Traditionally, Fantasy sports have consisted of picking a team based on a draft or a salary cap and has increased dramatically with the likes of FanDuel and ESPN among various other fantasy platforms. However, a sport that has lacked Fantasy popularity is golf. Now with Fun On the Links, the golfer can play on a team with their favorite professional golfer, against friends and golfers around the nation.
JJ Manning, the founder of Fun on the Links, says “Fun on the Links is about giving even the most casual golfer the opportunity to team up with two PGA Tour players to win big prizes. We extend a simple round of golf into weeks of entertainment, as they compete in the ultimate fantasy sports competition with the largest purses available in amateur golf”.
Fun on the Links is an application that serves as a virtual scorecard for your round of golf. Once the golfer finishes their round and enters it on the app, they can pick the Professional golfer of their choice. Fun on the Links will pick the best scores per hole on each team, and uses the team score to compete with other golfer’s teams from around the nation.
Essentially, the app creates a Pro-Am tournament for any golfer in the United States, giving the participant the opportunity to use their scores from any of the 11,800 USGA certified courses along with a professional of their choice for that week’s PGA tournament.
The challenge for Manning is introducing the app to players who do not have a handicap. There are numerous ways to reach those players that have handicaps. Out of all golfers, “85% of [them] are without a handicap, and 70% of core golfers (golfers who play over 10 times a year) don’t have a handicap” said Manning. The lack of any organizational structure for the casual golfer makes it difficult to communicate with them effectively.
Fun on the Links is setup to allow each golfer, regardless of whether they have a handicap or not, to enter their personal score from the round. The non-handicapped players will have their handicap randomly generated for them by picking six random holes and calculating the average over par for those holes, then extending that to an 18 hole handicap. Divisions are split between handicap and non-handicap players to ensure a level playing field for all golfers.
The application also gives golfers a way to standardize scores no matter the course that the golfer plays on. “Taking index, course rating, tees, genders taking it all into account to create a leveled playing field among players, creating a virtual golf course in cloud services” said Manning.
Fun on the Links was introduced to Kickstarter, and is hoping to reach their goal of $30,000 by November 27, 2015. Fun on the Links is offering free entry to an exclusive tournament open to all of their backers on the app with a $10,000 purse. Any backer will also receive additional tokens for regular tournaments based on the level of donation.
Fun on the Links is aiming to bring a whole new experience to fantasy sports, offering an interactive way for golfers to play along with their favorite professional. The application is hoping to increase the participation in the game of golf by providing an innovation to fantasy sports. If interested in the product you can donate through their Kickstarter page.