Swingers Brand Guidelines: London Crazy Golf Clubs Styled on 1920s Country Golf

Crazy golf, rebuilt as a night out.

Swingers is a London company that runs crazy golf clubs combined with cocktail bars, street food and DJs. The Caterer, the British hospitality trade weekly, reported in November 2018 that the business was founded in 2014 by Matt Grech-Smith and Jeremy Simmonds, and that it then ran two Swingers sites in London, each pairing crazy golf with bars and street food. Grech-Smith was described as co-founder and co-chief executive of the parent company, which the magazine called Competitive Socialising; Front Office Sports named the same parent the Institute of Competitive Socializing in April 2022.

The first permanent site was in the City of London, in an office block beside the Gherkin. Time Out London describes it as a 16,000-square-foot room themed on 1920s golf, with two nine-hole courses, five bars, a trio of street food vendors, DJs and a two-storey clubhouse with a terrace. The second London venue, in the West End near Oxford Circus, opened in 2018, according to Front Office Sports; Time Out calls it a Riviera-inspired addition.

In November 2018 The Caterer reported that Swingers had secured investment from the property investor Cain International, to fund a second competitive-leisure concept in the UK and openings in North America. Grech-Smith told the magazine that the company had begun the investment process that May, and that the United States mattered to its plans. He also argued that competitive socialising, which some had dismissed as a passing fad, was a stable business model. The figures attached to that round and to later ones are left out of this guide.

America had been on the list for some time. Front Office Sports reported in 2022 that Swingers had a single London venue in 2015 and was already looking at property in New York by 2016, two years before the West End site opened.

From the City of London to Las Vegas.

The Caterer reported in March 2021 that the first American site, in Dupont Circle in Washington DC, was built around two nine-hole courses inspired by 1920s English country golf clubs, with a clubhouse, five cocktail bars and local street food vendors; Swingers worked there with the DC company Knead Hospitality and Design on the food and drink. Front Office Sports confirmed in April 2022 that the Washington venue had opened the previous year.

New York followed. The same April 2022 report described a 23,000-square-foot club in the city with three nine-hole courses and six bars; The Caterer had placed it in the Flatiron District, in the basement of the new Virgin hotel. In February 2023 the local news site PoPville carried the company’s announcement of a second Washington venue, in the city’s Ballpark District, which Swingers called its third US location and fifth in all, opening on 10 March 2023.

The trade site blooloop reported in September 2024 that Swingers was taking the concept to Dubai and Las Vegas. In Las Vegas the venue sits in the Mandalay Bay resort on the Strip; blooloop described it as a 40,000-square-foot site with four courses, two bars, a street food concession and a retro arcade called Carnival, the largest Swingers to that date. In Dubai, the magazine What’s On reported in February 2025 that Swingers would open to the public from 7 February on Bluewaters Island, as the brand’s first venue in the Middle East, in partnership with Rise Hospitality. blooloop had described the Dubai plans as a two-floor, 21,000-square-foot site with three courses, three cocktail bars, a two-storey clubhouse, scenic projections and the first Swingers speakeasy; by the time of opening, it noted, Swingers already traded in London, Las Vegas, New York and Washington DC.

In February 2026 the Boston property weekly Banker & Tradesman described Swingers Back Bay as the London brand’s fourth US location, with a pair of indoor crazy golf courses, several cocktail bars and retro-style games.

Venues, games and the night out.

Bowling, competitive-socialising and indoor-leisure operators sell an evening out rather than a product, so their identities live mostly in rooms and on screens. Their own websites lead with venue interiors: lanes lit in neon, bars set beside the games, and photographs of groups mid-throw or mid-putt. Some build a whole venue around one period theme; Swingers, according to The Caterer, styles its crazy golf clubs on 1920s English country golf clubs.

Naming does a lot of the work. Swingers names its venues after their districts, such as the West End or Back Bay, and operators give house names to games that turn familiar pastimes into branded attractions: an arcade called Carnival, a shuffleboard called Supercharged Shuffle, a shooting game called HotShots. Kingpin’s 2017 identity, Mumbrella reported, put a bowling spare mark inside the name and adopted the line “Roll like a Royal.”

Booking is part of the identity too. Kingpin’s website, for example, opens with a venue picker, a date selector, party packages and gift cards, placed ahead of any story about the company. Some operators add a scoring tool inside the venue; Time Out listed a scorecard app among the features of one Swingers site.

Behind the venues sit owners that are often less visible than the brands. Kingpin belongs to TEEG, a group formed in 2017 by the family company behind Timezone and Quadrant Private Equity, and it is TEEG’s corporate website, rather than the venue site, that sets out the timeline and the brand list. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand, from founding and ownership to how it presents its venues, and marks clearly what rests on the company’s own word.

An old golf club, reimagined after dark.

London also brought the brand’s first closure. Time Out London reported in February 2025 that Swingers had closed its original City of London venue because of plans to demolish the building; the venue’s own notice, dated March 2025, thanked guests for nine years and pointed them to the West End site, which stayed open.

The venues borrow the look of a 1920s English country golf club, set inside city buildings, and add cocktail bars, street food stalls run by outside food brands and nightly DJs. Time Out lists a Swingers scorecard app among the City venue’s features, alongside the two-storey clubhouse. Time Out notes that the City venue admitted over-18s only, and What’s On described the Dubai site as an over-21s venue.

Swingers has also worked with outside food businesses: Knead Hospitality and Design in Washington, according to The Caterer, and vendors such as Pizza Pilgrims, Patty & Bun and Breddos Tacos in the City, according to Time Out. In Boston, Banker & Tradesman named Emmy Squared Pizza as the food partner.

For a design guide, Swingers shows how a single, clearly dated theme can carry a leisure brand from one London office block to resorts and city centres on three continents. Compare Puttshack, another crazy golf brand that grew from London into the United States, and Flight Club, which applied a similar bar-and-game format to darts. For this guide we use a clubhouse green, a cream, a brass and a claret with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Swingers’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.