A New PLATFORM for Golf.

By Thomas Hackett

No matter the industry, there must always come a moment when improving on what already exists is no longer enough. That’s when, instead, we collectively must start redefining it.

That’s been the goal at PLATFORM Golf from the outset. We didn’t set out to make the best golf simulator. We wanted to revolutionise what simulated golf can be. Mimicking the experience of playing on a real golf course can only get you so far… Bring the outdoors, in. What we wanted is that realism, and in golf it’s the little nuances that really make a difference. Our most advanced version, TrueSlope™, is named so because it offers a true representation of the game.

To be clear, the world of indoor golf has never lacked ambition. For decades, so many incredible brands have made massive advances in accuracy, tracking, realism and everywhere else. Graphics have come on leaps and bounds and we’ve brought this all together. We mastered the art of replicating real course conditions, to the extent that golfers can know the world’s most famous layouts inside out before they ever set foot on them.

But there have always been gaps in the experience that felt like they doomed the simulator to perennially fall short of outdoor golf. Putting is perhaps the most obvious example – just look back at the debut season of TGL earlier in 2025. Without the state- of-the-art technology that ensured every putt demanded as much planning and precision as a real PGA Tour-standard green, the pros would have breezed through it and rendered the last stage of each hole a formality.

That idea isn’t dissimilar to the ethos at the centre of PLATFORM Golf. It’s an example of how simulator golf had a river to cross to truly become a comparable experience to the ‘real’ thing. Soon enough, we worked out how to build a bridge over that river. And then we built it.

Of course, I’m oversimplifying things in a way. Yes, our platforms tilt to replicate the contours that make any good green interesting to play on. They can also replicate the uneven lies that you are likely to face every time you walk up to your tee shot on an outdoor course. And that has so many advantages: if you’re a coach teaching a complete beginner how to play golf, for example, how do you expect them to be truly prepared for the real thing if every putt breaks the same way? And then, at the exact opposite end of the spectrum, what does a Tour pro do when they need to sharpen their game before a big event, but the weather just isn’t co-operating? How do the top coaches make the best better?

Brad Faxon knows a thing or two about winning on the PGA Tour, so it was a real honour to hear him vindicate PLATFORM’s importance on the training ground: he mentioned “Platform Golf has solved what’s probably most lacking in simulator golf, where you couldn’t actually finish the hole properly by putting out. So, now you can get Platform Golf simulators to make a putt feel like it’s the real thing and give the proper closure to a hole, even in indoor simulator golf.”

Another putting mastermind is Stephen Sweeney, who has coached star players at the very highest level. “The ability to teach on realistic, ever-changing slopes in a simulated environment is something we’ve been waiting for,” he said, “This has set a new standard in golf training.”

It’s one thing to be proud of the product you’ve built – and we were. But knowing that the people at the very top of their field see it as a game-changer? That they want to work with us as ambassadors due to the technology, not just another pay day, that’s when you know you have something special.

But there is much more to it than what a PLATFORM Golf unit can do in a physical sense. The future of golf is digital, after all. Tracking and monitoring the intricacies of a top golfer’s game has been a key part of their development for a long time, and there’s no reason why players of any skill level shouldn’t have the opportunity to benefit from the same data. We knew that the hardware we had, while very special, needed to be compatible with the very best in golf simulator technology if it was going to fulfil its potential.

Off-course play is growing exponentially. More people are learning, training and competing indoors than ever before, but they’re looking for more than games. They want improvement. They want realism. Above all they want to trust that the hours they put in on the simulator will translate to real, tangible benefits on the course. We want to give them that trust.

Theoretically, if a club pro stepped onto a TrueSlope™ Platform to play a virtual replica of their course, would they make a putt they’d made a thousand times before on the real thing? Our goal is nothing short of the green behaving exactly how they knew it would. Only then can we say for sure that we did what we set out to do – not just mimic the game beneath a roof, but bring the soul of the sport indoors

Thomas Hackett is co-founder of PLATFORM Golf