Summary of the 1st day

FIFG FootGolf 2018 World Cup gets underway in Marrakesh Morocco with Frenchmen Alexandre Richer and Nicolas Pussini topping the leaderboard.

The third edition of the FIFG FootGolf World Cup is underway in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh with France already dominating the leaderboard with Alexandre Richer and Nicolas Pussini posting first round scores of 9 and 8 under par respectively.

Britain’s Jamie Cullum from the university town of Cambridge posted a first round 63, seven under, to claim the third place on the leaderboard after day one.

Current World Cup holders ‘Team USA’ are looking to retain their title in Morocco but will face stiff competition from France, the UK and 2016 World Cup beaten finalists Argentina.  

Over 500 players from 33 nations are competing for both the World Cup team trophy and the individual men’s, women’s and seniors titles.

LATEST WORLD CUP SCOREBOARD - LIVE
2018 FIFG FootGolf World Cup Format
Individuals and national teams compete at the World Cup Finals for the men’s team title, men’s individual title and women’s and senior’s individual titles. After players have completed two rounds of the competition the field is cut down to 220 players and 16 national teams. The national team cut is determined by the top four individual scores after round two of the men’s competition. The men’s single tournament then sees a further cut as the best 100 players enter the final day on Sunday 16th December. The team tournament takes place in a knock-out format with FootGolfers going head-to-head in a combination of singles, foursome and fourball matches on Saturday 15th December.  
Schedule for the 3rd edition of the FIFG FootGolf World Cup Finals:
Tuesday 11th - round 2 of each categories
Wednesday 12th - round of 16 team competition
Thursday 13th - round 3 of each categories
Friday 14th - The VIP FootGolf Challenge
Saturday 15th - World Cup Team Competition (Matchplay)
Sunday 16th - World Cup Men’s, Ladies & Seniors final rounds. (Strokeplay)
For more detailed information click this link.
Roberto Balestrini, FIFG President:
“So winning the World Cup for a team, I won’t say it’s more important than winning an individual World Cup but its creates a lot of excitement for a lot of people. So i think that in this World Cup I won’t mention the names of the teams but we have some very strong teams and I think that we are going to see the best of our sport.”
Romauld Pretot, Co-President, World Cup Organising Committee:
“So the styles of FootGolf differ depending on the course a player is playing on. Not everybody has an opportunity to open a course in their country. Now there are two here in Morocco, there are over forty in France maybe seven or eight in Switzerland. Each country has difficulty to open a FootGolf course so in fact the style of play depends on the course a player has available to practice on.”
Nicolas Pussini, Team France (2nd after Day one. 8 under par):
“Today it was fine, I started slowly only par at every hole and then after hole 10 berdie, berdie, berdie, so minus 8 is a very good score today although better is minus 9 but I’m happy with minus 8.”
Jamie Cullum, Team UK (3rd after Day one. 7 under par)
“I was pretty much mistake free I only made one mistake I made just a bogie when I was potentially looking at double bogey or worse so I played a pretty good. The first round is always so important because you can’t win the tournament in the first round but you can certainly lose it and be out of it! So to post that sort of score in the first round I’m obviously delighted.”
Jordan Godfrey, Team USA (Day one 3 under par)
“I think the first time around were definitely were, now people have their eyes on us a little more but I think we are definitely coming in as underdogs this second time around. We do have a lot of new players on the team and compared to last time a little bit less experience but we’re going to come out and do our best to put our talents on display.”
Fred Kuipers, Dutch Coach:
“I think we have good players for the team event too, perhaps we have candidates for the world title at the seniors and the mens. Of course it’s a good competition it’s a tough course I noticed this today because I played it myself, although I’m the manager and don’t play the competition. I have tried to get the team really connected so they can perform very well at this World Cup.”
Alberto de Benito, Team Spain:
“So we know that there are alot of teams who were playing FootGolf for a long time before us, like Argentina, the UK, the Italians and the the Netherlands, so we are not afraid of them but we want to be at the same level. In the last few months the Spanish team were in a competition in Portugal and we were at the same level as the Swiss and the Portuguese, so we don’t have to be afraid of other teams. We just want to be at their level.“
Steven Sui, FootGolf China, President:
“FootGolf is a developing sport in China with only four years of competition but more and more Chinese people are liking this sport and enjoying this sport including the professional former footballers, ladies, seniors and children. They try it once and they find that they love this game. I think it’s for sure that more and more Chinese people will play this game in the future, and as the Chinese Federation that is our goal.”