St Petersburg University students win prize in the Games of the Future phygital minigolf tournament
Students from the Graduate School of Management at St Petersburg University have participated in the All-Russian Phygital Minigolf Tournament as part of the Games of the Future promotional programme. In the team competition between cities, golfers from St Petersburg, represented by St Petersburg University students alongside students from other universities of the city, took second place.
Phygital minigolf is a contemporary version of the classic golf game. Like all disciplines of the Games of the Future, it combines real sports and sports video games. Initially, athletes compete on the minigolf courses before moving on to the Sony PlayStation 5 video game console. Subsequently, the points are tallied and the winners are determined.
Games of the Future is the inaugural international multisport tournament in the realm of phygital (physical and digital) sports. The tournament took place from 21 February to 3 March 2024 in Kazan and saw over 260 international teams and more than 2,000 participants from across the globe. The organising committee for the planning and execution of Games of the Future was set up by the Ministry of Sport of the Russian Federation.
One of the teams representing St Petersburg at the competition was the team from St Petersburg University. The team consisted of students from the Graduate School of Management at St Petersburg University: Aleksandr Antonov, Svetlana Antonova, Elizaveta Vandysheva, and Zinaida Korotkaia.
We began training in a small office on the Mikhailovskaya Dacha campus, and we were able to gather 70 interested students independently. Now, we aim to shift the training outdoors and await suitable weather conditions.
Svetlana Antonova, student at St Petersburg University
Participation in the competitions has been an experiment for students from the Graduate School of Management at St Petersburg University (GSOM SPbU), as they usually engage in regular golf, not minigolf, and have never undergone serious training in a digital setting.
'Knowledge of the hitting technique aided us during the tournament, but using a different club posed a challenge,' Svetlana Antonova shared. 'Among the participants in Games of the Future, there were professional golfers who, like us, were using the video game console for only the second or third time. The competition was evenly matched and tough, especially emotionally, when you recognise that you could have performed better. Nonetheless, it is an enriching experience. We gained insights on hitting and selecting clubs based on the computer’s recommendations in varied situations. Undoubtedly, this signifies professional development.