Golf Gym – driveclubs.com Launches

None of the services come cheap. Membership, which is limited to 500 people to ensure a rarefied air, runs $5,000 a year. Personal trainers cost $100 to $150 an hour, while golf instructors run $125 to $350 an hour. The entire golf center can be rented out — as it has been already, often by financial-services firms for corporate events — to the tune of $6,000 to $7,000 an evening.

Some might call that pricey, even by Manhattan standards. “We thought there was only one way,” says Don Saladino, sitting down for an interview in Drive 495’s lounge area. “Golf isn’t necessarily a cheap sport.”

Still, for two guys in their 20s starting their first business together, the upscale nature of the club and the amount they have invested — $4 million, from their own savings and family contributions — seems risky. Not to them. “My brother and I have never once turned to each other and said, ‘What if we fail?’” Saladino says. “We’d hit each other over the head with a golf club if we said that.”

To date, 200 members have signed up. One is David Bossalina, an investment banker who has stopped down from his midtown-Manhattan offices on this winter day to relax and practice his swing. “It’s kind of a country club vs. a gym,” he says. (Indeed, the owners say fewer than 10 patrons are usually there at a time — a stark contrast to the city’s crowded gyms.) Bossalina, 36, has tried out personal training, but is even more enthusiastic about the golf studio’s AIM-3D technology. “It’s exactly like hitting a ball on a golf course,” he says. And that $5,000 membership fee? “It’s on the more expensive side, but I think it’s worth it.”   

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