Dubai: Golf could become the new darts if a new four-stage Long Drive World Series, which tees-off with its first ever event at Jumeirah Golf Estates on Friday, hits off.
With live DJs, pyrotechnics and food trucks, organisers are hoping to revolutionise the sport, and open it up to a younger, more hip and cool, audience.
Although the first leg is being held at a golf course, Jay Boisvert, managing director of the series, has hopes of holding future legs of the tour — slated this year for London, Singapore and Las Vegas — in even wackier locations, like off the back of a yacht in Cannes, or from the top of the Burj Al Arab helipad.
The concept is simple: whoever hits the ball furthest wins.
Two wildcards from the general public have already been entered into Friday’s final with eight past and present Long Drive world champions; one by virtue of winning an open qualifier on Thursday, and the other having won an in-store simulator challenge.
Now all 10 participants will be eligible to win their share of the £50,000 (Dh223,281) prize-money on Friday.
“Golf viewership has declined because people don’t have four days to invest in watching a tournament anymore,” said Boisvert. “With the internet age everything has to be quicker and sport is evolving, cricket has T20, rugby has sevens, and even snooker is holding timed shot events to speed things up.
“With the Long Drive World Series you won’t have to invest four days anymore as it’s all over within three hours.
“And how many sports give you, the fan, the opportunity to turn up on a Thursday and potentially compete among the world’s best in front of a global reach of 1.2 billion TV viewers, by Friday?”
Reaction from sponsors has been positive and by the final event, slated for Las Vegas later this year, Boisvert hopes prize money will be as high as £1 million.
“If you look at darts 15-20 years ago, maybe only the top five were full-time and the rest of the guys had side jobs, but after rebranding, attracting a new audience and sponsors, prize money is through the roof. That’s what we hope for our series.
“Players can certainly make a living not only from prize money, but through sponsorship from everything from clothing brands to protein shakes.
“What we like about the concept is that it’s something you can measure, and I know there are people out there who can hit over 400 yards that don’t even know this is a sport, and they are the people we want to attract. We want to grow our player pool and increase our event fields. This event there are 10 players but by London in July we want 32.”
As well as attracting a new audience to the sport, Boisvert also acknowledged it would attract a new type of player. Just as rugby sevens has attracted American football stars, golf could be seeing baseball players and cricketers make the leap. But he says he doesn’t want to lose newcomers to the mainstream game.
“The potential is there for them to get into golf but we hope to create a market that’s big enough that they won’t want to leave and we’d rather players come from golf to us rather than the other way around.”
