MONday, JULY 1, 2002

Fourteen hours of pure ecstasy

 

The guy behind the counter called us animals.

The two guys playing ahead of us on one of our rounds said we were "sick."

I can't speak for my friend Chuck, but I felt pretty good as we approached the conclusion of a 14-hour golf marathon at Empire Lakes Golf Course in Rancho Cucamonga, California.

Unless you play golf, you probably can't understand why two middle-aged men would get up at 4:30 a.m., drive 45 miles and be on the first tee before the sun had come over the San Bernardino Mountains.

I have to admit that old line by comedian Rita Rudner comes to mind. When she said a friend of hers was in labor for 37 hours, Rudner deadpanned the audience and said, "I don't even want to do something I enjoy for 37 hours."

Fourteen hours may not be 37, but most women in labor are a lot younger than Chuck and me. For us, 14 hours on the golf course was pretty damn good.

It's difficult to explain why these infrequent golfing marathons have become so important to us. Maybe it's because work and family schedules don't permit us to play weekly or even every few weeks. We're lucky we can carve out the occasional Friday, pay $70 each to play all day and then see how many holes we can complete.

Usually there are three of us, and we're fortunate if we can make it through 54 holes. Either someone has to be home by a certain time or someone starts getting that achy breaky feeling. Besides, three rounds of golf is a pretty good day.

This time, though, we were hoping for more. We were on the course at 6 a.m., first off the tee with no one in front to slow us down. A round of golf on a full-length course can take anywhere from three to five hours, depending on a lot of things, but Chuck and I raced through our first 18 holes in about 2:50 this time.

He's a much better golfer than I am.

Editor's note: Who isn't?

Ouch. Cheap shot. Anyway, Chuck shoots in the mid-to-high 80s when he's playing well, and I've only had one round in my life where I broke 100 on a good course. That was a September day when the moon, the stars and all the planets were aligned properly, and I shot a 98 at Empire Lakes.

It was apparent it wasn't going to happen again on the first round Friday. I staggered through the front nine and made the turn at 58.

"Warm-up round," Chuck said generously.

I told him that was how I had it figured. When I broke 100 last September, it was actually on the third round of the day. Since we had plenty of time on Friday, I was full of optimism.

I felt even better after shooting 48 on the back nine. My 106 was nothing to brag about, but it was the first time I had been under 50 on Empire's difficult back nine. I felt good, and it wasn't even 9 a.m.

We went right back out for another 18 holes. By now the course was a little more crowded, and it took us a little more than 3 hours and 30 minutes to play our second round. My 55-50 was only a small improvement, but I figured a nice lunch break would have me fired up for a good score in the afternoon.

It didn't quite work out that way. I asked the starter if we could get back on the course at around 1:15, and he said that wasn't going to work. We had a choice -- 12:50 or 1:45. We grabbed our club sandwiches and took them with us on our way to our third encounter with the first tee.

We struggled through the third round. Chuck was shooting high 80s, low 90s most of the day, but I messed up and shot 110 the third time through. I had a few good moments, but the biggest was watching Chuck knock in a two-foot putt for an eagle on the Par 5, 500-yard fifth hole.

Midway through the third round, we started talking about how much longer we were going to play. "We've got plenty of daylight left to break our record," I said.

He agreed. Our longest day ever -- with three golfers instead of two -- had been three rounds plus 11 holes of a fourth round. We figured we would definitely get in three plus 12 before it was too dark to see the ball.

We finished the third round and were back on the course for the fourth at 4:25 p.m. As long as there wasn't anyone slow ahead of us, we might manage to complete an entire round before the sun went down.

It was my last chance to break 100, but I soon realized that wasn't going to happen. After swinging a golf club more than 320 times, I was staggering around the course like someone who was downing a shot of bourbon every time he missed a putt.

"I don't care what my score is," I said. "If I can walk, we're going to finish this round."

Chuck agreed. Both of us somehow understood that this was a once in a lifetime thing, that never again would we have the opportunity to play four full rounds of golf in one day. We slogged on, hitting shots in places we had never hit them before and somehow walking onto the 18th green a little before 8 p.m.

We had repeated two holes earlier, so we were actually playing our 74th hole of a very long day. When we finished, I looked across a small lake at my favorite hole on the course, the par three 7th hole.

I looked at Chuck. He knew exactly what I was thinking.

"What the heck," he said, shrugging. "One more can't hurt."

When we turned in our cart, the sun had set. The guy in the clubhouse asked me how many holes we had played. When I told him, he said, "That's the record."

It will almost certainly be the only course record I ever set, and my legs have been aching all weekend. That's all right, though. I hit some good shots and had a great time, even if my scores were nothing special by anyone's standards.

Go gentle into that good night? No way. When the sun sets on my life, I plan to be blasting out of a sand trap or chipping onto a green.

I'm not going to grow old. Heck, I haven't even grown up yet. As long as somebody is calling me an animal, I've got lots of life ahead of me.