Hyperscapes Golf Club
In its global golf design business, Nicklaus Design has built courses just about everywhere.
Now comes the first virtual session.
Nicklaus Enterprises on Wednesday announced a partnership with a New York-based technology company to develop the first professionally designed championship golf course and members-only clubhouse in the metaverse.
Through its deal with technology startup, Hyperscapes Golf Club, Nicklaus Design will apply its traditional design philosophies to a modern virtual landscape, creating a one-of-a-kind course, playable for its members from anywhere in the world.
“The core of Nicklaus design has always been the artistry and knowledge of our designers and their understanding and respect for the traditions of golf history,” said Phil Cotton, CEO of Nicklaus Companies. “We are now bringing this unprecedented real-world experience into the virtual world.”
While virtual golf is nothing new — simulators have been around for years, and their presence in the market has been exploding — this new club is supposed to be a departure in both its design and the experience it offers. Unlike simulators, which serve digital doppelgängers for existing courses, Nicklaus-Hyperscapes will have an original layout that brings the attributes of an expertly crafted physical course to a unique and richly detailed virtual terrain, filled with photorealistic 3D scenery.
“This is truly an artistic and technical project,” said Gabor Tankovics, CEO and co-founder of Hyperscapes Golf Club. “I think of the designers involved as marble sculptors, taking the pristine terrain, with minimal intervention and thinking, How do I use that rock or that valley?”
What’s more, Tankovics said, rather than duplicating an existing tournament, the goal is to replicate the “private club experience”—not just in the shots and rhythms of the tour but also in the social interactions.
“Think about the promise of a simulated experience, where they say, ‘This is what playing Pebble is like,’ but that’s clearly not true,” says Tankovics. round. For me, this simulated experience is very frustrating. A lot of golf is about the blank spaces, the moments between shots. And that’s what’s particularly exciting: How do you fill in those spaces in between? “
A Hungarian-born, French-educated businessman, Tankovics got his start in golf more than a decade ago as general manager of Chambord Country Club, an eco-golf resort in France that stalled in development and never opened. Tankovics said that it was, in part, the bureaucratic difficulties of building a sports field that prompted him to consider the Metavirex golf project.
Recently, in New York, where he has lived and worked for the past decade, Tankovics said he saw a “significant reference” in a project called LinksDao, a crypto-funded golf club that has raised more than $10 million in NFT memberships. Sales, which you used to buy a physics course in scotland. The difference, Tankovics said, is that where LinksDao has built a community with the goal of getting a course into the real world, Hyperscapes is building entirely virtual courses, around which it plans to grow communities, fused through friendships, delicious talk, post-round cocktails, and more: weaving The club’s social, located in Metaverse.
But these are features that will be layered later. Other details about the Hyperscapes-Nicklaus Design project are also still being refined, including the virtual reality settings golfers will use to play the course.
Tankovic said the priority at the moment is to complete the course itself, which is expected to be open for play in the second half of 2024.
Like an exclusive club in the real world, Hyperscapes will sell a limited number of memberships, which will be a maximum of 300. Tankovics declined to say a price, but said the initiation fee would be on par with that of a “moderately priced” private club. Although he said that the use of cryptography is key to ensuring “secured membership in the blockchain,” traditional currency will also be accepted.
Early access to the club is now offered through the Founders Program which is limited to 30 memberships. Founding members will be given special access to follow the design process through virtual site visits allowing them to watch the course take shape.