Albatross Golf expands HQ plans with straight-line to fall opening; Hard Hat Happy Hour preview gets Thursday tee time

A friendly bounce this spring offered the team behind Albatross Golf a lucky break: more space than originally anticipated to launch a flagship storefront and headquarters in Prairie Village for its trio of portfolio businesses.

“We put real capital into this on purpose, because we wanted a real flagship,” said Matt Williams, co-founder of Albatross Golf, a sports tech incubator of sorts for the GolfTRK, Noonan, and TRK Performance brands.

The company expects a September opening date for its nearly 11,000 square foot new headquarters at 7068 Mission Road. The site is 3,000 square feet bigger than originally planned when Williams and co-founder Alex Reed announced the project earlier this year.

A Hard Hat Happy Hour event is planned Thursday for supporters and curious potential members to get a behind-the-scenes tour of the space, view construction progress, meet the GolfTRK team, and catch an insider look at what’s coming to Prairie Village.

Among the highlights: the extra room allowed Albatross to expand its on-site PuttView short-game space from 1,500 square feet up to 2,000 — making the virtual reality putting green the biggest PuttView experience in the entire United States, Williams said.

In fact, the PuttView space alone is bigger than GolfTRK’s entire first location, added Reed.

The unexpectedly available corner unit — near the popular Big Grove Brewery — in a renovated complex that previously housed a sprawling Macy’s — also allows the company to install eight TrackMan bays instead of six, as well as build space for bookable offices and a conference room people can reserve for meetings and events.

“This is a true national headquarters,” Williams said. “The center of all Albatross operations, not just another GolfTRK location.”

Albatross Golf’s new headquarters and GolfTRK flagship location at 7068 Mission Road in Prairie Village; photo by Austin Barnes, Startland News

Albatross Golf co-founders Alex Reed, Sam Collins, and Matt Williams, along with their spouses, stand inside the new headquarters space in Prairie Village; courtesy photo

GolfTRK is the most consumer-facing of Albatross’ brands. With its national franchise network model, GolfTRK offers premium indoor simulator facilities with Tour-grade technology, where members come to boost their game any time they want.

“My co-founders and I are serious golfers, and when we looked around, there was nowhere for us to actually improve,” Williams said, describing a business built out of personal frustration. “The options were all entertainment concepts. Bars and restaurants with golf bolted on the side. At a place like that, the golf is secondary. It’s built for a night out, not for getting better.”

Albatross’ digital caddie app provides a tech play, taking a player’s performance data and turning it into smarter on-course decisions that actually lower their scores.

And TRK Performance is the company’s installation arm through which it builds and installs the needed simulator bays for its franchise locations — now 50 and counting across state lines.

Additional warehouse space at the Mission Road space sold Williams, Reed and co-founders Sam Collins and Paul Buonopane on the risk associated with expanding the headquarters beyond their original plans, Williams said.

“The corner unit has the extra room we need to actually run our bay-installation business out of here,” he said, noting it also allows space to grow the team, train new hires, and run new programming Albatross plans to announce soon.

Matt Williams, co-founder of Albatross Golf and its portfolio businesses, GolfTRK, Noonan, and TRK Performance, details golf’s “leaky bucket” problem June 5 during a pitch competition at Pipeline’s Daytime Showcase inside the Planetarium at Union Station; photo by Nicole Bissey Photography

Making strides without grinding in the dark

It’s all about fixing what Williams calls golf’s “leaky bucket” — roughly three million young golfers quit each year because the sport is difficult, time-intensive and expensive (and especially challenging to sink when they stop seeing improvement).

On-site Tour-grade technology with trusted franchise partners TrackMan and PuttView, along with a PGA professional at every facility — who gives lessons, does club fittings, and runs clinics and leagues — help fill the gaps.

“There’s a trend right now toward unmanned, 24/7 indoor golf. We don’t believe in that,” Williams said. “If you want the best place to actually get better, you need a real instructor in the building.”

“The point of running Albatross under one roof is that the pieces finally talk to each other,” he continued. “What we learn from a player’s practice sharpens the decisions they make when it counts, and what happens in their round shapes the practice that targets their weak spots.”

And that’s the part that matters most, Williams said.

“The moment a player starts to struggle, we can see it and step in, so they’re not stuck grinding in the dark until they quit,” he said, tying the company’s biggest markers of validation to its members’ achievements and progress.

“I get a charge every time I hear a member hit a big milestone. We’ve had members qualify for the US Amateur, win the Kansas City Match Play, and win state titles,” Williams continued. “And it’s not just the elite players making strides. One of our early members told me he’d never broken 100 when he first joined. Recently he broke 90 for the first time. That one got me. Golf is just a different game when you’re actually playing better, and that’s the whole point of what we’re building.”

Noonan/Albatross Golf co-founders Sam Collins and Matt Williams with Tanner Barnhard, vice president of GolfTRK, at Startland News’ 2025 Startup Crawl event at Spark Kansas City; photo by Haines Eason, Startland News

‘A national company that comes from KC’

Albatross isn’t letting up on its game as it heads up the course toward the headquarters’ opening, Williams emphasized.

Matt Williams, co-founder of Albatross Golf and its portfolio businesses, GolfTRK, Noonan, and TRK Performance, accepts the Best Pitch award at the June 5 Pipeline Innovators Gala in the Grand Hall at Union Station; photo by Taylor Wilmore, Startland News

Fresh off a Best Pitch win this summer at Pipeline’s Daytime Showcase, he and Albatross are wrapping up a Series A funding round with an eye toward continued scaling.

“The Kansas Angel tax credits have been a real help getting investors over the line, and that kind of state support is part of why building here makes sense,” Williams said of the Lenexa-built company.

With the soon-to-open flagship, he and Reed are committed to keeping Midwest ethic front and center, even as GolfTRK swings into entirely new markets.

For founding memberships in Prairie Village, the company is giving each golfer a custom Hanna putter with their membership. The move is a nod to Hanna Golf founder Jared Doerfler, who “put everything on the line” to build his boutique Iowa putter company, Williams said.

“He quit his job, bought a milling machine, and started building custom putters in his garage,” Williams explained. “That’s what entrepreneurship in the Midwest is all about, and we’re proud to back him.”

The bigger picture for Albatross is supporting — and elevating — the underdog, which is a core value within the portfolio’s Midwest identity, he said.

“We could have built this company anywhere. We chose to build it here,” he said. “Kansas City is home, the talent is here, and we want to build a national company that happens to come from KC. Not one that packs up and leaves the second it gets big.”