Recently I have had to travel to the Dallas/Fort Worth area for work.  The last couple of times there one of our customers has taken us out to Top Golf one evening during my visit.

Top Golf is basically a fancy driving range where you pay by the hour. The targets are greens at different distances. It’s best to go after dark as the range and targets are all lit up. What you do is, when it is your turn, you get a ball from the dispenser, and that ball is linked to your profile.  You hit the ball and once it hits a target you get a score. The scoring is all done automatically, and it shows where you hit the target, as well as the distance the ball traveled.

The key is to make sure your profile is selected before you retrieve your ball from the dispenser.  If you forget, then you hit and someone else will get your score and they will lose one of their shots.  My coworker had a initially kept getting balls from the dispenser without changing it to be his shot, so he was taking the a shot that should have belonged the previous hitter.

There are a bunch of different games.  The one we played was called “Top Golf” where hitting the target gives you a score, the farther the target and the closer to the pin the better the score. It seemed like it was somewhere between 2 and 20 points.  Each player gets 20 balls to hit and the high score at the end is the winner.  If you hit your target consecutively you get more points, kind of like rolling consecutive strikes in bowling. And I think certain “rounds” are worth double points.

The closest target is about 75 yards, and the furthest one is 185 yards.  The end of the range is 215 yards, I think.  If you hit it off the end of the range, but between the lights at the end of the range (i.e. in the fairway) you get points. The closer to the middle light (center of the fairway) the more points you get.

Each stall has either a high table with chairs, or a living room style sectional sofa and chairs.  And you have waiters coming by to take orders for drinks and food.  The food was pretty good. There is also a TV for each stall and you can choose what channel you want to watch. We seemed to always be tuned to a baseball game.

Each stall also has a half set of both men’s and women’s clubs.  Each had a drive and 3-wood and 3 hybrid.  And then either 3, 5, 7, 9 irons or 4, 6, 8, and PW irons. The shafts on the men’s set were all either regular or uniflex, as I found them to be a bit weak, especially the drivers.

Here is our host and customer. He started golfing later in life and is now extremely avid, he tells me hit plays or practices every day.

There were plenty of people there even on Wednesday nights when we were there, some who could really hit it, and some who looked like they had never hit a ball before that night.  Everyone seemed to have fun, even the beginners who could score points by at least rolling it into the targets.

There were three levels to the range. We hit off of the top level. The middle level, which is where you entered the facility, also had a gift shop, and the inside of the lower level had pool tables, ping pong table, and foosball. So there was lots to do for even the non golfers.

Here is my coworker. He is just starting to get into golf and is very inconsistent but can hit it a mile when he catches it.

I was searching for something to watch on TV the other day and saw the Adult Swim channel showing the “Adult Swim Golf Classic” and I had to watch. What I found was a throwback to the old Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf matches of the 1960s and 70s.

This match pitted Adam Scott (the actor) portraying Adam Scott (the golfer) against Jon Daly (the actor) portraying John Daly (the golfer). Somehow the match is set in 1966.

It is a nine-hole match and it is one of the funniest things I have ever seen, especially the antics of Daly really getting into the role of Daly. The commentary from Golf Channel’s Gary Williams elevates the antics to a whole new level.

I had missed the start of the match but was able to find it on Youtube.