Review: Topgolf is an emblem of the 21st century, and also pretty fun

Tennis is my preferred sport for seeming like a Kenan-Flagler Business School student whose daddy has a country club membership. I’ve always considered golf a bore. But, deep in the land of interstates and strip malls, at the center of the suburban purgatory between Raleigh and Chapel Hill, I found a new version of golf.

The Durham location of Topgolf, which opened Friday, April 12, is the first in the Triangle and third in North Carolina. 

Topgolf is to golf what Instagram Reels is to TikTok: purists will object that it’s not the real thing, but it never claimed to be. And in my opinion, it’s better than the original.

It can also be a tad overwhelming. The place is jam-packed with TV screens and bars on all three floors. A waiter constantly tries to get you to buy food, and the 150-foot tall net that catches any wayward balls made me feel vaguely like I was in “The Hunger Games.”

A bay at Topgolf holds up to six people, and costs anywhere from $35 to $141 for a two hour session. Once you’re there, you select one of about a dozen games on a touch screen and try to drive some golf balls to get points based on where they go.

In my favorite of these game, “Angry Birds,” you try to knock down imagined versions of pigs and blocks on the screen. I felt like I was playing the game on my mom’s iPhone 4 in 2012 as I looked at the pig fortress projected on the screen.

I first hit the ball into the spot on the range that had been simulated by the TV. Then, eyes back on the screen to see if the all-knowing ball-tracking system awarded the shot points.

How do they do this? The technology behind Topgolf depends on every ball being implanted with an RFID chip. The American Civil Liberties Union, concerned more with the chips' use to surveil people rather than golf balls, describes the technology as “tiny computer chips connected to miniature antennas.”

The first ancestors of the RFID chip were used to shoot planes out of the sky in World War II and spy on Cold War adversaries.

But now, living in the broad, sunlit uplands of the 21st century, we can put this technology to peaceful use for the good of all mankind: tracking golf balls as they fly through the Durham skies in games only vaguely resembling golf.

Even with all the fancy screens and high-tech antennas, the “Toptracer” tracking system just seemed wrong a surprising amount of the time. I would hit a ball right into a target, look up at the screen and it didn’t seem to award me points!

"Why has Toptracer forsaken me!" I thought with righteous indignation.

Suddenly, I felt a bit queasy about the luxury of it all. Here I was, surrounded by friends and bright flashing TV screens and a representation of the idea of a golf-like competition, spending wastefully and feeling sorry for myself over lost points. At the same time, people on the other side of the world were dying from tuberculosis even though it is treatable and curable. How could I possibly feel so entitled and self-centered?

With all this contemplation of the injustices and excesses of the world, my friends and I felt like we needed a fix of something — that is, we paid $12.50 for 24 “injectable donut holes” along with syringes full of chocolate and Bavarian cream.

Suddenly, the real world from back in Chapel Hill intruded on my two-hour vacation — I got a GroupMe message from my RA claiming I had to join a Zoom meeting about checking out for the year. I joined the call and turned off my camera, half-listening as the RA blabbered and half-watching as the ball sailed wide right.

Just as I looked at a screen to know where to hit the ball, I apparently had to listen to the screen to rehash how to move out of my room.

If you’d like to have the wonderful experience of dividing your consciousness between five screens and one real world, you can find Topgolf wedged between I-40 and I-540 at the implausible address 4901 Topgolf Way.

But it’s the only building you’ll find on Topgolf Way — what they did to the other 48 blocks we’ll never know. You can also try to make use of the dozen bike racks there, which I assume are intended for people with a death wish who biked down the interstate only to accidentally wind up at Top Golf.

In short, what’s fun about Topgolf is what’s fun about 21st century American life — some of the most advanced technologies the world has ever seen are put to use to hang out and play silly little games and ensure a very comfortable and prosperous existence.

But Topgolf and the 21st century are both double-edged swords. You can’t escape how the digital world intrudes on the physical, such that it’s hard to tell which one is the “real” world at all.

@SatchelWalton

@dthlifestyle| lifestyle@dailytarheel.com