The sentiment, up to this point, is that simulator golf is OK if there’s a foot of snow on the ground or it’s too cold or too rainy and it’s the only golf available. Fine, as far as it goes but it doesn’t go far enough. Flat screen, flat lies and even if you can putt, it’s always straight and only about 4 feet.
The innovators behind Platform Golf aren’t flat earthers in the universe of simulation. They have taken their original adjustable indoor putting green and married it with software that allows a simulator to communicate with the platform to mimic uneven fairway lies in real time. And it also creates putting with undulation from distances up to 40 feet.
It’s not TGL-level simulation, which costs millions and takes an arena to house. However, Platform Golf has added a couple of dimensions of realism that could make simulator golf a much more attractive option when “real” golf isn’t available — or for the growing number of indoor golf clubs that cater to the social aspect of the experience.
In 2014, Glen Coombe built a manual adjustable putting platform as a prototype for David Orr, a top 50 PGA instructor and founder of Flatstick Academy. Five years later, Thomas Hackett and Rory Flanagan, along with Rory Gibb, co-founded Perfection Platforms. In 2024, when the current iteration took shape, Hackett and Flanagan bought out Gibb at his request and rebranded the company to Platform Golf.
Hackett, who serves as CEO and has a tech background, having spent several years in Ireland working for Oracle and Glantus (now Basware), began to think beyond just putting while looking at simulators at the PGA Show one year in Orlando, Florida.
“We were the first integrated solution for Science and Motion (known as SAM PuttLab),” Hackett says. “I put their projection system on top of a moving platform. What if we just pointed our platform at a simulator and took this ball tracking and connected it to the data within a simulator? Could that happen? And would it happen?”
The answer was yes. And shortly, the company became rebranded as Platform Golf. Hackett is beginning an integration relationship with TruGolf, one of the country’s leading simulator companies, with more than 6,000 simulators and more than 140 commercial installations in place. Platform Golf hopes to retrofit many of those existing simulators with its new technology.
Hackett sees a potential market with college golf teams, particularly those located in cold weather climates. “It's going to be a standard of all the collegiate programs, especially the ones north of the Mason-Dixon Line,” Hackett says.
Hackett also believes the U.S. is in a boom of off-course golf experiences, with potential for substantial growth. The National Golf Foundation reports that a record 47.2 million people played golf either on-course or off-course in 2024. People who played off-course only totaled 19.1 million and 14.5 million played both on- and off-course.
And he believes that the U.S. is experiencing what countries like Korea and Japan have created out of necessity. “They don't have many golf courses, and the cost of playing golf is reserved largely to the elite,” Hackett says. “So, for most people all the golf they play is off-course.
“If you look at New York City or Boston or any of our big major metros, it's kind of the same thing. But that's all changing because of this massive growth of off-course golf. I think what we’ve created really democratizes golf.”
Even for those who can afford club memberships, because of high demand at private clubs, off-course can be a necessity. Hackett tells the story of the chief medical officer of a Fortune 100 company, who was experiencing a five-year waiting list for clubs where he lives. He’s also a beginner, so, he built a studio in his basement with a simulator equipped with Platform Golf. Playing and practicing exclusively on the simulator, he’s getting his feet on the ground as a golfer.
In fact, his son also learned the game on the simulator and shot 89 in his first-ever junior tournament. Then, with nine-hole rounds of 40-42-42, he made the junior varsity golf team at his high school as a freshman.
Platform Golf is also launching a virtual training academy that will feature teachers such as Brad Faxon, Claude Harmon III, Stephen Sweeney and Athletic Motion Golf. “The main focus of us as a company is to support the teachers and to be able to give them a solution where they can bottle their product up and sell it like Coke and Pepsi to their massive fan bases.”
Golf is still riding the wave of the COVID boom and Hackett believes that gaps in accessibility to the game were exposed and that off-course golf can help fill those voids.
“I think that that off-course golf is only just beginning to really go to a level of competitive resonance,” he says. “I was able to play golf against my 80-year-old grandfather in person when he was alive, now I can play against aunts and uncles all over the world.”
Which is, after all, one of the greatest attractions of the game. Hackett hopes to duplicate that attraction and those feelings without having to step foot on green grass.
