75 at Countryside

75 at Countryside

Yesterday, my brother and I completed 75 holes of golf in approximately 12.5 hours. Greg and I were gunning for 100 holes, but really we only expected to get in about 72. I'm a little sore today, but none the worse for wear.

Someone asked me if 100 holes in a day is possible, and I would say that yes it's possible, but you must have caveats. First, you'd have to be able to start at daybreak. Countryside in Roanoke, the course we played, was very accommodating, but they wouldn't allow us to tee off earlier than 7 am. You also have to have free real estate ahead of you. We were trying to play around other groups, which caused valuable time wasted in idleness. You would most likely have to play until absolute nightfall. We chose to break off early (7:39pm) with approximately an hour and a half left.

Greg and I are both middle-aged males and both tote around a genetically superior abdomen. For training, we took different approaches. Greg, three years older than me and on the north side of 50, changed careers last year, getting out of the pressure cooker of wholesale wine sales. Since then, he's worked a more relaxed and uniquely different profession as History instructor at Radford University.

I trained by taking my annual summer unemployment very seriously. I've posted a "Gone until August 5" note on my email and even took off with the family to the beach for a week. During that week, I spent just about all my time casting and recasting fishing lines out into the turbid surf. Good training for golf.

We were happily surprised that Countryside offered us a play all day rate when they realized we were serious about marathoning. For one low price, they let us play and play and play. All we had to do was drop the cart by the clubhouse every now and again to check for gas.

We teed off just after 7am and bolted around the course. Greg is quite a good golfer and my skills are much more modest. However, on the first hole, I played decently while Greg ballooned to a big score. From that moment on, Greg spent the day whipping me, not that were in competition with each other. Rather, we were in competition with the environment.

The day began with heavy dew coating all vegetative surfaces and was cool. On the greens, you could follow the path of your putt by tracking the line it drew as it passed through. These natural telestrator images imprinted in our minds served us well as we played each hole 4 or 5 times through the course of the day.

Our first 18 was done in 2.5 hours. That could have been quicker if we had been walking or if we each had a cart. Since we shared our cart and since we were usually wild differently with the golf ball, we were always zigzagging around the course, wasting valuable time. By walking, golf is more of a private point A to point B game; however, we really weren't in the kind of physical shape to pull that off.

When we went to start our second 18, three senior citizens were waiting patiently at the tee waiting for a group of three lost ball hunters midway down the fairway to move on. Getting past one slow group is one thing, but passing two is hard to do, and time was critical to us. We needed to mash in as many holes as we could in the morning hours. So we opted to play the second nine holes again.

As we ripped around the back nine, we got to the 16th hole. I had been playing quite well to that point. That's when my father stopped by to watch us. Dad is well known in the family as being an excellent golfer. In fact, he used to boast that he could play a whole summer with the same golf ball. I, on the other hand, am lucky to play two holes in a row without losing a ball. At almost 87, my pop's health doesn't allow him to play anymore; but his eyes were there at that moment boring into me. My brother thrives on the father pressure. I crumble under it. After we finished that hole, Pop proceeded to follow us in his car around through the next six holes...on all of which I imploded. After he went home, my game returned, and I played solid golf for the next 18 holes or so.

When we finished that 18, we had hoped to play another 18 from start to finish, but due to traffic congestion at the first tee, we again had to dive into the back nine. With the 90-degree heat of the day now fully beating down upon us, I began to lose focus and understanding. In short, I was staggering. We had plenty of provisions. We both were loaded with water, Gatorade, sandwiches, cut vegetables, and fruit. Yet, despite the provisions, I really began feeling the effects of the heat. My friend, Valerie lives along the right side of the 12th fairway, and I'm quite sure I left a golf ball in her backyard. (Digression: I'm never concerned about losing golf balls. While they are very expensive for most people, I actually go out and hunt them in my spare time. So I have a stash of several hundred prime lightly-used golf balls at my disposal. ) After I wagged my way through the hole to the green, my brother asked me if I needed a break. "Hell, no!" was my reply.

My brother's game got stronger as the day progressed. His drives became more consistent as mine became more erratic. His game was quite amazing to behold. I ended up shortening my bag and going with clubs that I seemed to have the ability to control. (5 wood, 6 iron, 9 iron and putter).

We reached the 54-hole milestone at about 3:45pm and realized that 72 holes was a real possibility with 80 not out of the question. Unfortunately, the first tee was blocked by a slow looking three-some behind a painful five-some. Again we took the dive onto the back nine. After three holes, we popped right back to the first hole and teed-off free and clear at 5:45. We knew that 80 holes were a real possibility. The sun began to relent and I began to feel stronger.

Soon, however, we got mired in traffic and had to slip past a slow moving four-some. Then we sailed free through the sixth hole where our younger sister stopped by to chat for a moment with us after her workday. On the seventh hole, we caught up to that slow three-some that we had dodged prior to the beginning of the final round. Man, were they slow and completely oblivious to us. We waited and waited for them on the seventh and eighth holes.

The ninth hole wait seal our doom. My brother and I made our way to the tee box on the ninth ready to put in at least another 9 and possibly more holes, when we were stopped cold. Up ahead, the three golfers were wandering around in the rough searching for their lost golf balls. Five minutes...ten minutes...finally after about fifteen minutes, they extracted clubs from their bags and took their replacement shots before finally moving along.

My brother, forced to idle, suffered from the pause. On his ripping swing, his back popped, and he had posted his last serious shot of the day. We both wagged it in the rest of that hole. We had been joined by a single golfer and VT fan during the wait, and he played alongside us up that final picturesque fairway. Thus, after 75 holes, we ended our day. Without the injury, we easily could have played another 9 holes and possibly 12 more. But all told we exceeded our own expectations.

When you play that many holes of golf, shots blur together. However, I have three that stand out for me. I actually drove the ball from time to time very well. On the eighth hole, once, I uncorked a huge drive in the fairway and was left with only 125 yards to the green. I also played my 5 wood very well. Quite often, that wood was getting 200-210 yards, which is easily about 30 yards longer than normal for me.

The most unique shot for me happened on the second hole in the late afternoon. My tee shot had landed under a low growing dogwood tree. I had no play except a sideways play. With the cart parked on that side of the tree, my brother asked if he needed to move it. I told him I had plenty of room. Ordinarily the ten feet window between the cart and the tree should have been enough, but I flubbed the shot and the ball popped along the ground over to the cart where it seemed to climb up inside the rear wheel tire well and disappear. I didn't come out. I checked underneath the cart and couldn't find it, and I lifted the hood (seat) to the mid-engine compartment with no luck. About 20 holes later, the ball popped out and rolled along the cart.

The weirdest thing happened after our 27th hole. On the previous hole, I found a sand wedge and turned it in to the office. Moments later, while in the parking lot restocking Gatorade, I saw the group that was ahead of us packing up their cars. So I yelled over. One of the guys turned and that's when I realized, he was one of my best friends from high school, Brian Walters. Brian lives in the Boston area and had come to Roanoke to visit with his mother and father. We hugged and talked about how strange it was that we had bumped into each other so randomly. Brian also knows both my brother and father, so he was able to greet them as well. We parted with the thought that perhaps we'd get together tomorrow to catch up.

It's a small world sometimes.