Wang Jijun launched a golf equipment business in 1996, back when China counted fewer than 80 golf courses nationwide. Nearly three decades later, his company Greenjoy has transformed into a digital golf powerhouse spanning 170 cities globally with over half a million users.
China’s Pearl River Delta had become a manufacturing goldmine by the mid-1990s. Golf emerged as the preferred pastime among newly wealthy factory owners, with just five or six profitable clubs across the entire country, half of them clustered in that region. Memberships costing hundreds of thousands of yuan sold effortlessly.
After leaving a state-owned enterprise, Wang worked selling American golf clubs before spotting a sharper opportunity. Imported hitting mats were expensive and wore out fast. Drawing on his chemistry background, he developed Greenjoy’s own mats using premium materials while pricing them at 85% of import costs. The product lasted over five years.
That single product opened the market. Greenjoy soon released China’s first 3D hitting mat, then expanded into ball washers, pickers, and automatic dispensers. By 2008, the company commanded 70% of China’s domestic market while exporting to Australia, Japan, the United States, and Europe.
Yet Wang recognized the ceiling. Driving range equipment represented low-frequency B2B sales tied to course construction cycles. Growth would always remain constrained.
The pivot arrived in 2011 when South Korean golf simulator firm Golfzon went public with a market value exceeding one trillion won. Founded in 2000, Golfzon had generated nearly $900 million in revenue within a decade. Wang saw the blueprint clearly: South Korea preceded China by roughly ten years in golf development, and user habits aligned closely. If simulators worked there, China could replicate that trajectory.
Greenjoy entered the indoor simulator market shortly thereafter. The company committed to independent development of high-speed cameras, sensors, and AI algorithms, launching its GOLFJOY brand. Rather than adopting cheaper Doppler radar technology used by most entry-level competitors, Wang chose machine vision despite higher costs and engineering complexity.
Machine vision operates reliably across indoor and outdoor environments. Radar systems struggle with indoor signal reflection, require fixed placement distances, and fail to capture short-range shots like bunker plays and putts accurately.
The engineering demands proved substantial. Each high-speed camera captures 2,500 frames per second, recording ball position and motion within milliseconds of impact. Processing must complete within 0.5 seconds to avoid user-perceptible delays. The team embedded multiple acceleration chips and developed parallel computing capabilities to meet these timing requirements.
Anti-static protection required upgrading from commercial to industrial standards. Dry northern climates caused electrostatic discharge that could crash equipment functioning normally in humid southern regions. Multi-layer circuit protection resolved this regional reliability gap.
Greenjoy GOLFJOY’s AI assistant now analyzes swing data from over 400,000 users. According to official figures, the company holds over 50% of China’s indoor simulator market share. In 2025 alone, users completed more than six million rounds and hit 210 million balls across range sessions.
The AI system avoids comparing users to professional templates. Instead, it anchors on each player’s personal best swings, creating progressive improvement paths toward self-defined benchmarks rather than unattainable ideals. Training shifts from vague feel-based practice to data-driven iteration.
Wang maintains that AI supplements rather than replaces professional coaches. The technology quantifies what instructors previously judged through observation, converting sensory information into measurable metrics like knee angle, hip rotation, and weight transfer timing.
Hardware alone never represented the endgame. Greenjoy GOLFJOY built a closed-loop system combining sensors, algorithms, and accumulated data from real users. As underlying AI models converge in capability, Wang argues the true competitive moat lies in domain-specific data richness and accuracy.
This 28-year-old company operating in a niche industry has found a sustainable path through full-stack independent R&D, from custom cameras to proprietary algorithms. The next phase hinges on whether accumulated swing data can compound into an insurmountable advantage as global competitors chase similar digital golf ambitions.
