Most evenings during the golf season, the Sagamore Hampton Golf Club greens in North Hampton are filled with teenagers … and soccer balls. They’re playing FootGolf, a hybrid of soccer and golf where players try to kick a soccer ball into a hole following rules similar to golf. Players aim a soccer ball at a 22-inch hole and are not allowed to wear cleats.
The Sagamore Hampton Golf Club is the only course in NH and one of 14 in New England that offers FootGolf. Since it opened the course to FootGolfers in June 2014, about 2,000 rounds of FootGolf have been played. There are more than 300 courses nationally that belong to the American FootGolf League. Most of them are in the south, though California has the most.
For Sagamore Hampton, FootGolf is good for business, attracting a diverse crowd of players to the club, says Kate Blais, the clubhouse manager. “I have also seen grandpas come out with their small grandchildren to show them where grandpa comes to play golf, but they get to play a less frustrating, easier game,” she says. “It’s great because they can do something together, outdoors, and in a completely different setting than they are used to.”
FootGolf was originally invented in 2008 by a group of players from the Netherlands, and the sport made its way to California in 2009. FootGolf is typically played at Sagamore Hampton after 6 p.m. during the summer when golfers tend to leave the course and after 5 p.m. when the days get shorter. It is only played on the course’s front nine holes.
Although played recreationally at Sagamore, there are tournaments similar to PGA Golf tournaments played across the country.
A round at Sagamore costs $19 per player and $5 for a rental ball, if needed. The groups are limited to four players per tee time, and the course sees about seven to nine groups on their busiest nights, usually
Fridays and Saturdays.
Many traditional golfers have a hard time understanding why the course added FootGolf, but the club provides FootGolf ambassadors to answer questions. “It’s almost like a conversation piece. What are those orange flags out there?” Blais says of the FootGolf holes. “We explain we are trying to get a new demographic to play golf.”
By Allison Rodenbush, of the Young Reporters Project, a partnership between Business NH Magazine and University of NH in Durham.