THE INTERVIEW with entrepreneur TOM HUMPHREY

by Karen Lee Hall. Photos provided by Jaco Golf

What is Jaco Golf?

We are a golf and sports simulator gaming experience for families, individuals and groups. We’re a family-oriented place where you can get good, healthy food, and a drink while you enjoy playing all kinds of sports games – not just golf - with 5 meter wide, high-definition screens. In Jaco there’s a local golf course but if it’s raining really hard, and people want to play golf, they come here to play my simulator. If you’re rusty, and you want to tune up your game before you go play on that course, come to Jaco Golf.  

Tell me a bit about yourself

I’m Tom Humphrey and I’m from the United States. I lived most of my life in Alaska. You guys might all know Alaska as being dark and cold most of the year, which is true. That’s why I love it here.  I grew up from grammar school through college in Southern California and the Los Angeles area. That’s where I got my exposure to surfing every day. When I graduated from college -- I’m an electrical engineer -- I went to work in Alaska where they had big oil company projects going on. I ended up raising my family there. Now I’ve been here three years full time in Jaco and loving it.

Why or how did you get to Costa Rica, and in particular what brought you to Jaco? 

My wife passed away eight years ago. She was beautiful on the inside and beautiful on the outside. Becoming a widower is very difficult. I don’t wish it on anybody. Anyway, she and I had always wanted to retire to Hawaii but somehow going there without her didn’t feel right. Early in our marriage we took a vacation here on the west coast. We started in Dominical and went all the way Drake Bay.  After she passed away, I thought, “maybe I’ll go back there on my own and try to reconstruct our first trip back.” This was 7-8 years ago but it was not the same. Nothing was the same. I couldn’t find anything from that trip, even the place we stayed at Dominical was gone.  Don’t get me wrong, it was still fun. I had always wanted to go to surfing beaches. There’s no surfing in Alaska. [chuckle] One of my criteria was a town that had surf shops and seven years ago that meant either Tamarindo or Jaco. 

I’m not a high-powered surfer but I love surfing. I ended up in Jaco, stayed a few days, got a surfing lesson and ended up liking it here. And to tell you the truth, I really like the people, they are just wonderful. I’ve been other places in the world and the Costa Rican people are just really nice people. So I got to thinking: there’s that; I’m thinking I like the sun; I like to surf; there’s a lot of great looking women in Jaco and I’m single; and, you know, maybe I should give this place a try.

What gave you the inspiration to do this business? It’s not surfing, and obviously there’s nothing like it anywhere around, so how did you come up with the idea for Jaco Golf?

I’ve always been entrepreneurial, dabbled in a lot of startups, and my main business is electrical engineering which I still do online with mostly oil field customers in Alaska. But that business has tapered off and I wanted to have something that I could do here. 

I started thinking about everything, including charging stations for electrical vehicles. I didn’t want to do all the typical things and compete with other businesses in town. I wanted something that didn’t exist here already.

Golf in Alaska is only played 3 months a year. It’s an incredible time because by the time the grass grows it’s the longest day of the year. The sun us up the whole day and you can literally play at midnight. So I have a fond memory of playing golf at midnight. And here I was in Alaska and meeting guys would like to play golf. I learned the game. But I guess the real inspiration was from my dad. My dad loved golf and he was also entrepreneurial, with inventions and patents like that. Back in the day he surveyed putting greens and published books, things like that so yeah, I’m kind of this is my tribute to my dad. 

When I ended up here in Jaco I’m thinking this is a pretty technical business with high speed cameras and computers and projectors, which interested me as an electrical engineer. As you can see, it’s actually a pretty beautiful presentation so I got this idea of doing a golf simulator studio. And that evolved when people advised me, “you can’t do that without food.” So, I added the food and drinks. 

And then it turned out, well, Costa Rican’s don’t play golf. What do we do for them? Now I have about 12 different sports simulations you can play in addition to the golf. Kids go crazy throwing them balls, kicking balls, throwing balls and killing monsters. So, it’s not just golf. Although golf is a really an up and coming sport in Costa Rica. 

We do give beginner lessons. I’m recently certified to train beginners. We have started offering memberships, we’re starting some tournaments, we got a new pool table, and we even have a chess club that meets once a week.

What’s a fun story you’d like to share?

There’s so many, quite a few are from birthday parties. We’re having one on Friday – a birthday for a four-year-old.  We actually have a four year old golfer that kind of plays like Tiger Woods. The kid loves golf, he has his own set of clubs. 

I guess you would have to at that age. 4 is kinda small.

We do have kids clubs, but for 8 year olds and up. 

Do you get a lot of repeat business?

Oh yeah, more and more. Word of mouth has been really good. Yet most of our business comes from people who see the sign and wander up to see what it’s all about. Getting people to walk up the stairs and see us is the most difficult problem we have because we’re on the 2nd floor. And then the second hurdle is, “ what’s golf?”.

Do you have any solutions to address this hurdle?

I have a plan to run a video on the wall at street level, put out a red carpet on Friday and Saturday night, with someone standing there like a bouncer, with the VIP rope thing to draw attention. 

I rent the place, but it was an empty shell when I started. I built everything you see here. 

That’s an enormous investment because looking around, you know you’re in a place that’s been carefully constructed. It has it’s a high quality experience being in here. 

And our food is some of the best in town. The inspiration for the food is largely from my wife who was a health food expert. She knew all about organic cooking, and raw food, grass fed protein, all that kind of stuff so she trained me to eat well. I brought that ethos to our grill and restaurant. Whenever possible everything is organic, local produce from the local vendor, with grass fed protein. And we make our own bread and buns with a secret ingredient. People always comment on the bread. 

What are your biggest nights? Or is daytime the most popular ?

We are open six days, closed on Tuesday. I got 2 wonderful staff. Stephanie is the bartender and front of house manager but really, she runs the place. But if I told her that I have to pay her more money. [chuckles] Rafael is a really good cook. The only problem is it takes 10 minutes longer than most places so our food is slow food. When you order something that’s when we do all the preparation it’s all done right then the French fries are cut to order, things like that. We’ve been thinking about ways to fix that. 

Typically I would say Saturday is the biggest day because of parties and birthdays and stuff, followed by Friday and Sunday. We are open 1pm – 10pm. Generally people come after dinner. Our busiest hours are 6:30 till 9 or 9:30pm. 

How long have you been open now? 

We opened April 1st of 2024 have been open less than two years. It’s been slow these last few months but I’m not gonna give up on it because I know we’re unique and people come in here have a happy time and then tell other people, “wow that was fun”. 

Tom Humphrey also runs an E Foil business called Jaco E-Foil. An e-Foil is like a surfboard and has a hydroplane pin underneath it and a turbine motor that you can operate with a hand control and so you get on the surfboard and then as you get to a certain speed it comes up and you’re flying with the wind. 

Find Jaco Golf at: Pastor Diaz Ave, Jacó. Puntarenas.

https://www.jacogolf.com/

+506-6223-1286

Instagram: @jacogolfclub

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