⛳ Good Times, Year Round: Norm's Golf & Social in Kingston

On a busy night at Norm's Golf & Social, the first thing you notice is a table of seven having laughs as they work through a pizza. Behind them a game plays on a screen the size of a garage door, and somebody is having fun playing cornhole on fifty feet of indoor lawn. Four golf simulators run along the wall. In any one of them you might find someone who plays every weekend, someone who has never held a club, and someone who came for the company.

Norm's Golf & Social is a golf simulator bar where people also gather with friends for a night out, throw parties and run fundraisers. It's in the RioCan Centre at 616 Gardiners Road in Kingston. There's about 4,800 square feet of it, and the golf takes up less than you would expect.

Four Trackman iO golf simulator bays sit along one wall. Norm's says they are the largest simulator bays in the city. Each one is wide enough for a whole group to pile in together. You watch and heckle and cheer, instead of lining up behind one player at a time. The simulators will drop you onto famous courses anywhere in the world and then tell you, in numbers, how well (or for some of us, how badly) you are playing them. They also run party games called things like Bullseye and Closest to the Pin, which are the ones the non-golfers quietly gravitate toward.

Then there is the lawn. Fifty feet of indoor turf runs through the middle of the space, set up with cornhole and lawn games. There is room to clear it and put out chairs when the space is being used for something else entirely. The bar is called The 19th, which is a joke every golfer will get. It pours Ontario craft beer on rotation, wine, scotch and cocktails, and the food is meant for sharing.

Norm Wall was a retired veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces who spent more than thirty years of his retirement on a golf course. He was also a hockey fan. According to the Norm's Golf & Social website, he is the one who handed his grandson Rich Wall the golf habit in the first place.

He was the person Rich talked the idea through with, too. On the same page, Rich describes his grandfather listening to him go on at length about the plan. He wanted a golf simulator bar where "everyone felt welcome, lovers of golf and those new to the game."

Norm died in 2022, before there was a room to show him. His grandson opened it in his name about two years later.

Rich has lived in Kingston since 2003. He earned a Commerce degree from Queen's University and spent over a decade working in finance before he left it. He described the move to Kingston Spotlight as a journey from finance to fairways. Rich was describing a room where beginners felt welcome before he had a room to put them in.

No golf experience is needed at Norm's Golf & Social. Rich puts it plainly: everyone who walks in should feel included and looked after, whatever their golf background.

Most golf is a conversation with some swinging in it. Even so, a promise like that is easy to make and harder to prove. Here is what customers describe in reviews posted on the Norm's website.

Part of that is the technology, which is more forgiving than a course. The party games reward a wild shot with a laugh rather than a lost ball, and nobody is holding up a group waiting behind them.

The bigger part is that at Norm's, not golfing is a normal thing to do. The bar, the screens and the lawn are all in the same room as the bays. Someone who would rather sit this one out does not have to leave the group to do it.

Alongside the simulators, Norm's Golf & Social runs leagues, sports watch parties, live music and private bookings.

The screens are the easiest thing to miss from the outside. Norm's puts the hockey on and builds nights around the golf majors, and the room fills up with people who came to watch rather than swing.

The leagues are where the regulars are. Norm's runs them across men's, women's and teen categories. The categories are set by how many people sign up, so the format bends to the turnout rather than the other way round. Norm's also holds tournaments built for families, including a Father's Day golf and cornhole event played in pairs.

Then there is everything the room becomes when it is booked. Birthdays and kids' parties, team socials and client nights, holiday parties, bachelor and bachelorette send-offs, and fundraisers. Bands play there. Chairs come out onto the turf for gatherings that have nothing to do with golf at all. The Muskoka chairs and the cornhole come out when the room is being used for hanging around rather than competing.

Norm's Golf & Social hosts fundraisers for local charities and community groups.

Rich told Kingston Spotlight that Norm's has helped a number of charities raise money, naming Girls Inc. Limestone and Pawsitive Impact Initiative among them. He said Norm's has chipped in with donations too, and works a fundraising angle into its own events. One night on the calendar is a golf and cornhole classic raising money for a Kingston synchronized swimming team. Norm's also co-hosts a charity tournament of its own with Amherstview Golf Course.

Rather than picking the cause himself, Rich is handing a shortlist of charities to the people who turn up and letting them vote. Whichever one wins takes the money.

A bus runs in both directions. They play the round at Amherstview, then everyone comes back to Norm's for an all-you-can-eat buffet from Tony's, prize giving and simulator contests.

Asked where Norm's gets its beer and food, Rich answered like a man who had been waiting to be asked.

"Great question! We ONLY support local! All of our suppliers are proudly Kingston/Ontario."

Here they are, alphabetically:

Some of those need no introduction in Kingston. A few might. Findlay's is Findlay Foods, the wholesale distributor on Progress Avenue that supplies kitchens across the region. It is where a lot of the food starts rather than a place you can walk into. Triple Bogey is a golf-themed lager brewed in London, Ontario, which is about as on-theme as a beer list gets. Flying Monkeys comes out of Barrie. Everything else on the list is Kingston or eastern Ontario.

A bar with four simulators and a licence could pour whatever the big distributor is pushing this month, and nobody walking in for a birthday party would notice. Norm's went the long way instead, and handed us thirteen names when we only asked where the beer came from. Step Soup & Sandwich is further along Gardiners Road. Homestyle Deli is around the corner from Riverhead. Go Italian and Findlay's are both west end. Most of that list is within a few minutes of the front door. Tony's earns its place twice over, since the buffet at the charity tournament comes from there too.