Sauce: Topgolf to be spun off, out of Callaway’s portfolio, owned
I don’t really know why, but hearing about the general suffering and decline of Topgolf makes me happy. I don’t really like or care for golf, and I’ve been to a Topgolf like twice; primarily because they were work team outings, and the pressure for the optics of being present outweighed my general ambivalence for golf, plus there was free food and drink, and it was on company time, so it beat being at work, working, but for the most part, I wasn’t impressed at all, and was just as happy to leave (early) as I was getting to imbibe on company-paid comestibles.
But really, I have no stake in Topgolf, and yet it still makes me feel smug satisfaction at hearing about their company’s struggles, bad enough to where Callaway the golf company, has expressed their intent to effectively boot them out of their portfolio, and leave them hanging as a standalone company, as opposed to being part of their family. Frankly, I didn’t know Callaway was big enough of a company to have a portfolio beyond golf clubs and apparel, but seeing as how 60% of the United States is white, I guess it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise.
I guess it’s because at the very root of things, I see Topgolf as a wholly unnecessary thing that the world doesn’t need, as well as tremendous wastes of space. I mean seriously, in the space of any Topgolf could be an entire subdivision of single-family homes. A moderately aesthetically pleasing condominium along with some small businesses and restaurants. Pretty much anything is more societally efficient than some gaudy monuments to the whitest activity in history than a giant ass field, with some 250 ft. poles and nets for people to whack golf balls around on.
Seeing a Topgolf anywhere tells me everything I need to know about a specific region, and typically wherever there’s a Topgolf, I generally know that the surrounding area is going to be a really kind of douchey, overly-white people vibe, and I probably wouldn’t enjoy myself at any surrounding restaurants or businesses within a few mile radius.
Needless to say, it brings me smug satisfaction to hear that they’re not doing as financially well as their investors hope they would be doing, because what a surprise, a business that primarily caters to a really niche, predominantly white community, would inevitably begin to decline once people realized how stupid it was to whack golf balls all day long, and there being little room for business evolution or diversity in services, other than overpriced food and booze.
I’m hoping for the day in which I’ll drive through the City of Atlanta again, and the Topgolf that’s in Upper West Midtown is closed down, and probably replaced with a CubeSmart. I don’t like CubeSmarts either, but frankly in a tale of two evils, they can at least be serviceable and useful to people of all walks of life, and not be just some niche douchey white guy thing like Topgolfs are.
