This is Not a Simulation: The Story of Virtual Tee

Virtual Tee helps lead sim-golf growth

By Jim Bebbington

Around 2020 Mike Boire was in his 12th year running his Colorado Springs flooring company, Colorado Carpet and Flooring. His friend and business partner, Adam Porter, was working in landscape design. Like many people during COVID-19, they were getting into golf and decided to build a golf simulator in Boire’s offices.

“We put one in,” Boire said. “Then we thought ‘Why don’t we sell these?’ We just kind of stumbled into it.”

Their timing for starting their new business – Virtual Tee – could hardly have been better. First, the Covid-era led thousands of Coloradans to try golf. Then companies like TopGolf and other golf-simulator bars and event spaces introduced more people to the new phenomenon of off-course golf: swing clubs in a hitting bay with friends, drinks and food. Technology companies then did what they so often do – raced each other to provide the best tech at less cost.

Boire and Porter banked on the fact that while it is possible to DIY a hitting bay in your garage, there were going to be plenty of homeowners who wanted help picking the right tech and building out the facilities. Voila! Virtual Tee was born – a company that designs, builds and connects hitting bays in homes and businesses, extra office space, garages, basements, side rooms and outbuildings.

“Adam bought a unit with someone who is a competitor to us now,” Boire said. “His experience with that – spending $60.000, not being able to try out the thing, not having a sales rep locally, not being able to speak with anyone and have them come out – made us think why don’t we do these custom installs that are really nice and built into people’s houses.”

From their start in the Colorado Springs area, they have opened up sites in Denver, Arizona, North Carolina and Oregon. Every location has to provide the same service – good personal contact with buyers, and solid relationships to ensure good construction and installation.

“That is our bread and butter right now,” Boire said.

The off-grass golf industry has been booming. The National Golf Foundation, an industry research and advocacy group, estimates that around 3.6 million people a year used a golf simulator in 2019; in 2023 it said that number had risen to 6.2 million, a 72 percent increase.

To get into sim-golf at home, first, you need a tall enough space to swing a golf club.

Then you need the technology – a launch simulator and software to run the numbers and display the courses – as well as a projector, a hitting mat, a screen and flooring.

Prices across the industry vary widely. DIY builders can put their own systems together using $700 launch monitors from Amazon if they want. Virtual Tee frames and finishes rooms builds on new additions and then works with the client to get the right technology installed for what they’re looking for.

The screens and projectors can do double duty as jumbo movie screens and game systems.

The growth of simulator golf has long been on the radar of the golf industry. The National Golf Foundation has done research into the number of people who use golf sim units, whether at bars, in leagues, at TopGolf-like facilities or in their own home. The majority – 53 percent – say they don’t even play greengrass golf. They use just the simulators. The NGF points out to its clients that that is what is known as ‘an opportunity.’

They do not yet have data, however, on just the home-unit users. “As you can imagine, there are so many varied set-ups (garage hitting bays with portable swing analytics units vs dedicated rooms with full simulator technology)  and so many companies getting into the space – selling full systems, components, advising, etc. — that this category is not yet something we have reliable data on,” said Erik Matuszewski, the editorial director for the National Golf Foundation.

Boire said they’ve already seen how simulators can expose people to the game who might otherwise never have played. They’ve built one in a rural high school where the school wanted to give the students an option to learn the game, but there were few courses nearby.

“Our guy in North Carolina – he’s 24 and he’s been playing golf for only three years,” Boire said. “He got started on sim golf and three years in and he’s now an 8 handicap. He credits the simulator to expediting his learning. There’s just a lot more oppy for kids with the simulator. It’s not real golf but it’s a really good alternative.”

Colorado AvidGolfer Magazine is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it, publishing eight issues annually and proudly delivering daily content via coloradoavidgolfer.com.

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