Jordan Nichols enjoys soccer, the sport that she’s played for many years. Golf, however, not so much.
Pair the two sports together, and you have Footgolf, a growing sport that Nichols has fallen in love with. And she’s good at it, too.
Nichols, a 2017 graduate of C. Milton Wright and 2021 graduate of the University of New Haven, starred in soccer at both schools until she couldn’t.
“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.”
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 played for years, and Nichols figured she would lose 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 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, at the end of May, Nichols competed in a pair of major U.S. Footgolf competitions in Orlando, Florida.
At the Walt Disney World’s Palm Golf Course, Nichols competed in the U.S. Open and came away with a respectable runner-up finish. Nichols (plus 10) finished behind one of the top female players in the world, Claire Williams (plus 6), from England.
Nichols also competed for the U.S. in the Jansen Cup, named for Michael Jansen, the founder of Footgolf. The tournament parallels the PGA’s Ryder Cup, a competition between the United Kingdom’s National and U.S. National teams.
