The Footgolf Boom: How Golf's Future Belongs to Football

It began with a note from a buddy. "This and beer, dude," he wrote, along with a link to a new footgolf course opening up at a local golf club. "Not 'this, and then beer.' This and beer."

Naturally, I was in.

A few weeks later, I had a Friday morning tee time with Woody Footgolfer. Sans beer. Because Woody—who goes by neither Mark nor Woodward, his legal first and last names—is president of New Jersey FootGolf, and a man who hopes to become the first professional footgolfer in the United States.

Also, he has been playing the sport for less than a year.

Of course, this is not an impediment. Almost everyone has been playing footgolf for less than a year, and that's assuming they've played it at all. A mashup of soccer and golf—instead of using clubs and golf balls, players use their feet to kick soccer balls across golf courses and into a large cup—footgolf is so new that technique, strategy, equipment and whether you actually can make a living at it are all being figured out on the fly.

I met Woody at a country club in northern New Jersey, set amid hundreds of condos and garish McMansions. When footgolf first came to America in 2011, I spoke to a man named Roberto Balestrini, who claimed he had brought the sport over from Europe. Within a year or two, he said, he hoped there would be two dozen courses in the United States. Nodding politely, I snickered internally.

Today, there are more than 250 footgolf courses across the country—most of them shared golf courses. The sport's quiet explosion has been stupefying, and scary to some.

"You get a lot of pushback from traditional golfers sometimes," Woody says. "But they soon realize we're not hooligans."

This course, like almost all the others, allows footgolfers to share tee boxes and fairways with the regular golfers, with each sport then veering off to their own greens. Unlike 4.25-inch golf holes, footgolf holes have a 21-inch diameter—only that doesn't make the sport any easier, not when the regulation-sized soccer ball used for football is actually bigger relative to its hole than a golf ball its cup.

Woody, an English soccer coach by day who speaks with a Sheffield-area accent, is wearing footgolf's pseudo-uniform: long argyle socks, a T-shirt emblazoned with the sport's logo and turf flats. No cleats or studs are allowed. He discovered the sport last August; the next month, he entered the first stateside pro-am on this very course. He finished twelfth. By March, he was in Marbella, Spain, the first stop in the 15-city European Footgolf Trophy Tour, which is played from Norway to Turkey, from Hungary to Portugal.

Woody shot four eagles in the first round and won the whole thing.

As his prize, he received free entry into three additional European Tour events. He cashed in on a pledge from Balestrini, now the head of the American FootGolf League, who had promised $1,000 to anyone from the U.S. who won in Spain. Very briefly, Woody became the top-ranked footgolfer in Europe, mostly because there hadn't been any other events held this year.

Still, that was enough for Woody to get serious about the sport. There isn't a lot of money in it. The four American pro-ams that will be played this year have a combined purse of $70,000. In Europe, it's much less. Woody has a few sponsors who pick up some of his expenses, a few hundred dollars here and there. He isn't discouraged. He figures the sport will grow, and the money along with it. Despite placing in the middle of the pack at a recent pair of Florida tournaments, he hopes to return to Europe to compete in other tour stops. "I just love it so much," he says. "I'm definitely up there with the best 10, 15 guys in the world."

Woody tries to play once a week. On his wedding anniversary, he took his wife out for a round.

It's not clear who owns footgolf. As often the case with new sports, several organizations are vying for control. The American FootGolf League, which is affiliated with the Federation International de FootGolf–FIFG, the FIFA of footgolf–claims to be the "governing body of the sport of FootGolf in the United States." Meanwhile, the United States FootGolf Association says it's the "national governing body for the sport of Footgolf."

The AFGL seems to be bigger. But the USFGA has a suggested dress code. "Think golf attire with a '20s flair," its website says. "Typical wear is a flat (Wedge/Hogan style) cap, collared shirt, golf pants, knickers or shorts. The trademark FootGolf has them wearing knee high argyle socks, which exhibits a bit of the golfers [sic] style. The is not required for everyday play, but, at official USFGA and State Association tournaments and events is a requirement."

But wait! Here's the AFGL's dress code from its own website: "Typical wear is a flat (Hogan style) cap, collared shirt, golf pants, knickers or shorts, knee high argyle socks and indoor or turf soccer shoes. This is not required all the time but, for an official AFGL tournament and events, it is required."

Did the AFGL plagiarize its rival? Or the other way around? It's hard to say. This much is clear: each governing body claims to be the one true king, and mildly shit-talks the other.

"We can talk without a doubt that the U.S. FootGolf Association is the governing body for the sport," says Carlos Stremi, president of the Illinois FootGolf Association and a member of the board of directors of the USFGA. "As far as we know, [the AFGL] is a company that sells equipment to the golf courses and they have a couple of high-entry fee tournaments during the year."

Meow. What does the AFGL say in response?

"I can tell you that we are the governing body for the sport of footgolf in the U.S. underneath the Federation for International FootGolf, which is 30 federations strong," says AFGL president Laura Balestrini, whose husband Roberto I spoke to about footgolf a few years ago. "We're the ones who brought the sport to the U.S. in 2011 and we are the ones who have been developing it here ever since.

"What I know of the U.S. Association"—Balestrini couldn't bring herself to use the word 'footgolf'—"is that they are self-proclaimed. They decided that they wanted to create another entity here to try to compete—or I don't even think it was a matter of trying to compete, I think they've seen that footgolf was growing fast and they wanted to capitalize on it so they went out and created this entity. It's really just a facade."

Stermi claims that the USFGA's more elaborate governance structure indicates its relative seriousness. Balestrini counters that the AFGL has been recognized by the Professional Golfers' Association and Major League Soccer. Check and … um, yeah, forget it.

Let's move on.

