French Speedgolf Open raises the bar

Howdy speedgolf family! You’re reading This Week in Speedgolf.

For my fellow 40+ readers: bald plus beard Costanza.

Here’s what’s happening in speedgolf this week.

Yass queen! Make it six for Emily Mollard

French Open photos courtesy of VISION CK by Catherine Khamphou.

Emily Mollard won her sixth French Speedgolf Open title last weekend at Golf International de Roissy, finishing at 251:37 and beating Alice Landon-Rouly by 60:39.

Look, nobody expected Emily Mollard to finish second at the French Speedgolf Open, but this still feels like she’s taking the sport to another level. I say that mostly because of her round 2 69 (-3) in 53:00 for a crisp 122:00.

Her previous best (and course record, and championship record) was 72 in 52:45 for 124:45 in 2023.

Not only did she break the women’s course record, she beat men’s champion James Hardy and every man in the field on day 2.

WATCH: Emily Mollard’s Round 2 French Open highlights

Let’s rewind to last year when Emily made the consequential decision to stop pursuing a career in professional slow golf. She had played on the LET Access Series, but she told me she wanted to focus on her true joys: teaching skiing, teaching golf, and competing in speedgolf.

Imagine if Andy Roddick had decided to quit professional tennis and commit fully to pickleball (ha!)

We’ll never know whether this past weekend’s performance would’ve happened anyway if Emily were still chasing the LET dream. Maybe she was always going to get there. But it’s not crazy to think that Emily’s choice to refocus on her ‘joy compass’ was what made the difference.

No matter what the real driver is, Emily is an amazing player AND content creator. Anyone who wants to win Worlds in November is going to have to get past Emily to do it.

French Open results

French Speedgolf Open | Golf International de Roissy, France | July 3–4 | (Speedgolf France)

James Hardy is not just a golfer anymore

When James Hardy won the 2025 British Speedgolf Championship at Sunningdale Heath, the easy interpretation was that a very good golfer had found the perfect speedgolf course.

That was not an insult. Sunningdale Heath is a short, tricky par 58 where typical times are sub-30 minutes. On a course like that, the golf score decides your fate. Rob Hogan’s brow furrows.

That was the easy analysis of Hardy’s win at the time. In light of recent events, I think it’s time to update our mental models.

Hardy finished fifth at the Scandinavian Open, but in a tight pack of elite speedgolfers. And that’s including what can only be described, with great affection, as a ‘brain fart’ on the final hole. (As we covered last week, Hardy found the fescue, chose not to drop, and made an ugly 7, knocking him down the leaderboard).

Every golfer has built an entire alternate life from one decision they want back.

One week later, Hardy came to Roissy and threw down.

He opened with 74 in 45:54 for 119:54, then backed it up with 76 in 46:30 for 122:30. Total: 242:24. Six minutes and nine seconds clear of silver medalist Rob Hogan. Hogan had the previous championship best with 77 in 44:39 for 123:39 in his dominant 2022 season.

That means Hardy lowered the standard by 3:45.

By the way, Golf International de Roissy, despite its proximity to Charles de Gaulle airport, is not a flat runway with flagsticks. It’s a hot, hilly, 5+ mile run. I understand intellectually that elite athletes can cover that ground in 45 minutes while playing golf. But that kind of speed (from a 46-year-old who was, until recently, presumed to be ‘golfer first’) is near-unfathomable.

Unfathomable in a certain mindset, anyway. But when I step back and consider the trajectory of speedgolf — and endurance sports in general — this is how things always work.

We’re in the middle of an endurance sport renaissance. We saw Sebastian Sawe run the first sub-2-hour marathon this year. Vincent Builliard just shaved nearly 20 minutes off the Western States 100 course record. High-carb fueling, sodium bicarb, super shoes, and cooling are helping athletes across the board.

In speedgolf specifically, we saw Luke Willett run laps around the field in 2025. We saw Harry Bateman break the speedgolf World Record, then Robin Smith demolish Harry’s new record just a couple of weeks later.

Hardy is clearly a unique specimen. But the more these athletes see each other do outrageous things, the less outrageous the next thing seems.

That’s how the performance ratchet works. It’s a great time to be a lover of speedgolf.

WATCH: Speedgolf France’s French Open highlight reel

The SpeedStache European rankings are back

The biggest events on the European summer calendar just happened in quick succession, so it should be no surprise that SpeedStache is back in the lab.

The SpeedStache European rankings are not the official ISGA rankings. The ISGA rankings are a points system. They reward results, attendance, and event strength through an official structure.

SpeedStache is trying to do something different: estimate true skill level.

His model uses a speedgolf handicap idea built from golf score against par, time against time par, and performance quality across rounds.

Here is the current men’s top 10 from SpeedStache’s best-four-rounds model:

Do I think this ranking accurately reflects players’ current speedgolf skill? No, but it’s closer than most!

SpeedStache has admitted this, but the current model is practicing lazy analysis by weighting stuff from the distant past — most notably the 2025 European Open — equally to more recent results. That’s why Carl Palmberg still sits at #1 despite having to withdraw from the French Open (I’m told he was getting over an infection and suffered in the heat) and why Scandinavian Open champ Will Robson is all the way down in seventh.

