Chip Golf’s Telford Bet Now Runs in Two Towns

Telford’s Chip Golf Studio still runs two Trackman bays at Ketley Business Park, and the same format opened in Bedford in late August 2026. PGA professional Jaime Brittain, from Wellington, opened the Ketley unit on 1 September 2025 as Telford’s first indoor golf studio. The second site is the part of the story the launch copy could not show.

He did not put the rooms under a golf club. He put them in a business park, left them mostly unmanned, and asked golfers to book a bay the way they book a squash court.

Two Bays in a Ketley Business Park

Chip Golf Studio sits at Unit 9, Ketley Business Park, Telford, TF1 5JD. Golf Swing Systems fitted two indoor Trackman bays, and Brittain, then 35, said the fit-out took about two months. Drinks are on site. Coaching is on site. Sessions are booked ahead, through chipgolf.co.uk or Instagram at @chipgolfstudio.

At opening he sold a simple gap. Telford had courses. It did not have a dedicated indoor studio. Wet weeks still kill a range session. A simulator does not care about rain, and it does not care if the round is at St Andrews or on a made-up par 3 with a moving target.

It is an honour to launch Telford’s first indoor golf studio and I’m really excited about the opportunity it brings to people here. I can’t believe there hasn’t been anything created like this in Telford before, as it’s perfect to practice in different scenarios, and of course, when the weather outside is very wet, it means you can still get on the golf course.

Jaime Brittain, PGA professional, Chip Golf Studio launch

He also pointed at touring players and at Robbie Williams as people who keep a swing alive on the road with simulation. The pitch in Ketley was narrower than that celebrity line. It was a local pro asking club golfers, beginners and children from age five to walk into an industrial unit and hit a real ball into a screen.

Wrekin Golf Club Never Built a Driving Range

Brittain is a member of Wrekin Golf Club, the 18-hole parkland course under the Wrekin that opened in 1905. It plays as a par 66 at 5,570 yards. Visitors praise the views and the greens. They do not praise a range, because the club does not run one.

A Telford and Wrekin playing-pitch assessment counted 56 dedicated driving-range bays in the borough, all of them at three other sites: Horsehay Village Golf Club, Aqualate Golf Club and The Shropshire Golf Centre. Those bays are sports-lit and pay-and-play. They are still outdoor cages. Wrekin is listed as a standard 18-hole course with a practice area and a putting green, not as a range operator. Visitor reviews on Golfshake score the club’s practice kit at 3.8, the weakest mark on that card.

THE PRACTICE OPTIONS AROUND TELFORD

That is the hole the Ketley unit fills. A Wrekin member who wants a measured driver session in January had to drive to a lit range or skip it. Chip Golf put the same job in a dry bay, with club and ball numbers on the screen, a short walk from Wellington.

An Unmanned Studio From 6am to Midnight

The commercial trick is not the screen. It is the hours. In an August 2025 sit-down with installer Golf Swing Systems, Brittain said the studio would be unmanned in the main, with golfers using a card to get in. The live site still lists the Ketley rooms as open seven days, 06:00 to 24:00, an 18-hour window, and it still tells visitors to book first.

HOW THE KETLEY UNIT IS SET UP

• Access: Booked sessions, card entry, no full-time front desk.
• Hours: 6am to midnight, seven days a week.
• Price floor: The operator advertises memberships from £59 a month, plus guest play and a corporate slot of one booking a day for up to four players, Monday to Friday.
• Who can hit: Anyone aged five and over.
• Contact: 07883 748061, with bookings through the Chip Golf site.

A two-bay room cannot copy a London golf bar. Those city clubs stack eight or twelve bays, a lounge and a kitchen. Ketley is a teaching studio that happens to stay open through the night shift. Membership is optional. Walk-up guests are still told to book so the two screens are not double-sold.

The same thin staff model is what makes a business-park unit viable. Rent is on an industrial estate. The software logs players onto the Trackman system. Brittain’s coaching diary, not a bar till, is the other engine.

What a Trackman iO Session Records

Both Chip sites use Trackman iO, the indoor, ceiling-hung unit rather than a floor unit on a tripod. Golf Swing Systems, which fitted Telford, lists the ceiling-mounted Trackman iO from £12,594. The head is 333 by 333 by 107 mm and 3.9 kg. It mixes radar, infrared and high-speed cameras, and it does not need extra lighting or markers on the ball.

At launch Brittain talked about more than 500 courses, including the Old Course at St Andrews, Lofoten Links and Evian Resort Golf Club. Trackman’s own performance-studio guide now puts the library at more than 550 courses, with new layouts added through the year. The Ketley launch copy also mentioned more than 80 on-screen games. That is how a five-year-old and a single-figure player can share the same bay without sharing the same task.

