GOLF+ VR Open at Birkdale — Win St Andrews

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GOLF+ just launched its first VR Open, and the grand prize is worth paying attention to.

The tournament tees off July 16 — the same day The 154th Open Championship starts at Royal Birkdale — and runs through July 19. Players compete on GOLF+’s new Royal Birkdale course DLC ($11.99 or included in the GOLF+ Pass subscription at $9.99/month). The winner gets a VIP trip for two to the 155th Open at St. Andrews in 2027, including hospitality passes and the chance to play the Old Course.

That’s a real prize. A trip to the home of golf for the Open Championship, with a round on the Old Course the next day. GOLF+ isn’t throwing branded merch at this thing. They’re buying a winner a bucket-list experience.

What’s Actually Happening

GOLF+ is a VR golf game on Meta Quest headsets. You use your Quest controllers as a golf club — swing like you would in real life, and the game tracks your movement. It’s been around since 2021 and has built a legit community of players who treat it as more than a casual game. The GOLF+ Tour runs regular competitions with leaderboards and prizes.

This is their first tournament timed to coincide with a major championship. Royal Birkdale is the new course addition, and it comes with grandstands, spectator areas, and Open Championship branding built into the VR environment. It’s not a generic course reskin — they built the championship atmosphere into the experience.

The entry mechanic is smart: every player who completes a VR Open round gets entered into the grand prize drawing. You don’t have to be the best player to win. You just have to play. That’s going to drive participation numbers through the floor compared to a skill-only tournament.

Why This Matters for the Sim Industry

This is the first time a VR golf platform has aligned a tournament with a real major championship and offered a prize that competes with what traditional sim tournaments offer. GOLF+ has been growing steadily — they announced Royal Birkdale as a course addition, they’ve got over a dozen real course replications, and they’re coming to Steam soon (currently Quest-exclusive).

The VR golf audience and the home sim audience overlap more than most people think. GOLF+ runs on a $300 Quest headset. That’s a fraction of what a home simulator costs. But the players are the same — people who want to play golf when they can’t get to a course. A VR Open during Open Championship week normalizes that format in a way that benefits every sim platform.

For the R&A, this is a smart partnership. The Open Championship is one of golf’s most protected brands. Letting a VR platform run an officially timed event with “Open” in the name and a St. Andrews prize is a signal that the R&A sees VR and sim golf as part of the sport’s future, not a competing format.

What This Means for VR Golf

The barrier to entry for VR golf is already low compared to traditional sims. A Meta Quest 3S runs $299. GOLF+ is $29.99. Royal Birkdale DLC is $11.99. That’s roughly $340 total for an experience that lets you play a championship course from your living room.

The catch is that VR golf isn’t the same as sim golf. You’re swinging a controller, not a real club. The feedback is different. The data you get is game data, not launch monitor data. GOLF+ is working on integrating with real launch monitors — the MLM2Pro is on their confirmed compatibility list — but the core experience is still controller-based.

That said, the gap is narrowing. GOLF+ on Steam (coming soon) opens up higher-resolution headsets and more PC VR options. And if the VR Open draws real participation numbers — thousands of players, not hundreds — it proves there’s a market for this format that goes beyond casual gaming.

The Bottom Line

GOLF+ is running the first VR Open that feels like a real tournament. The Royal Birkdale course is available now. The competition runs July 16-19. Every player who completes a round enters the drawing for a St. Andrews trip.

For $340 all-in (Quest + game + course), that’s the cheapest entry into an Open Championship-adjacent golf experience you’ll find this week. And if you already own a Quest headset and GOLF+, it costs you nothing to enter — you just need the Royal Birkdale course.

Whether VR golf ever replaces real sim golf is a debate for another day. But this week, GOLF+ is offering something no traditional sim platform can match: a championship-level tournament experience for the cost of a few rounds at the local sim bay.

Read our full coverage of the Toptracer Open Championship activation for how the real-world technology presence compares. And if you’re curious about how GOLF+ fits into the broader sim ecosystem, see our GOLF+ Sim announcement coverage.