About a sand wedge’s distance above the ground, a black drone buzzes. Below it, from a string, a blue box hangs. The drone and box lower until the box rests on the fairway, and a man runs up and empties its contents. Eight aluminum bottles of Bud Light and two glass bottles of Stella Artois.
“This is the drone bringing our drinks,” a man says during the video shared on Instagram this weekend. “You got to be kidding me.”
Nope.
It doesn’t bring just beer, either.
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About a sand wedge’s distance above the ground, a black drone buzzes again. Below it this time, from a string, a paper bag hangs. The drone and bag lower, a man runs up to it and waves, then unhooks and grabs the bag before it touches the fairway below.
“How they bring out snacks at #THEGROVEXXIII,” former tennis star Caroline Wozniacki wrote on the video she shared on Instagram.
He was Michael “Air” Jordan. Not Michael “Beer Cart” Jordan. Not Michael “Hot Dog at the Turn” Jordan. At Jordan’s new The Grove XXIII golf course in Hobe Sound, Fla., as the videos can attest, beer and snacks fly in, much as Jordan once did on the basketball floor.
“The course was unbelievable,” NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin told USA Today earlier this year. “There’s only 75 members. Hopefully to be 76 here in the next few weeks, so it was really an honor to be invited and be a member at such an exclusive place. It’s really new, just a few months old. It’s going to be fun to do for the next 20 to 30 years, as long as I’m able to play.”
Officially opened last fall, the course, of course, is more than food and drink drones. Its futuristic clubhouse was designed by NBWW architectural firm, and its 15,000 square feet consist of men’s and women’s locker rooms, lounging areas, a pro shop and dining room. “We wanted the precision and flow of the golf swing as well as Michael’s athleticism and corporate finesse to inspire the contemporary form and detailing of the clubhouse architecture,” said NBWW’s Don Wolfe on the company’s website. The golf carts, reportedly, go up to 35 mph, and the caddies, as Wozniacki video showed, use scooters. The course, according to Golf Digest, has a double-helix routing, meaning it can be played in four nine-hole combinations or three- to six-hole loops.
The Grove XXIII, according to Rickie Fowler, already has a nickname, too.
“Slaughterhouse 23,” Fowler said on a recent episode of GOLF’s Subpar. It’s Jordan’s course. So it’s a course for Jordan.
“The shorter you hit it, the wider it is,” Fowler said. “So the tees and pins are done every day, so the golf course can play as long as you want, but they set the back tees at roughly 7,000 or 7,100 yards, and MJ just plays the back tees.
“It’s a golf course where he can basically hit driver on all of the par-4s and par-5s, and if I wanna hit driver, I have to kind of put it into a little bit tighter of a spot,” Fowler continued. “I can obviously play back if I want, but that obviously becomes a little bit of a disadvantage, especially if it’s a hole where he’s getting a stroke on. He’s great with wedges in his hands, around the greens, he’ll putt anyone straight up. If I’m giving him a shot, I can’t then play him from the same spot he is when he’s laying zero.”