The answer can be found at Wailea on the Hawaiian island of Maui. There, on or about the longest day of the year for over a decade, a group of fanatics annually plays the 100 Holes of Golf -- all 100 holes in one day! And there-in lies the golf story of the decade -- and the solution to the game's most dangerous demon. Get thee behind me, Slow Play! I've teed it up in seven of these things and believe that the 100 Holes offer lessons that will improve the quality of each golfing experience.
Imagine: In one day, with enough time left over for a prolonged stay at the 19th Hole (actually, by that time, it's the 101st Hole, which has a nice ring to it, although after 100 Holes in the Hawaiian sun your ears tend to ring a little anyway) and to catch a Green Flash sunset before dinner, 32 golfers play five rounds of 18 holes, another 9-hole half-side, plus an extra hole, which everyone plays together for laughs. For guys who play once a month, you'd be in business from now until Christmas.
To put it in perspective: The trio of Rick Castillo, Chuck Ryan and this correspondent once averaged an hour and two minutes per nine for the first 72 holes, then snailed down to an hour and five minutes thereafter. And we did it with very diverse routes to the cup. Or cups, that is. Castillo, the head pro at Wailea, was the day's low scorer with 408 (par is 399, bogey 499). Ryan, a Steamboat Springs, Co. entrepreneur, tied newsman Bob Sevey of Olympia, Wash., for high gross, a.k.a. the Most Exercise Award, with 531 swipes and gracious gimmes.
Following Tommy Bolt's sage advice to "miss `em quick," Sevey's foursome -- including Ray Nagel, state Sen. Bob Herkes and media consultant Mike Middlesworth of Honolulu -- finished the first 99 holes 30 minutes ahead of everybody else.
In their haste, however, Nagel, the former Los Angeles Rams' GM. and now director of the Hula Bowl, lost two golf clubs and a Rolex watch. Fortunately for Ray, who missed the post-golf dinner to fly to Honolulu to celebrate his 29th wedding anniversary with wife Shirley, on another trip around the course he eventually found one of the clubs and the Rolex, which Shirley had given him on a previous anniversary.
Hopefully, Ray was more fun than Larry Stubblefield, who fell asleep at dinner. Stubblefield, the 100 Holes director and one of Hawaii's top players since leaving the PGA Tour and regaining his amateur status, had stayed out until the very wee hours of the morning "baby-sitting" Honolulu sports writers Steve Kimura and Randy Cadiente, 100 Hole rookies, at the Inu Inu Room. Which makes Larry's 410 total all the more remarkable. As he put it: "The good part was that I didn't get hung over until the 36th hole."
Kimura, still in his cups, aced the third hole he played.
Holing tee shots certainly speeds play along, but that's not the reason the 100 Holes is always completed in 12 hours or less, including lunch (okay, lunches), restroom stops, re-loading sunscreen, admiring the scenery and buying more balls and gloves. As Ryan said: "If Sevey and I can play that bad and still play that fast, anybody can."
Not all of the 100 Holes rules and peculiarities are practical for everyday golf, of course, such as each player driving his or her own cart. And two-and-a-quarter-hour rounds are not necessarily desirable. Neither, however, are six-hour rounds, which I had to endure at a popular public course on a recent weekend. But many tricks of the 100 Holes could help friendly foursomes get around in four hours or less without changing the character of the game or the competition.
For starters, the player with honors hits first only if he or she arrives on the tee first. 100 Holers do not stand on ceremony, or in one place for very long. Likewise, players closest to the hole may hit first if they get to their ball first.
A crucial difference is that out of bounds is abolished, white stakes be damned. Any lost ball is deemed to be in a lateral hazard and another is dropped in the vicinity of its departure, which is neither long lamented nor much sworn over. As Jim Leahey, the voice of University of Hawaii sports and in this case the voice of experience, puts it: "Just break the damn 3-wood and get on with it."
In the fairway and on the green, everyone is busy choosing a club or lining up a putt and getting ready to hit as soon as it's their turn. As a matter of practicality, after the first couple of holes nobody wastes time or energy on practice swings, but uses a waggle to focus quickly on the shot at hand. 100 Holers will rake a sand trap for a partner who has to fetch a putter. And putts, even long ones, usually get looked at from only one side of the hole, not from 360 degrees, and in less time than it takes to boil water at sea level, which is the PGA Tour standard.
Also, there is a minimum of small talk and joke telling. Besides speeding play along, there is an added benefit: Only pretty good jokes get told. Most of the talk is golf-related. No business deals are consumated on the course. Nobody carries a beeper or a cellular phone, although the thought has arisen that it would be nice to call a masseuse along about the 63rd hole.
Mostly in the 100 Holes, you have to keep moving and stay focused -- start planning your next shot as soon as you see where the last one resides. That's why we play the game isn't it, to concentrate on the golf instead of the pressing gunk of the world?
That and any of the other 100 Holes tactics will help speed along anybody's day of golf. Because regardless of your score, as a wise Scottish gentleman with whom I once played at Royal Dornoch said: "It's not a game you want to be playing for a long time, now is it, lad?"
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