Chicago hosts first U.S. FootGolf national championship with 100 players

Sidney R. Marovitz Golf Course on the Lake Michigan shoreline gave U.S. FootGolf its first true national title race, with 100 players from across the country converging on Chicago for the inaugural U.S. FootGolf National Championship. FootGolf USA said the event marked the moment the sport began to look less like a scattered novelty and more like a structured championship discipline.

The format matched that ambition. The tournament was played as a 36-hole stroke-play event, and the opening field stretched well beyond a single region. Contemporary accounts put the turnout at more than 100 players from over 20 states, while one report listed 99 U.S. footgolfers from 22 states, plus competitors from Mexico and Argentina. That kind of reach mattered in a young sport that had only begun building an American circuit a few years earlier.

The road to Chicago started with the American FootGolf League, which was founded on November 19, 2011. The first FootGolf tournament in the United States followed on July 22, 2012, at Chula Vista Resort in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. After two years of promotional tournaments around the country, the AFGL launched the U.S. FootGolf Pro-Am in 2014, then brought the national championship to Chicago at 3600 N Recreation Dr. for an event built on a course designed by FFANS under FIFG parameters.

The sanctioning gave the championship its real credibility. The Federation for International FootGolf formally approved the event, and the Chicago tournament doubled as a qualifier for the FootGolf World Cup at Pilar Golf Club in Argentina on January 6-10, 2016. The top three finishers earned spots on the U.S. team, turning every shot into more than a domestic result and giving American players a direct path to the international stage.

FootGolf USA said the first championship crowned Men, Senior Men and Women champions, and later noted that the National Team competition became the most popular part of the national championship. That shift showed how quickly the sport’s competitive identity evolved: Chicago was not just a celebration of an emerging pastime, but the first blueprint for how FootGolf in the United States would measure itself, select its best players, and build championship stakes that reached far beyond one weekend on a golf course.