Young entrepreneur driven by golf

By David Mullen

When Tommy Graunke decided to take a swing at his first business venture, he started from scratch. Downtown Dallas was lacking a topflight golf practice facility and Graunke “went for the green.”

Graunke, 28, is founder of Scratch Golf Club at 2111 Flora St., an exceptional indoor golf facility available to members 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Less than a year old, the 2,600 square foot studio has three state-of-the-art Trackman simulators, a practice putting green that runs at 11 on the Stimpmeter (a PGA tournament standard) and locker facilities all situated a seven-iron away from the heart of the AT&T Performing Arts Center.

Scratch Golf Club may be the best kept secret for avid golfers looking to raise their concentration level   while lowering their handicaps. It is a distraction-free experience. 

“I wanted players to be able to come in and feel like they had all the space in the world to be able to do everything that they needed to have the best indoor golf experience,” said Graunke, a native of golfing Mecca Scottsdale, Ariz.

Everything at Scratch Golf is tailored to the serious player looking to improve their game. As with many simulators, golfers can play many virtual golf courses, but this isn’t a Topgolf or arcade experience. 

Three video cameras provide multiple angles to measure swing and ball speed, contact point on the club face, distance and other depths. Slow motion replay allows golfers to analyze their swing or overanalyze their swing, which is par for the course for most players. 

“The slow-motion video is probably the biggest benefit to a player looking to improve their game,” Graunke said. “It also comes with coaching tools. If you’re working with a coach either here or elsewhere, you can make a recording of your video and send it to a coach or send it to yourself. It makes it a lot easier to work on a particular part of your swing.”

Instead of the out-of-round golf balls that are full of smiles found at most public driving ranges, Scratch Golf provides tournament quality Titleist Pro V1x RCT golf balls, engineered for radar-based launch monitors to provide the most accurate golf ball data.

“I also chose the Trackman as the simulator of choice because it’s the best one in the industry,” Graunke said. “There are a few others that are trying to compete with it, and they might have their nuanced advantages, but there is a reason why Trackman is the one on the PGA Tour. It has the best graphics of all simulators.” Graunke sited the simulation of Pebble Beach Golf Club on Trackman versus other simulators. “It gives you the best visual and the best data experience.” 

A Baylor graduate, Graunke said: “My sister went [to Baylor] two years ahead of me. I was looking for a Christian school with a good football team that was mid-sized.” Graunke graduated in entrepreneurship and has a background in branding, digital marketing and website development. “I grew up with my dad being a serial entrepreneur. He’s built up and sold businesses his entire life. I got into the idea early of what that entrepreneurship looks like and what it looks like to work for yourself.”

In 2010, Hank Haney Golf Center between McKinney Avenue and Central Expressway at Blackburn Street closed, leaving Uptown and downtown Dallas golfers without a nearby facility to practice. When Graunke moved to Dallas, he lived downtown but was challenged to find a golf practice facility to fit his schedule.

“The only way you get better at golf is to go and hit balls. And at that time, hitting before sunup or after sundown, there really wasn’t a great place to be able to do it. I saw a pretty big hole in the market. I thought if I bring in my skills into something that I’m interested in from an action standpoint, which is golf, I thought I could string together a business like this, and have it run better than anything else that I’ve seen.”

When entering Scratch Golf Club from the street level, golfers can choose ambient music from a touch screen activating a music library. A putting clock is on the left, followed by the three practice bays, each with a flat screen TV. “You can watch a golf tournament or whatever you want to,” Graunke said. Large lockers line the wall on the right. 

Like joining a country club, a membership fee and monthly dues are required. As opposed to a public range or party driven gaming facility, where drinking takes precedence over driving, “I’d rather have a more exclusive experience,” Graunke said. “Because it is membership only, all of the members have gotten to know each other.”  

A second Scratch Golf Club is due to open at the end of March in the Park Cities at 5401 W. Lovers Ln. near the Dallas North Tollway. More information is available at scratchgolfclub.com.

If practice makes perfect, then Tommy Graunke may have designed the perfect practice facility.