I'm an okay soccer player. I have deficiencies—many, many deficiencies. But, if nothing else, my long passes, free kicks and shots are solid. So footgolf seemed like a natural fit. Only the sport itself is surprisingly hard. Hitting a soccer ball exactly flush is tough. Doing so on a hilly surface or striking the ball through heavy brush is tougher yet. There are inclines and grass lengths and all manner of other conditions to consider, just like in traditional golf. If you're a soccer player, footgolf makes you realize that you're spoiled, used to flat fields and neatly-mowed grass.

What's more, soccer balls are much lighter than golf balls relative to their mass, which makes them more prone to external conditions. Grass doesn't slow the ball as much. Sod bumps, slopes and wind have greater effects. A seemingly stationary ball can move in the breeze, and you have to let it roll where it will.

As he makes his run-up on the first tee, Woody rises high like some kind of footgolf monster. He's very tall, and windmills his endless right leg through the ball with authority. Still, I manage to outdrive him on the first hole, somehow, thanks to a series of fortuitous bounces. But I soon discover that while the drives and approach shots are soccer, putting is very much golf. You win or lose on the green. It takes me three putts to bogey the first hole. I shoot another bogey, then two double-bogeys. It takes me six holes to hit my first par; 14 holes to get my first birdie.

On the eighth hole, I triple-bogey a brutal 284-yard fairaway—a 70-yard drive counts as a bomb in footgolf.

Halfway through the round, my body begins to stiffen up, even though I play soccer at least twice a week. I lose the feel for my shot—which is probably not helped by holding a notepad in my left hand as I kick. No longer just ramming the ball as far as I can, I'm forced to play a finesse game. And this helps. I learn to read the course. On the front nine, I missed five birdie putts. On the back nine, I start hitting them, shooting just 2-over.

Meanwhile, Woody hits his tenth career hole-in-one on a downhill 78-yard par-3, then takes a selfie at the flag. He winds up beating me by 13 strokes. The next day, I'm sorer than I've been in years. My hamstrings feel like tree bark.

Hell of a good time, though.

Like any proper sport, footgolf has competing origin stories. Kids have been inventing soccer skill games forever. In 1929, Chicago doctor William Edward Code invented an eponymous game called "Codeball," which was briefly a thing in the 1930s, and pretty much the same as footgolf. This dude claims he invented a version of footgolf in 2005– you kick the ball at portable, movable "nests", which said dude conveniently will sell you.

However, the generally accepted story—winners write history—is that Willem Korsten came up with footgolf, and that Michael Jansen formalized it. Korsten was a Dutch professional soccer player who'd either picked up or come up with the game when he was playing for Tottenham Hotspur. Players would try to return the balls from the practice field to the equipment room in the least amount of kicks. Korsten's career ended prematurely due to injuries, and he became a coach in the Netherlands, where Jansen and Willem's brother Bas learned of his lazy ploy to avoid carrying balls and turned it into a full-fledged sport. In 2009, a Dutch championship was held, laden with actual soccer pros.

The game is spreading rapidly. In Argentina, something of a pro league already is up and running. "There's no doubt that we're a level above the other countries," Christian Otero, an Argentine, recently told the New York Times. In May, Otero won a Miami pro-am by eight strokes. Woody calls him "the Messi of footgolf." Four Argentines placed in the top five.

"In the U.S., we need to catch up," Woody says. "Nike and all those people need to help the U.S. Footgolf is definitely not slowing down, that's for sure."

The Argentines have sponsorships. They travel abroad to compete. Perhaps befitting their nation's most famous soccer star, Diego Maradona, they seem to be the sport's tricksters, too. There's talk—unsubstantiated, of course—that they deflate and inflate the ball as they move through the course: firm for big air and bounce; soft for more feel and friction. Sometimes, it's whispered, balls are adjusted between strokes. It's a murky practice, straddling legality. On the rules page of FIFG's website, right under where it says "The official rules of the best game ever invented," there is no mention at all of how much a ball should be inflated, or whether air pressure can be altered during competition.

Note to Ted Wells: There's no mention of air pressure on the USFGA's website either.

Almost all footgolfers have a preferred ball: The Adidas Speed Cell, released in 2011 but no longer made. It's light, and carries long and true. The footgolfers hoard them. They go for at least $200 on eBay. The Argentines scour the earth for them. Otero is said to have gobbled up 15 Speed Cells, all by himself, which makes it seem like he's stockpiling them to deprive his rivals as much as for his own use.

Woody finally snagged a Speed Cell the day before he traveled to Spain. He had never played with one before. His win, he says, couldn't possibly be a coincidence.

A funny thing about footgolf: it could wind up saving regular golf. Since 2006, there's been a net loss of 643 golf courses in the United States. If current projections hold, within the next few years golf will have lost a third of its American players over a 15-year period. The Tiger Woods boom is over. The American economy is increasingly defined by income and wealth inequality. Golf is an expensive and fussy and time-consuming sport, and fewer and fewer people can afford to bother with it; by contrast, footgolf feels almost like a parody of golf, a chance to mock the snobbery for an hour or two, accessible to the 99 percent.

Already, footgolf has become an alternative revenue source for golf clubs. It takes just a few months for them to recoup their investment, and one course in California allegedly sold 200,000 rounds of footgolf last year.

For the players, footgolf is easy to learn, quicker and cheaper than golf. Most courses charge less than $20 for a round. "It's bringing in a new crowd," Woody says. "The people that aren't playing golf—Millennials, Hispanics—are playing footgolf. It's not a lot of equipment to buy. Your shoes. Your ball. And your leg."

A few weeks after my game with Woody, I played nine holes with family. I shot 3-under. It cost me all of $8. I still haven't had my beer, but I'm thinking of getting a Hogan cap.