The longest day of the year is June 21st. This day is officially known as the summer solstice. With so many extra hours of sunlight, it is the ideal day for a golfing marathon. For the true golf fanatics among us, it's a good enough excuse to take up the challenge of completing three rounds of golf within a single day. That's no less than fifty-four holes. For me, this is something that I haven't done since the good old days when I was a healthy and energetic golfing Californian boy. For the others, a seemingly impossible challenge ready to tackle.

That is how the first annual Zduhac 54 hole marathon was born: a truly historical moment in golfing history. We were a part of this fantastic event, a proud moment to share with the world. Now is our biggest chance to become famous.

We started at the crack of dawn and we were unbelievably enthusiastic about embarking together on such an exciting adventure. The first drives were all down the middle, with many drives to come. Would we survive, could our aging and feeble bodies handle such extremes, how about the mental stress dealing with so much pressure? Turn the clock fast forward. Nearly fifteen hours later and we somehow managed to finish just before the sun went down. From 7:00am until 9:30pm, we golfed and golfed, and when we started getting tired we simply golfed some more, only taking two short breaks between the rounds for a quick lunch and dinner.

We made a fun and relaxing tournament out of it, keeping to the fine spirit of golf. Sport for gentlemen, the thinking man's sport. For the sake of competition and making it kind of official, we kept score (gross and net scores, most birdies and sandies, fewest putts, skins, etc). In the end, there was a designated overall champion. Congratulations to Eric van Mieghem. However, by simply completing this enormous task at our age, we were all winners in the end.

Final hole teebox (almost done).

Finished at last.

Let's forget about the next two days when we could barely stand up any more, let alone bend down to tie our shoes. Our vertebrae seemed to be glued together; the bottoms of our feet were badly bruised. True challenges to prove ones manhood and virility are not without risks, frustrations and much mental as well as physical pain.

For the sake of the history books and all those curious readers, the fearsome foursome consisted of the following fantastic golfers, in order of the net scores: 1st - Eric van Mieghem (221), 2nd - Bernhard Kordic (235), 3rd - Kiffin Gish (242), 4th - Michael Pentowski (249).

Hopefully this fine event will live on in as a proud golfing tradition, maybe even becoming a famous golf tournament someday. Next year I hope to enlist more enthusiastic and crazy golfers to join in our noble cause. For sure, the four of us will be there again.