This Is What Callaway Hoped Topgolf Would Be

Callaway is announcing a partnership today with indoor simulator chain Five Iron Golf that will turn each Five Iron Golf location into a Callaway Certified Fitting Center.

Five Iron Golf is a chain of city-based indoor golf and entertainment centers offering simulators, practice time, lessons, food and drink. It had offered brand-agnostic fittings but now will be exclusively Callaway.

As of today, all Five Iron Golf coaches will be Callaway-certified fitters and will, as the press release states, provide a “premium, Tour-level fitting experience” to Five Iron members and walk-in customers. It must be noted that Callaway holds a minority ownership position in Five Iron Golf.

This, friends, is what Callaway hoped for when it merged with Topgolf in 2021.

The details

Five Iron Golf is part golf entertainment complex, part teaching center staffed with golf coaches. Think of it as Golftec with burgers and beer.

“Five Iron and Callaway share the same vision of making golf for everyone and increasing enjoyment of the game while genuinely helping players improve,” says Five Iron Golf Co-founder and CEO Jared Solomon. “Callaway tour fittings will reshape the way golfers are fitted for equipment.”

Fitting services will run $99 per hour and be open to Five Iron Golf members and walk-in customers. Five Iron coaches will offer the entire line of Callaway metalwoods, irons and wedges as well as Odyssey putters.

There are 29 Five Iron Golf locations across the U.S. You can book fittings online.

What is Five Iron Golf?

Founded in 2017 by Solomon and partners Katherine Solomon, Nora Dunnan and Mike Doyle, Five Iron Golf is a fusion 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 coaches who also provide custom fitting services.

Each venue also features a bar, food, pool and other table games plus big-screen TVs.

Each Five Iron Golf center is in a downtown area. 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 purchased a $30-million minority stake in  Five Iron Golf in November 2021. That was just 10 months after completing its merger with Topgolf.

This is what Topgolf was supposed to be

It doesn’t take a Harvard Business School degree to see this is what Callaway had in mind when it merged with Topgolf in January 2021. Fitting and selling Callaway clubs at full retail at Topgolf venues seemed like a no-brainer. Several challenges, however, kept that from happening.

First, golfers looking for fitting services tend to see Topgolf as an entertainment center, not a practice and fitting facility. Second, Topgolf is set up for gamification. Fittings with downrange capabilities would likely be a logistical nightmare. Third, building Topgolf venues is expensive, requiring land, parking and access infrastructure. The quickest way to recoup those expenses is to focus on what drives revenue: gameplay, food and beverage.

That’s not to say Topgolf won’t eventually find a way to offer fitting services. It very well could still happen. However, when Topgolf Callaway announced last fall it would split into two separate entities, it 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 requiring no land, parking or infrastructure. It offers memberships, lesson packages, locker rooms and club storage to golfers who might not otherwise have easy access to practice facilities and it is already set up for fittings.

For more information on Five Iron Golf’s Callaway Certified Fitting program, visit the Five Iron Golf website.