Urban Golf is something I’ve been wanting to try for a while now and today was the day!

You play in a dark room or bay by hitting balls off a driving range style mat. The balls hit a kind of curtain which registers the balls speed, trajectory and presumably (?) spin. Each bay and simulator costs £40/hr which is pretty good considering five people can play.

The system itself seemed surprisingly accurate. I don’t have the experience to judge exactly how well I was hitting with a driver or long irons but short irons seemed quite accurate. If you hit a bad shot the simulator definitely shows you just how bad! Putting seemed to be the weak point for Urban Golf. I couldn’t work out exactly where the ball should be placed before hitting it, judging distance was particularly difficult and sometimes a delicate putt wouldn’t seem to register at all (though the next bay along didn’t seem to suffer from this).

It’s good fun which loads of golf courses to play and there are a lot of game modes, too. The best one we played involved splitting into teams. Each team member hits a shot and the best shot is then selected, then each player hits from that position. It speeds things up and means that non-golfers don’t get left behind.

All in all I’d say it’s worth the money, particularly in winter when it’s cold outside. Saying that, I was boiling!