Oct 28, 2025 – 6.02pm
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The Shots sports bar in Watford, north-west of London, is not the first place one would look for global technological innovation. But in a private room at Shots last week, I played an artificial intelligence-enhanced pool game with Steve and Dave Jolliffe, the twins who pioneered an industry in this town near London.
There, 25 years ago, they opened their first Topgolf, a chain of “gamified” driving ranges where visitors can strike golf balls, drink and dine. By having big targets that were easy to hit and embedding microchips in balls to keep the scores, they made a difficult sport fun for beginners. “We came up with Topgolf because we weren’t very good golfers,” Steve Jolliffe told me.
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Financial Times