By General Rodriguez
With dusk falling, Nico Garcia squatted down to read the perilous 20-foot par putt. Needing only a bogey to win Argentina's national championship, he sent the ball snaking downhill across the green, where it stopped just short of the hole. He tapped in for victory — not with a putter, but with the instep of his soccer cleat. Garcia's game is not golf but footgolf, a hybrid that borrows rules and courses from its more established relation, only with a larger ball, a 21-inch hole and feet instead of clubs.
As footgolf emerges as one of the modern alternatives to golf, the subject of fretting over a precipitous drop in participation, Argentina has established itself as the dominant force in the game. "There's no doubt that we're a level above the other countries," said Christian Otero, 36, Argentina's topranked player.
Footgolf, which is played with a regulation soccer ball on a shortened golf course, was formally invented about six years ago in the Netherlands. It came to Argentina shortly after, in 2010, and has flourished: Organized leagues have been formed across the country and the best players, led by Otero, often compete abroad.
The regular competition has given Argentines an unrivaled springboard to develop their game swiftly, said Javier de Ancizar, the 38-year-old president of Argentina's footgolf association. But Argentina's strength on the world stage — footgolf's international governing body has 28 member countries — is also attributed to innate talent, or what de Ancizar called the "raw material" of footgolf.
"When you're born, a soccer ball is the first present you receive," said Marcos Cortes, 29, a steel salesman who is ranked 21st nationally. "Striking the ball is in our physiology; it's automatic." It was an Argentine living in Palm Springs, Calif., who introduced the game in the United States and later helped to found the American FootGolf League. Footgolf is now growing across the United States, where golf courses seeking revenue are embracing it.
Argentina will host the second World Cup next year, after Hungary — the other seedbed of footgolf talent — held the inaugural competition in 2012. (Players always compete individually, but the World Cup may have a team format and prize, too.) "The Argentine league is at the vanguard," said Marcelo Landau, 56, an Argentine-born American who promotes and organises footgolf in Florida and represented the United States at the World Cup in Hungary. "Other countries follow Argentina's steps.
Traditional golf in Argentina remains a hobby of the elite, and a vast majority of footgolf players here are defectors from soccer. "Soccer is my wife," Matias Perrone said, standing on the 10th tee at the national championship.
"And footgolf is my mistress; she tempts me." Perrone, 32, an advertising agent who alongside Otero is one of the world's best players, is also a striker for Santa Marta, a neighborhood soccer team in Buenos Aires.
In 20 years of playing for Santa Marta, he said, the only events that led him to miss matches were violent illness and a qualifier for the footgolf World Cup. He has been at the forefront of the sport's rise, securing sponsorship from apparel companies and his municipal government long before his rivals. were billed as the sport's first pro-am events in Hamburg, N.J., and Oxnard, Calif.
Perrone and Otero defeated international fields to win both tournaments, and their countrymen packed the leaderboards. But while Argentine players have established themselves as the world's best, beginners here sometimes struggle to adapt to the frustrations and etiquette of the sport.
"In soccer, there is a lot of trickery," said Julio Colacci, 40, a businessman who plays on a circuit based in Mar del Plata, a coastal town, and likes to compete wearing a fuchsia beret. "Argentines are hustlers, and we find it hard to respect the rules."
Equipment is mix and match. Players wear polo shirts and use soccer cleats designed for artificial turf. Off the tee, some use low-profile training cones as tees. Every player, however, opts for the same model of soccer ball — the 2011 Adidas Speedcell, which is prized because it runs fast on the longer grass of the fairways. Otero has amassed an envious stock of 15 Speedcells, but since the model is no longer manufactured, players hunt for them like hidden treasure.
In his quest to find one last year, Cortes stopped at every town during the drive from his hometown, Carcarana, in Santa Fe province, to a tournament in Uruguay. He eventually found one at a sports store in Concordia, a border city. "It's a four-hour drive, but it took me eight or nine," Cortes said.