Jordan Nichols enjoys soccer, which she has been playing for many years. Golf, on the other hand, is a different story.
When you combine the two games, you get Footgolf, a developing sport that Nichols has fallen in love with. She’s also quite excellent at it.
Nichols, a 2017 C. Milton Wright graduate and a 2021 University of New Haven graduate, starred in soccer at both institutions until she couldn’t anymore.
“So, I had a bunch of concussions that ended my soccer career during my senior season, well, kind of my senior season because it got canceled by COVID. We had some scrimmages and it was my final concussion,” Nichols said.
“My trainer was like, yeah, you can’t do this anymore, but I still wanted to stay competitive in some way and got an internship at Morphius Records in Baltimore and the owner of the record label, David Andler, asked if I play soccer.”
Nichols of course said yes and the two talked about soccer and Andler asked if Nichols had ever tried Footgolf and she quickly replied, “never heard of it.”
“Always down to try new things, so he took me out and we played and I just fell in love with it,” Nichols said. “I was a center midfielder, so a lot of my strengths were distribution skills, long balls with accuracy, it just happened to translate over to the sport.”
“He convinced me to go to the National Championship and that’s where everything kind of started.”
Nichols’ Footgolf start began in August of last year and it was November when she stunned opponents and herself at the National Championship event in Reidsville, Georgia.
“When I went to the National Championship, it was a three-round tournament and it was like my fifth time playing ever. I was not
confident at all,” Nichols said. Many women had been playing for years and Nichols figured she would lose by a lot.
“I went out to have fun and see what happens and at the end of the first day, I was in third. That’s when my confidence started to go up a little,” Nichols said. “I thought maybe I could win this and then by the end of the third day, I was first, so.”
It wasn’t so easy, though, as Nichols was part of a three-way tie, meaning extra holes in a playoff. “We all tied the first hole and the second hole, I made a birdie and they made a par and bogey,” Nichols recalls. “Made a 12-yard putt with my foot.”
And with that, Nichols was hooked. The victory earned her a spot on the U.S. National Footgolf Team!
More recently, Nichols competed in a pair of major U.S. Footgolf competitions in Orlando, Florida at the end of May.