WHAT THE iO PUTS ON SCREEN

• Ball flight: Speed, launch angle, launch direction, spin rate, spin axis, curve, height and hang time.
• Landing: Carry, total distance, side, landing angle.
• Club: Dynamic loft, face angle, impact height and impact offset, with extra club-path numbers listed as coming on the unit.
• Play modes: Full course play, practice, and the short-game and putting tools built into Trackman Performance Studio.

The coaching offer sits on top of that feed. Chip Golf’s Ketley page now flags video analysis and, for 2026, 3D motion analysis. Brittain still sells remote coaching as well. His Skillest profile lists him as founder of Chip Golf Studio and The Swing Plate, with 688 online lessons on Skillest, a 4.99 rating from 199 reviews, and more than 14 years as a PGA coach. Fresh lesson notes on that page run through 16 September 2026, so the online book did not die when the bays opened.

Golfers who have used the Ketley rooms talk about them as a place to take a lesson and then stay on for a measured range session, not as a night out with a cocktail list. That is the product. Two bays. Data. A pro who already had a teaching brand before he signed a unit lease.

Chip Golf Bedford Copies the Telford Template

In June 2026 Brittain sat down again with Golf Swing Systems to talk through a year of running a commercial Trackman studio. He described birthday parties, corporate hire and a summer pilot that would let juniors and non-golfers play free one day a week. He also said three more studios were already in the works, “franchises of what I’ve done.”

Late August 2026 put one of those follow-on rooms on the map. A Bedford listings account posted that Chip Golf was opening at Rushey Ford Business Park, with a launch event on 31 August 2026 from 12pm to 6pm and official opening that week. The spec is a carbon copy: two Trackman iO bays, self-service access, pay-and-play or membership, family games as well as course play. Hours there are listed as 5am to midnight, seven days. Chip Golf’s Telford site already lists Chip Golf Bedford under “Our Locations,” and the Bedford handle is @chipgolfbedford.

THE CHIP GOLF TIMELINE

1. March 2020: Brittain turns a lockdown idea into The Swing Plate, a steel base for alignment sticks.
2. August 2025: Golf Swing Systems finishes the Ketley build; Brittain says the studio will run mainly unmanned.
3. 1 September 2025: Chip Golf Studio opens at Unit 9, Ketley Business Park, with two Trackman bays.
4. June 2026: He tells the installer that three more studios are in the works and talks up junior days and corporate hire.
5. 31 August 2026: Chip Golf Bedford holds a launch day at Rushey Ford Business Park on the same two-bay, self-service plan.

The replica is the evidence. If Ketley had been a hobby that sat empty after the opening weekend, there would be no second industrial unit with the same sensors in the ceiling. Bedford’s first visitors, in the town posts around opening, described mixed groups of adults and children. That matches the Telford age rule and the games library. It does not match a city golf bar that needs a Friday-night queue to pay the rent.

Other market towns are making the same hardware bet with different owners. Fox Golf has said it will open three Trackman bays in Loughborough in November 2026. The Chip Golf wrinkle is tighter: two bays, a PGA teaching brand, card access, and a business park rather than a high-street bar.

Why Chip Golf Started With a Training Aid

The Ketley lease is not Brittain’s first product. During the 2020 lockdown he built The Swing Plate training aid, a UK-made steel base that holds alignment sticks on any surface, including mats and indoor floors where you cannot push a stick into the ground. The company number on the site is 12577084. DP World and PGA Tour coach Liam James has called it portable and versatile. Challenge Tour and DP World Tour coach Michael Welch has said it belongs in a golfer’s bag. JCB Golf and Country Club head professional John Howells has used it as a multi-drill tool.

The Swing Plate is an invaluable tool for every level of golfer. It is both portable and versatile, with many different uses. It’s in my coaching bag wherever I am in the world.

Liam James, DP World and PGA Tour coach, The Swing Plate

That gadget is the through-line. Brittain already sold practice to people who could not get to a range. The simulator studio is the same idea with a radar in the ceiling. Online lessons on Skillest, a physical aid in a golf bag, and two bays in Ketley are one teaching business with three doors. Bedford is a fourth door on the same key.

The wager is still small in square footage. Four screens across two towns will not move national participation numbers. It does answer the question the September 2025 launch left open: whether Telford would book an unmanned Trackman room once the novelty wore off. The Ketley unit still posts those 6am to midnight hours. The brand now prints a second address.