Why city workers and US investors are going crazy for London’s newest golf club

One of London’s newest – and trendiest venues is redefining the golf club experience by pairing virtual gameplay with live music, brand new Callaway clubs, and top courses. We paid the founders a visit at their new flagship site in Canary Wharf to find out how they are building a new community of golfers and office workers in the city, one venue at a time.

When two newly qualified PGA professionals came across an unused gym space at a swanky health club in London’s Square Mile, they spotted an opportunity. Fed up of coaching outside at night and in the cold, Chris Ingham and Elliot Godfrey saw potential in moving into an indoor space and using technology as a means to inspire and educate.

Armed with one Trackman, two Foresight GC2 Launch Monitors, and a loan from Godfrey’s brother, they built two teaching bays next door to a swimming pool and started ushering gym goers through the doors of their new golf studio. It proved to be a slow burner.

“I’ll never forget, we opened the space and a week in, Chris was sitting there, head in his hands, saying, ‘We’ve made the biggest mistake of our lives’,” recalls Godfrey. “In that first week, we must have had one customer.

“We soon realised that with the density of the population in London, there were a lot of golfers who we could target. We just needed to get the message out. We ended up doing some free showcases to a bunch of workers at a bank opposite us. I think all of them wanted lessons, and that felt like a watershed moment, knowing that we had done the right thing.”

As word of mouth spread, so too did the number of bookings. The business was flourishing, but when the gym was taken over three years later, they were left homeless without so much of a warning. Still, it proved to be a sliding doors moment.

In 2016, they rebranded and relocated to a bigger site in Bishopsgate, which was the first iteration of their Pitch Golf concept. It quickly became one of the coolest places to congregate after work.

“What we wanted to do was modernise golf and change the perception, really,” explains Godfrey. “When we first floated the idea, there were maybe a couple of indoor golf venues, but they weren’t very modern representations of the game. Certainly, when you come to Pitch, with the way the venues look and feel, it is quite different to that normal kind of golf space.

“A lot of people have this preconceived idea of what golf is and how it looks and feels. But we want people to come to our venues, to feel welcome, and to really embrace the social side, the music, the food… all the things which bring people together.”

That much can be seen upon entering their new flagship store in Canary Wharf, their third location in London. Inside, the atmosphere and design are more akin to a sports bar than some kind of private members’ club for the rich and famous.

You don’t need a handicap or membership to enter, nor are you required to dress a certain way or bring your own golf clubs. It’s the kind of place you might go to play golf with your mates on a Friday night and then stay for the food, drinks and after party.

“It does have a really social feel to it, a place where you can hang out, have a laugh and have a good time,” says Ingham. “The main comment we get when people come here is, ‘I wasn’t expecting it to look like this’.

“But it is really rare to get to play on a Trackman indoors with a view behind you. It does make a big difference, having those floor-to-ceiling windows, which traditionally is the opposite of what indoor golf’s all about, right? It’s usually an underground thing, where everything is very dark and enclosed. Whereas the feeling here is quite grand – the staircase has a ballroom-type feel and it’s quite a light, welcoming space. And I think that makes a big difference to people.”

One of the most exciting things about Pitch Wharf is the ability to cater for just about every skill level and social occasion. Sure, it’s a place where serious golfers can buy a whole new wardrobe at Europe’s first-ever Trendy Golf Concept Store downstairs, and then use the best technology and Callaway clubs upstairs to play more than 300 of the world’s finest courses in ultra HD. But there is far more to it than that.

There are not many venues, let alone golf clubs, that have three shuffleboard tables, two bars and a riverside terrace with outdoor seating. There are perhaps even fewer serving Asian tapas and bespoke cocktails, with live DJ sets almost every night.

“The big thing for us is accessibility,” says Godfrey. “The hardest thing is making that step up from hitting a few balls on the driving range to playing a golf course with a hole which is 500 yards away. I think we kind of bridge that gap where people can come here for the first time, wearing whatever they want, using the latest Callaway clubs, and play a fun game that doesn’t demoralise them.”

“When people ask, ‘What is Pitch?’ this is the venue I want to send them to,” adds Ingham. “We’ve got a very golf-centric floor upstairs with 11 bays that can accommodate serious and social golfers. But then downstairs we’ve got an outdoor terrace and three shuffleboard tables, so we definitely tick a lot of boxes for the non-golfer as well.”

Ingham and Godfrey estimate that they have close to 1,000 members on the books now, as well as nine PGA coaches – including LIV presenter Rachel Drummond and former DP World Tour star Simon Khan – who operate across the five Pitch venues in Bishopsgate, Soho, Dublin, and now Canary Wharf and Manchester.

Though their own focus has shifted away from coaching, Ingham and Godfrey are actively working with brands such as Black British Golfers and the Muslim Golf Association to help get more people into the sport. They even run a women’s golf academy, in association with adidas, which has seen more than 500 beginners graduate from the programme in the last four years.

“You hear a lot about increasing inclusivity and diversity, but when you see what we’ve done to make that happen and bring people into the sport, it shows the value of what we can offer,” says Godfrey. “Take a brand like adidas, for example. They sponsor 100 women’s memberships a year at Pitch and within that, people get five practice hours and five lessons with our PGA pros. When we launched that in one of our campaigns, we had more than 1,000 women apply, which is just crazy.

“We also host several events with adidas each year now. There was one around the Olympics last year in Soho and we had 250 women walk through the door, with an average age of 27. Those kind of things really challenge that general perception around golf and are something we’re very keen to champion.”

With new openings to follow in Birmingham and Brighton before the year is out, there is now an appetite to expand the business outside the UK, with 16 sites already pending in Australia and three more in the southwest of America.

“The plan is to do 10 in America,” says Ingham, who is currently in talks with potential partners about taking the Pitch Golf concept to other European cities such as Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam and Edinburgh.

Godfrey has to stop him from saying too much, but it’s clear from speaking to both that they’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible.

“With the backing and investors we’ve got behind us, we do feel like we’re in a position where we can increase the scale,” adds Ingham excitedly. “Our international franchise has started really well and with the US on the table now, we do feel like there is an opportunity to build a genuine global brand that is mass scalable.

“The goal over the next three or four years is to use our 12 years’ experience and to educate sets of 20 partners who can then do four or five sites a year using our model. It’s still early days, but it is super-exciting to see where we might end up.”

A strong pitch!

Memberships start from £139 a month and include access to all four sites, as well as seven free guest passes per visit, one free lesson per month, and discounted deals on Golf Breaks via the Pitch app. Visitor bay rates start from £30 per hour. For more information, click here.