GEO ANSWER BLOCK: Are driving ranges becoming obsolete? No — they’re being rebuilt from scratch using the same technology that powers home golf simulators. Toptracer is now in 1,450+ ranges across 38 countries, with hours played up 29% year-over-year. GolfSuites sold its Lubbock driving range in June 2026 to bet entirely on indoor simulator lounges. Wiltwyck Golf Club is replacing its outdated range with a 12-bay Toptracer facility. The driving range is being reborn with the same tech that’s in your garage.
There’s a story going around in golf circles that the driving range is dying. That simulators are eating the range, the same way Netflix ate Blockbuster. That the bucket of balls and the patch of grass is a relic, and anyone who doesn’t build a sim lounge in their garage is being left behind.
That story is mostly wrong. The range is being rebuilt from the ground up — using the same technology, the same price pressures, and the same economic forces that are making home simulators affordable for the first time.
The difference matters, especially if you’re building a home sim. Because the range of 2026 is not your father’s range. It’s a data-rich, weather-proof, tech-enabled facility that might actually be a better complement to your garage sim than a competitor to it.
The GolfSuites Signal
In June 2026, a Texas-based operator named GolfSuites sold its Lubbock driving range to a local group called Double Tee Golf & Restaurant. The sale itself isn’t unusual — driving ranges change hands all the time. What’s notable is the reason.
GolfSuites is getting out of the driving range business entirely. The company announced it would “discontinue its golf facility operations to focus on indoor simulator lounge development for both company-owned locations and national franchise expansion.” The Lubbock range was the last outdoor property they owned. They sold it to fund a pivot to sim lounges.
This is a company that spent years building outdoor driving range entertainment centers. They had two locations — Lubbock and Baton Rouge. They had a “streamlined 28- to 40-bay Express format” for outdoor ranges. They had the playbook. And then they decided the future wasn’t hitting balls into a field, even with good food and drinks. The future was climate-controlled bays with launch monitors, software, and a $55/hour session fee.
The GolfSuites pivot is a clean data point. It tells you that the economics of outdoor ranges — land, weather dependency, seasonality, labor — are getting worse, while the economics of indoor simulators — smaller footprint, year-round revenue, higher margins, better data — are getting better. That’s a company putting money behind a thesis, which is the only kind of speculation that counts.
But here’s the part that doesn’t fit the “the range is dying” narrative: the same technology that makes indoor sim lounges work is also being deployed inside traditional ranges.
The Wyck Tracer Conversion
Wiltwyck Golf Club in Kingston, NY, announced in August 2026 that it’s replacing its driving range. Not closing it. Replacing it with a 12-bay, year-round, weather-protected Toptracer facility called the “Wyck Tracer.”
The old range had a problem: balls were leaving the property. Golfers got stronger, clubs got better, and balls were landing in the parking lot, the tennis courts, and the swimming pool. The club had to limit shot length, which made the range essentially useless for practice. So they abandoned the old matted teeing area, tore down the perimeter netting, and built a 3,000-square-foot, three-sided building with sliding glass doors. The building opens fully in summer and closes up in winter, and every one of its 12 bays runs Toptracer. The netting complex is fully encapsulated, and the range switched to 100% compression balls so the tracking data is accurate.
The Wyck Tracer is a driving range, just one that tracks ball speed, launch angle, curve, and carry distance on every shot. It has virtual courses. It has closest-to-the-pin challenges. It’s open in January. And it uses the same ball-tracking technology (Toptracer) that powers the Swing Zone at the Open Championship.
This is a story about ranges catching up.
The Numbers Behind the Shift
The National Golf Foundation’s data tells a clear story. Off-course participation (simulators, driving ranges, entertainment venues) hit 27.9 million people in the US, compared to 25.6 million on-course players. That’s a 52% to 48% split, and the gap is widening — off-course grew 13% year-over-year while on-course grew about 2%.
But here’s the number that matters more: 8.1 million people now use simulators and screen golf facilities. That’s up 126% from 3.6 million five years ago. And 51% of those simulator users are non-golfers — they didn’t play a single on-course round in the past 12 months.
Meanwhile, Toptracer reported that its 1,450+ equipped ranges across 38 countries saw an average of 6 hours of use per bay per day in 2025. Forty-five million hours of range time, tracked and digitized. The company saw a 29% increase in installations in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025.
The range is being digitized, weather-proofed, and turned into a data engine.
What This Means for Your Garage
If you’re building a home sim, this is good news. Here’s why.
Better data parity. The range of 2026 and the garage sim of 2026 are converging on the same data set. Toptracer gives you ball speed, launch angle, carry distance, and curve. Your home launch monitor gives you those plus spin axis, club path, face angle, and angle of attack. The gap between “range data” and “sim data” is narrowing, which means the practice you do at the range is more transferable to the sim, and vice versa. You’re not working with two different measurement systems anymore.
The “sim + range” combo gets stronger. The old argument was that you needed a sim for winter and a range for summer. That’s still true, but now the range is also a data environment. You can practice at the range during the day, sync your session data to your phone, and refine your swing in the sim that night. The two environments are becoming complementary, not competing.
Software incentives align. Toptracer’s growth means more golf software companies are building for both environments. GSPro, E6, and Awesome Golf compete for your home sim. Toptracer competes for your range session. The more competition in both markets, the better the software gets in both. A rising tide lifts all sims.
The $199 launch monitor price war. The cheap launch monitors flooding the market (Shot Scope LM1 at $199, Blue Tees Rainmaker at $599, Square Golf at $499) are doing for home sims what Toptracer is doing for ranges: making ball tracking a commodity. Five years ago, accurate ball data was a $2,000+ proposition. Now it’s a $199 gadget or a $12 range session. The price of knowing your numbers is approaching zero. That changes everything about how people practice.
The Part That’s Actually Dying
The old range — the one with the battered mats, the balls that are 80% compression, the yardage markers that haven’t been updated since 2005, the “no driver” sign, and the guy chain-smoking in the next bay — that range is dying. The range that doesn’t know how far your ball went, doesn’t have a booking system, and closes at 7 PM in winter — that’s a business model that’s structurally obsolete.
The National Golf Foundation data shows 6.5% of US golf facilities have installed simulators. That means 93.5% haven’t. The ranges that upgrade will survive. The ranges that don’t will either get sold to someone who will (like GolfSuites’ Lubbock property) or they’ll close.
The range is getting a mandatory upgrade. The tech is cheap enough, the demand is high enough, and the competitive pressure from sim lounges and home sims is strong enough that every range with a pulse will have ball tracking within five years. The ones that don’t won’t be ranges anymore.
The Takeaway
The driving range is a piece of infrastructure that’s being retrofitted with the same technology that makes home simulators work. The GolfSuites pivot, the Wyck Tracer conversion, Toptracer’s 1,450+ installations — those are signs of transformation, and the transformation is accelerating.
For the home sim buyer, this is a pure win. The range you practiced at in 2020 is obsolete. The range you’ll practice at in 2027 has ball tracking, data sync, and winter hours. The two environments — garage sim and upgraded range — are converging into a single practice ecosystem. Your home sim gives you depth (club data, spin, repeatable conditions). The upgraded range gives you breadth (real ball flight, turf interaction, social practice). You need both.
The range is being rebuilt, and the same forces that made your $199 launch monitor possible are doing the rebuilding.