Slovenian invents new game - tennigolf
Bovec, 29 September - A Slovenian sports aficionado has come up with a new hybrid sport, a mix between tennis, golf and footgolf that he calls tennigolf. The game is played on a golf course with a racket and a tennis ball, while the target is a footgolf hole half a metre in diameter.
"Tennigolf is a new sport that nobody in the world has registered or patented," Aleksander Kravanja, the inventor of the sport and owner of the Bovec Golf Course, said at the sport's world premiere yesterday.
The Bovec Golf Course has been offering footgolf for a several years now and has even hosted an international competition and national championships in the increasingly popular sport.
According to Kravanja, tennigolf is more accessible than golf, which requires a lot of skill, or footgolf, which requires between three and five kicks of a football for a single hole.
Bovec is currently the only place where it can be played, but next year the plan is to introduce it at several more courses across Slovenia.
In the coming weeks, the new sport will also get more precise rules and a handicap system.
There are quite a few hybrids between golf and other sports. Disc golf is particularly popular and players have five courses available in Slovenia.
Footgolf is much more recent but has exploded in popularity, with an estimated 120,000 active players worldwide at the moment.
Kravanja, 51, took a liking to footgolf several years ago.
"I started with golf and then I realised that other activities can be performed on a golf course. I tried footgolf and I realised people were enthralled with the sport... I'm sure tennigolf will thrive as well and in the future we'll be able to say that Bovec is the homeland of tennigolf," he said.