Why it exists
Finding a good room should not be this hard
The complaint was always the same one. Google Maps, Yelp and the rest are noisy, their reviews are gamed, and a serious local simulator sits below a bar with a screen in the corner and a better SEO budget. None of that is a shortage of information. It is a shortage of anyone willing to sort it.
An index that lists everyone cannot sort anything. It can only rank, and ranking is the part that gets gamed. So this is built the other way round: a person reads a venue against a written standard and decides. Most venues do not clear it. That is not a gap in the coverage — it is the whole of the work.
The standard is published in full, and it is the same standard whether a venue pays for anything or not. Read what it takes to be selected.
The evidence
How a fact gets onto a page
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01
It starts as research
Every venue enters the same way — as a candidate, found by research, carrying no status of any kind. Nobody applies, nobody is invited, and nothing is listed because someone asked.
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02
It is checked at the source
Listings are compiled from public sources and then checked against each business's own website. A fact taken from a venue's own pages is recorded as that venue's claim, dated and attributed to it, rather than presented as something we confirmed.
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03
Prose is not a fact
Bay counts, opening hours and prices are never read out of marketing copy. Where a page says "five bays" in a sentence, the sentence is kept as a quote and the field stays empty until the number comes from a booking system or from the operator.
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04
The quote stays off the page
The evidence behind a selection is kept so the record can answer who said this. It is not printed here. A check runs against the built site on every release to prove none of it arrived.
Who it is for
Written for people who would rather be told no.
Where the golf is incidental — a screen behind a bar, a launch monitor nobody calibrates — this guide will not help you find it, and that is deliberate rather than an oversight.
- Golfers who want practice and play they can rely on, not an evening out that happens to have a screen in it
- Coaches and instructors who need accurate data and a room with space to work in
- Players who notice the mats, the ceiling height, and whether anything is being looked after
- Operators who take their own room seriously and would like the difference to be visible
Where it stands
The guide today
- Selected venues
- 25
- Across 3 cities — Toronto and Tokyo and London. Every one chosen by a person.
- Cities checked, not selected
- 1
- Published openly as checked. Nothing in them has been through the standard yet, so nothing in them carries the mark.
- Advertising that moves selection
- None
- A paid listing keeps a venue's facts current. It cannot put a venue on a city page, and it cannot move one up.
Inclusion cannot be purchased.
- SelectedEditorial inclusion
- Independent, scarce, and decided by the guide alone. Never influenced by payment of any kind.
- VerifiedOperator-supported facts
- A selected venue keeps its facts, imagery and booking details current. A factual status, not an award.
Three separate things, shown separately, because a paid status must never be mistakeable for an editorial one.
Read the standard What this means for venues