Golfing Revolution

Attracting a new crowd to the sport, the innovative GolfSixes tournament returns to St Albans next month, bringing with it some of the best players on the planet

- Layth Yousif

Golf fans new and old in the county are in for a treat next month when the short form of the game – the equivalent of Twenty20 cricket – returns to Centurion Club in St Albans, where the inaugural tournament took place last year.

Top stars from the men’s and women’s game will be competing for a pot of €1m (nearly £900,000) over the weekend of May 5-6 in the exciting, quicker version of the game, known as GolfSixes, as part of the European Tour. These include Ryder Cup captain Thomas Bjorn – who will partner his Solheim Cup counterpart Catriona Matthew as the tour includes women in a team golf event for the first time.

The traditional format of golf makes for a wonderful sport, whether you are a Sunday morning hacker or watching the world’s best performing at the Open or the Masters. However, at four hours or more to play, or view, an average 18-hole round, some find this simply too long. Enter GolfSixes, where matches are played over six holes and where the use of a ‘shot clock’ on one of the holes has been introduced to speed up play. All of which means a tournament can be completed in a jaunty weekend instead of four intense days, with a game completed in not much more than an hour.