No Shirt? No Shoes? No Problem!: Tropical Breezes and Rock Music Put Golf in Full Swing!

Crystal blue waters lap up against ivory sands. Joyful shouts and lively beats create a liberating vibe. Then, the thwack of a golf club hitting a ball (yes, you read that right!) rings out. Down here on the beach on Miyako Island, summer starts earlier than on the mainland. For 14 years, the Miyako Island Rock Festival—Miya Rock for short—has combined two of summer’s most essential elements: festivals and the beach. And in 2019, GDO (Golf Digest Online) took part in Miya Rock for the first time. 

[Video] Miya Rock 2019 was another big hit, with over 7,000 attendees

This famed tropical rock festival featured local Okinawa artists like BEGIN and MONGOL800 alongside a slew of top acts such as ELLEGARDEN and UVERworld. GDO’s reason for taking part was simple: we wanted to combine rock festival with golf to trigger a chemical reaction that would show young festival-goers how fun golf can be. 

Of course, not everybody who gave golf a try at Miya Rock was necessarily going to end up loving it. Still, it’s GDO’s mission as a company to bring out the fun in golf. We put our heads together to come up with a way for beginners and veterans alike to experience the fun of golf together. And what we came up with was beach golf. 

Beach golf is...well, perhaps you should watch the video first before we explain.

[Video] It looks hard at first, but even beginners can hit this distance

The real charm of beach golf lies in the out-of-the-ordinary experience of hitting balls into the sea. Players stood on the beach and aimed their shots at a floating target a few dozen yards off shore. If they scored a hit, they won a golf ball-shaped bar of soap. To keep the beach safe, instead of golf balls we used rubber balls with LED lights inside that lit up when hit. This ensured they floated on the water and were easy to find. Swimsuit-clad GDO staff retrieved and reused every last ball participants hit so that the ocean waters remained pristine. 

GDO’s beach golf event took place on Turiba Beach, next to Miya Rock’s main stage. It drew more audience members that even we imagined, with people stopping by for a break between artists or at lunch time. Iwashita and Ariyoshi, two festival-goers from Osaka, shared their thoughts with us about what a great experience beach golf was for them. 

――How was your first time playing beach golf?

Iwashita: I was totally blown away. You know that one variety show where they hit balls at a floating island and a celebrity has to catch them? I’ve been wanting to try that out...but there’s no place you can, like, actually do it. And then when I found something pretty close where I least expected it, I was pumped! (laughs) 

――Did you have fun even though you’d never played golf before?

Ariyoshi: I did! It would’ve been too hard for sure if they used real golf balls, but with these balls I felt like I could hit the target. And it was cool how they made it so that women and kids could play too, like with plastic clubs (*SNAG Golf) along with regular clubs. 

――Do you want to give regular golf a try?

Iwashita: Yeah, I think I do. I mean, this is kind of more like entertainment, but it’s still golf, right? (laughs) Golf was a total mystery to me until today, but I think the more chances you give people to see how fun it is, the more you’ll get on the radar of young people like me who never played before. I wanna see more fun golf events like this!!

Meanwhile, as GDO’s first venture into beach golf drew a nearly constant stream of visitors, none other than Miya Rock executive committee chair Yoshihito Nozu told us about what he felt the events had in common: “You were a big hit not just with young adults, but with kids, too. It reminded me of what I had in mind when I started Miya Rock 14 years ago with a group of friends—giving Miyako kids a chance to hear real music. Out here on the outer islands, you have to go to Okinawa Main Island to do just about anything, and that’s especially hard when you’re a kid because you can’t just go off by yourself. It’s neat to see this new form of golf you were able to create by bringing golf into our festival."

Since Miya Rock’s founding, Nozu and his core team have given their all to help the event grow. Hearing his words of praise for GDO’s beach golf project, after all the crazy effort it took to bring it to life, was somehow both reassuring and humbling.

In coming to Miya Rock, we hoped that combining golf with the beach and rock music would trigger a chemical reaction that would wipe away the game’s negative image as a sport for old men or a corporate ritual. That, and we wanted the young festival-goers to have fun. We never imagined the event would be this popular among the kids. If it contributes to cultivating future golfers, even if only in a small way, we’ll consider it a great success. 

Beach golf is a new form of golf designed to be photogenic and “Instagrammable,” in line with recent trends among young people. Judging by the number of social media posts it generated, those young people seem to have taken a liking to it overall. We plan to use this experience, with its enthusiastic reception buoyed by a pounding soundtrack, to attune ourselves to the latest trends and pursue new, cutting-edge forms of golf.