Grandpa plays golf, grandson plays FootGolf

Lasse Eriksen was a professional football player in the eighties. The ex-defender played golf also, so when he saw the mixture of these two games, his future was decided. Now, he is in charge of the international affairs of the Norway FootGolf Association and also a member of the Board of Directors of the Federation for International FootGolf. He promises, the Norwegian national team will be a strong one in the World Cup.

Lasse recognised FootGolf as a promising newborn sport less than five years ago. “A few people played a game similar to FootGolf in camp grounds and parks in Germany and in Denmark, where I saw it. We joined the rest of the world in the spring of 2013, when we started to play in golf courses in Norway and with the help and support of people from the existing country organizations, especially Hungary and Argentina, we started generating some success. By the end of that year we had two courses to play FootGolf and last year we added seventeen more. Today, we have nineteen courses, and one of them is dedicated for FootGolf only.”

Norway has two hundred golf courses, which is not as much as for example Sweden has, but there are no place to play FootGolf yet so, other than continue promoting the sport in our country, we hope we can contribute to expand it in the region.

He added, “Other than kids and youth, It is really nice to see adult and senior people playing FootGolf, as well. Our sport is fantastic, it can be played by anyone. What I really like about in this sport is that you can have a plan for the game, even if you can not kick the ball far away.”

Lasse Eriksen believes, the ex-professionals can promote the game, but the most important thing is to have FootGolfers on the courses, not only for tournaments but, everyday, if possible. “One of the best chess players is Magnus Carlsen, who loved to play FootGolf, when had free time. It helps us, but we need players to the events.”

Norway is going to hold a stage of the European Footgolf Trophy Tour 2015 at the end of May, “This tour unites the FIFG members much more and not just Europeans, because players from all the world can join us, as we saw last time, when Mark Woodward from the United States won the first stage in Marbella, Spain.”

Norway needs more golf players on it’s courses as any other country all around the world and since FootGolf is a great sport to invite the entire family, “Our slogan is: grandpa plays golf, while grandson plays FootGolf”. We have been working on building relationship with many schools and businesses around the country, they are now buying  time to be on the courses for their PE classes, and we are getting requests for business events also.”

The Norwegian association focuses on growing the base as a player, hoping to average a hundred players on their tournaments. “This season is more important than the last one was, because our championship is qualifying for the next World Cup. We will come up with a quite strong team, wait and see.”

Lasse Eriksen on the left