on with our team in our worlds, in our project worlds and things like that. It is hyper-realistic.’’

Topgolf’s online World Golf Tour game is also No. 1 in the industry, meaning players who cannot make it to El Segundo can still play Topgolf via their smart phone app.

“It’s simple,’’ says Gen Gray, Topgolf’s COO. “New golfers entering the sport are wanting to break down the barriers associated with traditional golf.’’

Down the road, Lovejoy says there may be artificial intelligence capabilities at Topgolf’s cold-weather venues, such as Minneapolis’ Brooklyn Center, where golfers tend to come to the range in snowstorms.

“Our golfers do come out and play during a blizzard with friends and family,’’ Lovejoy says, laughing. “So I think AI and machine learning are going to help stitch things together if the ball lost in view or the snow.’’

But El Segundo site — outside of Las Vegas’ four-floor 120-bay venue —could have the most sizzle of all, largely due to its adjacent 10-hole par-3 green-grass golf course. Known as The Lakes at El Segundo, the renovated course is the first to ever sit on Topgolf property. As part of the renovation, Topgolf also added lights to the 10-hole course to allow for night golf.

The technology on the 10th hole is the game-changer. A camera is embedded behind the tee box, capturing a player on video the same way NBC would capture Tiger Woods. A dual-screen video is then available to the Topgolf player. On the left side of the screen is their actual shot and on the right is a highlighted trace of their shot that can be shared on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or to their grandfather’s cell phone.

The whole idea is to convert more of the general public into golfers. Which is why company employees always talk about a meme on a golf hat that sums up Topgolf’s mission:

Photo credits: Courtesy of Topgolf

Seeking to establish an online social network for those tennis players is Break the Love, which raised $2.5 million in seed funding earlier this year from investors that included the Adidas family-backed Lake Nona Fund, retired Wimbledon doubles champion Vania King, and Wim Fissette, the former tennis coach for Naomi Osaka. Trisha Goyal, a former product manager at ESPN and passionate tennis player, founded Break the Love in 2019 after being underwhelmed with the sport’s existing options for match scheduling and networking.

TiqAssist is a startup that focuses on helping season ticket holders resale their tickets for games they can't attend. TiqAssist uses proprietary software that scans prices on all major reselling platforms and automatically adjusts your price every 10 minutes.

Part 3 of SportTechie's digital scouting series on soccer focuses on the new sets of metrics available to coaches and scouts as well as the devices and platforms that provide the data.

SportTechie covered Iowa football's usage of the Seeker last fall, and now the device has found its way into the NFL with the Green Bay Packers becoming the first pro team to utilize the robotic quarterback. If the technology is found to be useful for the Packers, the smart machine and its data could have implications for the rest of the league.

In a highly saturated social media market, Fivestar is hoping to stand out thanks to its unique design of a Tik Tok-like video-only app that focuses on sports highlights. The emphasis is on the content, not comments as Fivestar allows users to watch, rank and rate athlete videos but does not include a commenting feature.