If you drive south from Brisbane along the Gold Coast highway, in less than an hour you’ll find the growing sprog of Surfers Paradise littering the blue bird sky. Gone are the days of the slow-paced beach boulevard scene round these parts. The high rises are tall and they are plenty as the Blackpool of Australia continues to attract locals and holidaymakers to the city on the sea.
Keen to cash in on the growing population along the golden sands, it’s no surprise to see the entertainment offering spread inland to catch the tourist traffic. There’s Dreamworld, a theme park that fell some way short of its name when four people died in 2016 in the Thunder River Rapids. There’s Movie World, that saw its Green Lantern Ride shake loose and strand 13 thrill seekers mid-air for hours in scorching heat. And there’s Seaworld where, in better news, no instructor has ever been eaten by a killer whale because no orca has ever been held here in captivity. Yay Blackfish.
All that being said, I wasn’t going to take my life in my hands heading to any of the three. Instead, I made my way south to the Gold Coast to entrap myself in a different kind of cage. The TopGolf kind to be exact, with its glow in the dark emblem a bat signal for swing geeks to test themselves in its futuristic driving range striving to make golf cool.
Five of us travelled, of which only three played golf. Two if you exclude Jarryd who only owns a five iron to keep the cane toad population around his house at bay. The other two were jockeys, encouraged when I told them that creating lag in the golf swing is a lot like whipping a horse, only golf balls don’t have feelings and you can’t get suspended for overuse.
We arrived on Sunday evening. To give you an idea of how busy the place was, there are three floors and 90 bays total and we had to wait nearly an hour for one to open up. The wait was made infinitely easier by an extensive bar serving cold beers but I soon found that golf is made infinitely more difficult when you’re half-pissed.
Of course, while I wouldn’t be a golfer if I didn’t get the excuses in early, I would say the selection of clubs on offer didn’t help my game. I’d expected the latest releases from the leading brands and hoped to use them as an opportunity to trial a couple of clubs I’m in the market for. Then one of the jockeys skied a ball into the ceiling and took out a pint glass, and nearly the monitor, and suddenly it all made sense.
That said, I felt the game play modes didn’t reflect the way the game of golf should be played. The range was about 190 meters long (yes, I’m still adjusting to this sacrilege), and all (all!) you had to do was hit the back of the net somewhat straight to earn maximum points. Meanwhile a bullseye with a three quarter wedge produced barely a third of the score. So as I made my feelings known about how Sir Bobby Jones would be turning in his grave if he knew such a misrepresentation of the ancient club and ball game existed, I turned around in my drunken haze to my fellow TopGolf competitors, of which, not one sported a polo shirt, never mind a FootJoy glove like yours truly. And well, wasn’t that the whole point?
Here I’ve been fighting in the face of tradition for years, bemoaning dress codes, rule books and inefficient formats affecting the accessibility of this great game and here’s a driving range in the middle of Australia’s beach scene packed to the rafters with a bunch of misfits who are one shot away from becoming hooked for life.
It was beautiful. Hopeful. Then I turned around to see one of the jockeys had lost his whip; the grease from the loaded nachos he ordered making the club slip straight from his hand and out into the arena for a respectable 18 points.
Who would’ve thought taking my chances on the Green Lantern was the safer bet?
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