In January we mentioned Giles Morgan’s plea for golf to take a leaf out of cricket’s book and radically rethink its format to attract young players into the amateur game. He said that there is room in the calendar for new faster formats. In the next few posts, we will be looking at some of the new formats that are already being tried and proving to be quite popular. We start today with Speedgolf.
Speedgolf is athletic and, as its name implies, Speedgolf is fast. You play a full 18 holes in under 80 minutes, or 9 holes in under 40 minutes by running between shots. The challenge is to match your running pace with your ability to control your heart-rate and maintain accuracy when making your shots.
The aim is to achieve the lowest possible score combined with the quickest time you can manage to run the golf course. This combined total 
gives you your Speedgolf Score. Shooting a round of 84 in a time of 72 minutes and 14 seconds would give you a Speedgolf score of 1560:14.
This year’s event will be held on 16th August at Dale Hill Hotel and Golf Club located on the Kent and East Sussex borders and, if enough entries are received, a new dedicated women’s category will be introduced. The Dale Hill Course is an undulating course and will pose a real challenge for competitors, without being too physically demanding for newcomers to the sport who would like to take part.
Although relatively new in the UK, the sport is gaining momentum, as indeed it is in other countries around the world. British Speedgolf operates the same principal rules as devised by Speedgolf International based in the US.
The Inaugural 2014 British Speedgolf Championships were hosted at Boars Head Golf Centre near Crowborough, East Sussex, where PGA Professional George Scott took the title with a round of 76 in 57 minutes and 28 seconds for a combined score of 133:28
This year’s event will be held on 16th August at Dale Hill Hotel and Golf Club located on the Kent and East Sussex borders and, if enough entries are received, a new dedicated women’s category will be introduced. The Dale Hill Course is an undulating course and will pose a real challenge for competitors, without being too physically demanding for newcomers to the sport who would like to take part. 
Playing Speedgolf is a great way to practice and train. It gives you a good cardiovascular workout and, incidentally, is brilliant for training yourself to cope under pressure when playing competitively in the traditional form of the game. Practically speaking, it is very similar to transition training. Another benefit is that completing 9 holes shouldn’t take you much more than half an hour or so!