Captain’s Midsummer Madness
Guest Blogger: Andy Caine
Captain of The Drift Golf Club in Surrey, Andy Caine, rose to the challenge of playing 100 holes on the longest day of the year, accompanied by fellow members Clive Abbott and Nick Stephens. Their efforts raised money for The Rainbow Trust.
After a number of years of playing 72 holes of golf at the Drift in aid of the Captain’s charity for that year, I was challenged to “make it a bit more difficult” and, being foolhardy, I blurted out that as it was my captaincy year I would play 100 holes in a single day. I managed to find two other members mad enough to accompany me and, together, we made the rash promise to walk the whole way and carry our clubs.
It couldn’t be much more difficult than 4 rounds, could it? It’s just another round and a half after all. Then we sat down to work out the logistics. It turned out that there would be 17.5 hours of daylight meaning that we would have 10.5 minutes to finish each hole. To put that in perspective, that is 3 hours and 9 minutes per round for five and a half straight rounds and we’d need to tee off before even the greens staff arrived for work. Suddenly it didn’t seem so simple. We’d clearly need help!
Thankfully it was forthcoming. The Club Manager arranged access to the course for us before the birds were awake; the pro shop provided buggies throughout the day as support vehicles, and my charity, The Rainbow Trust, provided collecting buckets and banners to advertise the day. With a support team assembled and a plethora of home-made flapjacks, bananas and other tasty morsels to sustain us, we were set.
At 4:15am we were waiting for the light to be good enough to see which direction a mid-iron would head from the 1st tee. 5 minutes later, we were off. We would start by playing the first through the fifth holes, and then the tenth through the fourteenth, leaving us with five more full rounds to play. We had a timetable with us indicating what time we should finish each hole and, knowing we would slow as the day went on, we decided to go hard early and try and get ahead of the clock. To our astonishment, we finished the first 10 holes in just an hour – a full 30 minutes ahead of schedule – and the first full round flew by in just 2 hours and 10 minutes. Why does it take over 4 hours normally? We were way ahead of schedule now and found ourselves setting a new challenge – how early could we finish? As we prepared to tee off for our second full round, a generous (or merciless!) member offered to sponsor us £1 for each hole on which one or more of us made par or better, so now the golf needed to be good as well as fast.
The next round was finished by 10:10am, nearly 2 hours ahead of our original schedule, and at this point we knew time would not be a factor any longer; it was just our stamina and willpower that were being tested. Our support team kept us fed and watered from the buggy and politely requested any groups we came across to wave us through. We marched on, aware that our walking pace was slowing and our golf was getting more erratic as the afternoon progressed. We took to counting down the number of times we had to climb the hill up 10 and 17 (11 times in total) and keeping track of the number of pars we had scored. We set a target of 70.
And so the rounds ticked by: the third finished at 12:25pm, again taking 2 hours 10 minutes; the fourth by 3:25pm, the slowest of the day at 2 hours 55 minutes. Finally, at 3:40pm, we set off on our final round still needing 13 more pars to make our target. Another member arrived to provide support from the 10th as we trudged through the last few holes until, at long last, after 14 hours and 26 miles of non-stop golf, we finished our 100th and final hole.
Did we achieve our target of 70 pars – no we didn’t. Yours truly missed a 6 foot putt for par on the very last hole which left us on 69. We just had time to throw our stuff back in our cars and retreat to the bar for a well earned pint before the predicted rain arrived at just the time we had been expecting to start our final round. Starting a round in the rain isn’t fun at the best of times, but with 82 holes already clocked up it would have been the stuff of nightmares!
Once again I’d like to thank everyone who helped us out on the day: all the members and visitors to the club who waived us through and gave us encouragement on the way round; the club chef who produced some nibbles for us afterwards, and most of all, those who sponsored us to raise funds for The Rainbow Trust.
Did we enjoy it? Yes, I think we did, in a perverse kind of way. But if someone were to ask me to do it again, I think the answer might well be short and negative.