A result from a year ago cannot carry the same weight as a result from last week.

This is not a shot at SpeedStache, by the way. More rankings = more fun, in my book. Keep ‘em coming!

While we are on spreadsheets

SpeedStache also went on a rant about score notation, and I am afraid I must co-sign every word.

If a player shoots 80 and runs 52 minutes, 30 seconds, the speedgolf score is 132:30.

Colon.

Not 132.30. Not 132,30. Not whatever cursed format your spreadsheet happens to tolerate because Excel assumes every time is a time of day, not a duration.

Why does this matter? Because 132.30 can mean 132.30 minutes, which is 132 minutes and 18 seconds. That is not the same thing as 132 minutes and 30 seconds.

Across one round, that might look small. Across multiple players and multiple rounds, it can change finishing order. (By the way, ask Mikael Palmberg if scoring errors have ever come back to bite anyone!)

We do not need to be doing this by hand anymore.

Folks, it’s 2026. You have a free app, SpeedScore, that will add up all your strokes and minutes, present them in the proper format, and make them available on an app instead of a clunky PDF.

I love a good spreadsheet as much as the next middle-aged sports nerd, but why people are still using spreadsheets to score speedgolf tournaments is beyond me.

Also, while Belgium is in the newsletter: congratulations to Belgium for walloping the U.S. in the World Cup.

Watching the U.S. play Belgium is like winning a local speedgolf tournament and then entering the New Zealand Speedgolf Open. You do not realize how much better those guys are until you see them up close.

Temecula’s going to bring the heat

We’ll do a proper U.S. Speedgolf Open preview next week.

In the meantime, here’s what’s on my mind: Temecula in July is going to be hot.

Not “the competition is heating up” hot. Heat from the sun.

We just watched a Brit dominate the French Open in the middle of a heatwave. If you want to win in Temecula, you had better be ready for the heat.

That is why one little nugget caught my attention this week. Speedgolf Temecula sent me Robin Smith’s Instagram Story showing him running on a treadmill in a heavy jacket.

Presumably: heat training.

That’s good news. Robin’s back injury appears to be healing. He withdrew from the Irish and Scandinavian Opens with a back issue that would’ve had me sidelined until I’m eligible for the Senior division (and then presumably I’d develop a litany of other injuries and retire forever). And coming from a temperate Taranaki winter, Robin’s going to need all the heat acclimation he can get. He’ll be one of the last 2 players off the tee on Day 2 in all likelihood, which means the fog will have burned away and he’ll be baking in the sun.

The U.S. Open is already setting up as one last cross-continent clash before Worlds: Robin, Will Robson, Carl Palmberg, James Hardy, Gatjeak Gew, Kyle Peyton, and Steve Vancil, with the laid-back folks of Temecula hosting with plenty of sunscreen applied.

This week in speedgolf media

Emily Mollard’s Round 2 French Open highlights are the best speedgolf video of the week. That long bunker shot!

Speedgolf France’s awards reel

Kathy Leppard thanks the French Open volunteers. Speedgolf events do not happen without people standing outside for hours watching the rest of us make questionable decisions. Also from Kathy: “Pure Panic” ball spotting for James Hardy

Speedgolf Temecula hosted a girls speedgolf clinic with First Tee Inland Empire.

Rip it & Run is still playing 18 holes before work in Australia, even in winter. What I’d give for “winter” weather like that!

Upcoming Speedgolf

Find your next speedgolf tournament or meetup on Speedgolf Directory.

• Jul 11 — Kentucky Speedgolf Open
  🇺🇸 GlenOaks Golf & Country Club · Prospect, KY
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• Jul 12 — Hope – Torslanda Links Speedgolf Open
  🇸🇪 Torslanda Links · Göteborg, Vastra Gotaland
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• Jul 12 — Wellington Oostende Speedgolf
  🇧🇪 Wellington Golf Oostende · Oostende, West Flanders
  A coastal 9-hole sprint on a former hippodrome, where sea air, short turf, and Belgian tour energy make for a very different kind of round. Sign up »

• Jul 24 — 10th U.S. Speedgolf Open
  🇺🇸 Temecula Creek Golf Club · Temecula, CA
  A chance to play the flagship championship of American Speedgolf in a setting that still feels welcoming, fun, and unmistakably Southern California. Sign up »

• Jul 26 — ECPG Zwijnaarde Speedgolf
  🇧🇪 ECPG (Zwijnaarde) · Ghent, East Flanders
  A compact castle-side sprint near Ghent, ideal for players who love precise 9-hole speedgolf and almost no wasted motion. Sign up »

• Jul 26 — Speedgolf Hokkaido Open
  🇯🇵 Golf5 Country Bibai Course · Bibai, Hokkaido
  Japan’s northern 18-hole tour stop offers sunrise-start speedgolf, a full-length test, and the feeling of the sport stretching beyond its usual hubs. Sign up »