Michael Jordan has always made the best of retirement. One of his latest endeavors: The Grove XXIII—the number is, of course, a nod to the GOAT’s number when he played for the Chicago Bulls—an ultra-exclusive, sophisticated new club in Florida.
The Grove is all about golf, with a private 18-hole course, practice range, training or practice facility, huge 15,000 square-foot clubhouse complete with locker rooms, lounge areas, and a golf pro shop, and gatehouse.
Hypebeast notes that The Grove’s on-course drone drink service is one of the perks and that it is no exaggeration to say this is an incredibly exclusive place “with just under 100 members and getting access to play 18 holes will be quite a challenge unless you are invited.”
Making video of the drone servers—and likely of the place in general—appears to be a problem for MJ’s club, as the original poster of the video above implied he had to remove his footage.
Nicol Sarch is the design firm behind The Grove XXIII, however, and they posted images of the private clubhouse (above) on their Instagram after it won “the People’s Choice Award at this year’s AIA Miami Design Awards.”
Golf Digest posted an inside look at The Grove XXIII in March 2020 and it illustrated that Jordan took an active role in designing the place, expressing to his golf course architect that his “primary requirement” was “that the course play fast and firm with features that produce dramatic matches.” This reportedly “gave way to broad fairways that glide over dips and swales and melt into low-slung putting surfaces.”
Even if you aren’t into golf, per se, or don’t think you’ll ever join a golf club that even Phil Mickelson has to join through some kind of “process”—see the caption in the Golf Digest Insta above—we can probably all agree that drone bartenders are the kind of “wave of the future” we can get behind.
