Pipestone Golf Builds Second Sim Facility

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Pipestone Golf broke ground on a second indoor simulator facility in Stevensville, Michigan yesterday. And the part that’s worth paying attention to isn’t the square footage or the number of sim bays or the target opening date (November, if you’re counting).

The part that matters is that this is their second one.

Pipestone Creek is a family-owned 18-hole course in Eau Claire, Michigan. They’re not a franchise. They’re not a national chain with a venture capital war chest. They’re a local course that decided indoor simulators weren’t a one-time experiment — they’re the future of their business model.

The new Stevensville facility will offer a private experience where golfers can play virtual courses on advanced simulators. “Allowing people a space where they can come in and not feel judged — they’re not losing golf balls, they’re not getting eaten by mosquitoes,” Dustin Lester, co-owner of Pipestone Golf, told WNDU. “Even in the summertime, but the wintertime is really where we are allowing an opportunity for people to enjoy this fantastic game a lot more than they could without these facilities.”

That quote hits on something that’s easy to overlook if you live in Florida or California. For courses in the Midwest, winter isn’t a season — it’s a revenue hole. From November through March, the greens are covered, the carts are parked, and the income stream dries up. A simulator facility turns that five-month gap into five months of membership fees, hourly bookings, and league play.

The Math Isn’t Complicated

The NGF says 8.1 million people used golf simulators in 2025, more than double the number from five years ago. Indoor simulator facilities are opening at a pace that would have been unthinkable in 2019. And the trend I’m watching closely is traditional golf courses — the ones with actual fairways and greens and real grass — deciding they need an indoor component to survive.

It’s not just Pipestone. Courses across the country are adding sim facilities, building out indoor practice areas, and retrofitting maintenance buildings into simulator bays. The economics are straightforward: a simulator bay can generate $50-100 per hour in revenue, runs year-round, and requires minimal staffing compared to maintaining 18 holes of bentgrass.

Pipestone’s approach is telling. They’re not trying to compete with the Five Irons and Topgolf of the world — the big experiential venues with Trackman simulators, full bars, and private event spaces. They’re offering something different: a private, judgment-free environment where golfers can work on their game without an audience. That’s the same positioning that has made so many small independent sim facilities successful. Golfers who are serious about improving don’t want the party atmosphere. They want to hit balls, look at data, and hit more balls.

The Family-Owned Advantage

Pipestone Creek is owned and operated by the same family that runs the course. That gives them something the franchises don’t have: a direct line to their existing customer base. Every golfer who plays Pipestone Creek’s 18 holes now knows there’s an indoor option coming. Every member who dreads the end of the season has a reason to keep paying.

The new Stevensville location will be Pipestone’s second indoor facility in the Benton Harbor area. They’re doubling down on a market they already know, which is the smartest move a small business can make. Expand within your footprint before you expand outside it. Serve the people who already trust you.

What It Means for Home Sim Owners

If you own a home simulator, the proliferation of commercial indoor facilities is good news. More people getting exposed to sim golf means more demand for sim-adjacent products, more software development, and more competition among manufacturers. Every time a commercial facility opens, a few of its customers go home and think “I should get one of these for my garage.”

And the more courses like Pipestone commit to indoor simulators, the more normal it becomes for golfers to train on sims in the winter and play on real grass in the summer. That’s the flywheel. That’s how an industry grows.

Pipestone is targeting a November opening for the Stevensville location. If you live in southwest Michigan and you’ve been waiting for a place to hit balls in January without driving to Kalamazoo, your options just expanded.

The family-owned golf course is not dying. It’s adapting. And it’s betting that indoor simulators are the way to survive the winter.