GolfNewsRI

Indoor golf has arrived in Rhode Island in a big way. 

Earlier this week, GolfNewsRI told you about the rise of indoor golf in the state, after conducting multiple interviews and collecting some national data. 

In part two of this series, GolfNewsRI will tell you the stories behind the launch of a few of these indoor facilities. 

Actually, the owners are going to tell you themselves: 

Newport Indoor Golf – Founder & President Max Buerman

1947 W Main Road, Portsmouth, RI 02871

“I was obviously golfer first, but I’m more of a tech guy as well. I obviously did research. We went around between Florida, I think we visited a place in Colorado, a couple of places in New York just to see what they were offering.  

I mean COVID obviously did wonders to the whole golf game, but there was obviously a need for it, especially where we live. 

I’m from upstate New York where it starts to snow in like October and doesn’t stop until like May. So there’s obviously a need for what I call the golf crazies. the golf 

The golfers that want to continue playing Saturday morning  and there wasn’t really anything around that offered a full facility. 

So I thought there was definitely an opportunity.

I opened Newport Indoor Golf in December of 2018. 

I don’t think there was anything in the state or there was, you know, some hit inside my garage type of places. 

I think when I started, we were still like piggy backing the E SIX software and now, obviously Trackman has like 250 courses and indoor games and like three driving ranges now.

 I feel like I was one of the first people probably, I mean, probably V-Golf too, actually having like a full Trackman indoor directly set up to do that in the area.

 We opened with four bays in December 2018. We grew to five bays in March of 2019 and now I have seven bays kind of running full time, full fitting studio, full repair, gripping repair. We have a putter fitting studio now. 

We probably do between 35 and 50 hours of lessons a week as well. So we’re fully hopping with not only just indoor golf but golf, fitting, retail sales lessons. 

We do a little bit of everything for every type of golfer.”

Inside Links – Owner Mario Lemme

132 Mendon Road, 2nd Floor, Cumberland, RI 02864

“Having gone to lessons indoors, and seeing a couple of places, we had the idea. 

I was sitting down and I was out of work for a couple of years, by choice, mostly, and I really didn’t wanna go back to work for anybody. 

So it was kind of what can I do? What are my favorite things to do? You know, we evaluated a few options but the indoor golf we started to szero in on. 

First we started building a pricing model and a business model on it and the business model seemed like it worked. 

You know, the certain number of hours you have to rent per day for your expenses, it seemed realistic to be able to attain. 

 Then putting together what the investment is gonna be, it didn’t seem unreasonable. 

And then while we’re doing this process, a lot of places open, I think Newport Indoor Golf was already there, and I think X-Golf had already been open. 

I think X-Golf was the big one going into the big place like the mall. That was kind of a clue that, hey, there’s something here.

There are a two big drivers. 

I think number one is, and we’ve talked about it a million times, driving ranges around here are going away, the land is too valuable. You can make way more by developing it.

So there’s nowhere to practice unless your club or your place has a range. 

Then number two, it’s very seasonal for a lot of people, they start in May and they put them away in October as soon as it gets cold. 

So this is a way to keep your game alive during the winter, still have that outlet of something to do. 

Gear up for the spring to be ready to play golf and not have to relearn how to play golf every spring. So those are the two big drivers.”

V-Golf – Owner Dennis Parrillo

850 Waterman Ave, East Providence, RI & Triggs Memorial Golf Course

I had just relocated back from Fort Lauderdale in 2017. I have always been in real estate and in construction specifically, electrical work. 

So moved back to Rhode Island for family reasons in the winter of 2017. Obviously, was used to golfing year around in Florida so really, really was bummed out that obviously couldn’t swing the clubs besides going to Golfer Warehouse and pretending you were buying clubs. 

At that point in time, there was no Golf Galaxy around. 

My brother and I in, will call it January of 2018 found a place in Milford, Massachusetts. It was called the 19th Hole. 

Beautiful, beautiful place. Not around anymore. They actually closed at the end of 19, I think, I mean, a multi million dollar build out. Beautiful, they had private rooms. 

I mean, it was a bar, restaurant, gorgeous place. I think they just kind of over did it. 

They were charging way too much. I mean, for four guys to go there, it was $500 to eat, drink and play golf, which was cool for the middle of January when you were bummed out and everything like that. 

But you couldn’t go there more than once a month. Otherwise you’d go broke. 

So fast forward to the winter of 2018, call it December-ish, November-ish. 

We ended up going back to this place and I’m like, why is there not one of these places around in Rhode Island? 

So I started doing my research on Softwares and obviously what it would kind of take to get into this. I approached my brother and my father about partnering up and doing it together. 

