Full Swing has teamed with Evenplay on a new Skill Strike gaming platform for its indoor golf simulators that gives users a chance to win real money in closest-to-the-pin competitions.
Full Swing
Full Swing, the official licensed golf simulator of the PGA Tour, has launched a first-of-its-kind, skill-based gaming platform called Skill Strike that delivers closest-to-the-pin competitions – and a chance to win real money – for golf simulator play.
Rather than competing against other golfers, however, the new feature, which can be used in home or commercial simulator locations, allows participants to pay an entry fee, take a swing, and potentially win money by outperforming their expected shot-making abilities. Essentially, players are competing against themselves and their algorithm-derived expected shot outcome, so it levels the playing field between scratch players and less-experienced golfers.
“Skill Strike is an unprecedented shift in skill-based gaming,” said Full Swing Chief Operating Officer Jason Fierro. “It essentially creates a real-time dynamic handicap for golfers of any skill level and allows them to win money so long as they perform above their personalized expected outcome.”
The Skill Strike platform is run by patented AI technology from Evenplay that analyzes real-time tracking data from Full Swing simulators and uses machine learning to calibrate each challenge to an individual’s skill level.
Target sizes and distances (yardages) automatically adjust on every attempt, with tiered payouts depending on how close a given shot lands to the hole. Players can win up to eight times their entry fee, which range from $3 to $20. There are also separate prizes available for holes-in-one.
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As for possible “sandbagging” in the world of indoor golf simulators, the technology looks at key swing indicators and can recognize if a user has dramatically changed shot to shot. In terms of establishing a baseline for performance, the AI can detect if swing mechanics are different from shot-to-shot and adjust the targets for subsequent shots in an accelerated fashion.
“We built our AI specifically to solve a problem that’s plagued golf gaming forever: how do you make it fair and fun for everyone?” said Evenplay co-founder and CEO Bryan O’Reilly, whose Las Vegas-based company is pioneering skill-based gaming through AI. “Full Swing’s precision tracking data gives us the perfect foundation to create truly personalized challenges.”
Full Swing is one of the leading simulator technology companies in the golf industry, with a presence in 3,000 commercial bays and partnerships with the PGA Tour as well as the indoor TGL league.
Full Swing
The Growing Golf Simulator Market
The rollout of Full Swing’s gamified technology comes at a time when the golf simulator market continues to expand rapidly.
More than 8.1 million Americans used golf simulators in 2024, according to the National Golf Foundation, a 31% increase over the previous year. Commercial simulator venues — including both national chains and independent operators — have also exploded in number, with at least 1,500 locations now operating nationwide, nearly triple the total from 2022.
Full Swing, which is recognized by the NGF as one of the top 100 businesses in the golf industry and is an official technology partner of the TGL indoor league, has simulators in approximately 3,000 bays at commercial venues.
“In recent weeks, we’ve given several of Full Swing’s commercial partners a sneak preview of the technology,” said Fierro. “All have been impressed by Skill Strike’s seamless integration into the simulator gameplay experience and believe it’s going to create a significant new revenue stream for their businesses, as it will increase the frequency of customer visits and also the time they spend onsite.”
Fierro added that additional integrations are on the way, including the ability to play against friends during simulator rounds and overlaying closest-to-the-pin challenges on famous par 3 holes from around the world.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikmatuszewski/2025/11/18/full-swing-unveils-gaming-platform-as-golf-sim-participation-surges/
