The Alternative Golf Association launched the $10,000 Longest Golf Ball Challenge to inspire inventors and engineers to add fun for players of its new game, testing under the name Project Flogton (“not golf,” backward).
AGA founder and inventor of Flexon eyeglass frames and golf clubs Bob Zider conceptualized and funded the contest to unleash equipment developers from the United States Golf Association‘s conformance constraints.
The prize-winning ball will be used for long shots only, and it does not have to have dimples or otherwise look like a traditional golf ball.
It must, however, test out for 25 percent more distance for players of swing speeds of 80 to 100 mph than current USGA-approved golf balls do, and meet the criteria listed in the official rules.
Scott McNealy, the longtime CEO and founder Sun Microsystems (since acquired by Oracle), is commissioner of the Alternative Golf Association.
“I love golf,” he said in a release. “I also believe golf is the hardest game on the planet – just ask Michael Jordan, one of the world’s greatest athletes, who at one time wanted to go pro. Just ask Jerry Rice, another amazing athlete who finds himself humbled by golf. If the game frustrates such coordinated and gifted superstars, imagine what it does to the rest of us – especially the child, the supersenior, anyone with a physical limitation, and, yes, even the middle-aged Baby Boomer once thought to be golf’s prime demographic.
“We are all trying to succeed at the same game, played by the same rules and with the same equipment as Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson and the top professionals in the world,” he added, “and at that we are doomed to fail and frown.”
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