When the action gets hot and heavy at some Hawaii golf courses, you might hear someone cut loose with “GOOOOAAAL!” instead of “Fore!” or “Get in the hole!”

That’s the temptation for people playing FootGolf, a hybrid game that combines the trappings and strategy of golf with the simplicity of soccer. The sport requires players to kick a regulation soccer ball across obstacle-filled fairways, roughs and bunkers and into a 42-inch-diameter cup set in the ground.

“You’re on golf carts, you get a cooler, you kick it, you find it and see who can get it in in the least number of kicks,” said John Yeadon, director of sales and marketing at the Hyatt Regency Maui, who plays with friends and colleagues at nearby Ka‘anapali Golf Courses.

“Just like a golf shot, you have to take something off your kick as you start to get closer in, and then you’ve got hills,” he said. “You’re playing angles and trees, and you’ve got hazards in your way.”

Yeadon has kickball in his veins, playing in leagues in Denver a few years ago, but the roots of FootGolf lie in soccer. The sport was created about a decade ago in Europe by professional soccer players who played golf in their spare time.

It made its way to U.S. mainland courses, and now there’s an American FootGolf League, which holds tournaments and has certified almost 500 courses throughout the country. (True to its soccer roots, the league is holding an exhibition match March 29 in California pitting the U.S. women’s national soccer team against their Japanese counterparts in a rematch of the Women’s World Cup.)

Yeadon, 32, remembers the pleasure of sinking a 60-foot shot at Ka‘anapali. “You’re just thinking, ‘That could go, that could go!’” he said. “We’ve had a couple where the ball hits the pin and bounces out, but this one went right in and it was great.”

Ka‘anapali Golf Courses is among three venues in Hawaii offering FootGolf to the public. It schedules tee — er, kickoff — times for 3:30 p.m. or later daily, after regular golfers have cleared the course.

On Oahu, FootGolf is offered at Turtle Bay Resort on the North Shore and at Bay View Golf Park in Kaneohe. Joint Base Pearl Harbor also offers FootGolf at its Ke‘Alohi Golf Course for military personnel and people with a military sponsor.

Turtle Bay has set up a separate 12-hole course for FootGolfers, but at Bay View, FootGolfers and golfers share the grounds, with the FootGolf holes set to the side of the golf greens. Both nine and 18 holes are available for FootGolfers on a course that features manicured fairways, roughs, grass bunkers, woods and water hazards, with lengths ranging from a 90-yard par 3 to a 300-yard par 5.

That’s not an unmanageable distance “because the grass is cut down so short on our course, the ball rolls like crazy,” said Larry Dunn, 52, who manages Bay View. “I’m not a soccer player, but I can kick it almost 50 yards per kick. I just kick it hard and it rolls down the hills. It’s fun, and you can actually make some birdies out there.”

Bay View has even hosted a FootGolf tournament, attracting a European player whose soccer skills were readily apparent. He scored a 3-under on the 9-hole, par 34 course, which Dunn thinks is the course record.

“The one hole that you kick over the creek, usually you lay up on your first shot and then you kick over. The dude kicked it over the creek on his first shot and then made birdie on that hole like it was easy,” he said.

As for yelling “GOOOAAL!” after a great foot putt? That’s frowned upon.

“We try to educate the FootGolfers that the golfers don’t want to hear screaming and yelling or stuff,” Dunn said with a laugh. “When a soccer ball goes astray, they don’t yell ‘Five!’ or anything like that.”