Toptracer and Rovio Entertainment have teamed up to bring more fun to driving ranges across Australia and the world. Coming September 30, a brand-new Angry Birds game mode will be available to golfers, at more than 1,000 Toptracer-enabled facilities.

Oskar Asgard, a Senior Manager at Toptracer, spoke with Australian Golf Digest about the idea behind the partnership.

“For me, personally, the fact that my 6-year-old son is more excited about this than I am says a lot,” Asgard said. “Since having kids, with all the stuff there is to occupy them today, from screens to activities, I can struggle at times to see how golf would naturally become part of their lives, and that kind of saddens me. If this can be a small piece of the puzzle to introduce them to the best game there is, then I love the sound of that.”

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Photo courtesy of Toptracer

Using the company’s ball-tracing technology, golfers will soon be able to knock down virtual buildings and take on a range of different challenges, teaming up with the characters from Angry Birds.

For those golfers unaware, Angry Birds was originally a mobile game launched by Rovio Entertainment. The company publishes games that have been downloaded more than 5 billion times. Since releasing Angry Birds in 2009, the company has since produced the Angry Birds movie in 2016, a sequel in 2019 along with an animated series.

“When Toptracer began the quest of gamifying the driving range 10-plus years ago it was all about making it more enjoyable to go to the range,” Asgard said. “The question was “could we make it rewarding enough for you to want to hit one extra bucket of balls. The results since will show that we have.”

The Angry Birds game is just one of the ways in which Toptracer has become synonymous with golf in recent years. Some readers may have played an Angry Birds game at a TopGolf location, also powered by Toptracer’s technology.

Tuesday’s announcement will see a brand-new game available at more than 1,000 driving ranges around the world including Aussie venues fitted with Toptracer Range technology like Swing Factory Terrey Hills (Sydney) and Morack Public Golf (Melbourne).

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Photo courtesy of Toptracer

“One of the coolest aspects of bringing a game like Angry Birds to Toptracer ranges is that it’s the first time we connect a world-renowned gaming franchise with a normal driving range. Whether that’s an 18-bay range in Scotland or a 500-plus-bay range in Tokyo.”

Did you know that more than 120 million shots are hit at a Toptracer driving range during an average week? Soon, some of those shots will result in characters like Red, Chuck, and Bomb being sent through the air in a mission to get points and climb leaderboards.

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Photo courtesy of Toptracer

“An aspect of golf that connects nearly all of us is that we probably got introduced to the game at the driving range,” Asgard said.

“That first shot hit out of the middle of face, that got us caught for life. I truly believe that making the driving range a more fun and engaging place to spend time, whether you play off scratch or are a junior just picking up the game, will be instrumental for the future of golf.”