My brother had his own business venture going on and my dad was getting ready to retire and he said I’m in. 

So by April of 2019, we opened V-Golf in Cranston. 

I think Newport Indoor Golf had opened up pretty much a month or two before that. 

So we were the first in Rhode Island, both Newport and us. 

Obviously, they’re on their side of the state and we’re on our side of the state. 

And I strategically placed it in Cranston because of the population density of what was going on. With local golf courses, obviously, we had a lot of golf courses within 10 minutes of us. 

It was a slow start when we first opened, we thought we were gonna be a year round business. We had a soft opening all of April. We opened up May 1 and we sucked wind all summer long. I mean, it sucked. 

I was trying to give away free rounds on Facebook just for reposting our link and I couldn’t get people to come in for free.

Fast forward to the end of the summer, like October-Ish. It started to pick up at night, then November once the time changed and once it gets a little cool, you gotta have 50 degree weather and hopefully some rain at the bare minimum, anything below 50 degrees and obviously rain or snow, you’re jam packed. 

And that’s why obviously December, January, February and March are the busiest months. 

So that first year, I really fine tuned because obviously being in real estate and construction guy, I had no idea about the golf industry. I was a golfer for 13 years, but I didn’t really know what the industry was and it was a fairly new thing. 

I mean, they invented an insurance policy for us because there was no insurance policies for these things. It was a very new in the state and the city of Cranston didn’t even know how to issue a license for it. So that’s how new it was at that point in time. 

Fast forward through the years through COVID, COVID was a very strong time for us because we have individual suites. 

So we actually flourished through COVID because when they came in for inspections, they’re like, “wow, you guys have individual rooms, it’s not wide open.” 

I mean, we passed our COVID inspections with flying colors. 

Honestly, throughout all that and then fast forwarding through COVID, with the resurgence of golf, I mean, we did record numbers, just record, record numbers, time in and time out and the beauty of what we have as opposed to a lot of other places, because everyone does everything different, but they all kind of do the same thing where it’s just like kind of wide open bowling bowling alley style bay, maybe have food, maybe have beverage. 

We kept our private room scenario the same where it’s just you and the three people you came in with in your own private suite. 

We’re using the best software out there which is Trackman. That’s undeniable, non debatable. And it’s the cheapest price. 

You can’t go anywhere and hit balls for $40 an hour on indoor software, let alone on the best software in the world. So where do we stand now?  

Obviously with the new locations, we obviously have the biggest market share in Rhode Island. We’re the only place that has two locations. 

But you got a lot of different subsidiaries of indoor golf. You got places like X-Golf, which is your franchised version of indoor golf. 

But then you got your other places like  the couple you had mentioned Inside Links and Shanks and there’s a couple others out there that I’m not even aware of, but the market share in Rhode Island alone is so big, you could literally have one of these places in every single town and still not, still not satisfy the market.

It’s a huge market.”

Linx Golf – Owner Brian Farley

6657 Post Road, North Kingstown, RI

“Basically I was on the phone with with my cousin and he was mentioning, ‘hey, let’s go play indoor golf,’ and referenced V-Golf in Cranston. 

He goes, you know, we can play in the winter time, have some beers. 

I was like, alright, let’s do it on the weekend, because I’ve got the kids, it’s just more convenient. 

He’s like ‘they’re booked out three weeks for the weekend.’ 

So when he told me that, you know, that’s when my wheel started turning and realizing the need there. 

I was working a corporate job that wasn’t very fulfilling at the time. 

So once I kind of dove in and did a real deep dive, I kind of started researching, you know, everything, kind of what kind of units I wanted.

I went up to New York to test pretty much every different simulator that they had.

I really just dove in completely, did a deep dive on everything, indoor golf and just to kind of see how I wanted to do to run my place and what technology I wanted to use, what software, and all that stuff. 

It really did start with just us realizing the need. Me obviously being a converted baseball player hanging on to my athlete status as long as I possibly can and making this work here. 

The winter was great. Summer is obviously a slower time when you can go outside. 

There’s nothing like being outside and golfing. 

We have some members that stayed through the summer to still get their data, loosen up before they went out into the course. 

I also have a bunch of Rhode Island courses on either of the two softwares that I use. 

Golfers were able to, you know, if they had a tournament at a course that they haven’t played yet, they’ve got the ability to use the software that we have and play that course before they actually played in real life. 

It’s not the real thing, however, you can kind of play the hole backwards, get your yardages, see how you’re gonna play a hole things like that. 

So strategically, you can still kind of map your bag out right for each hole and that’s obviously an advantage too. 

Winter was phenomenal. We had leagues, memberships, and again, just having one winter so far, we have met a lot of great people, great customers and looking forward to this winter.”