Wedges, Pledges and a 100-Hole Golf Marathon

As twilight sent shadows streaking across North Ranch Country Club, Terry Lange, head golf pro at El Caballero Country Club in Tarzana, tapped in a short putt for a par, carding a round of 75.

Nothing extraordinary there. Lange shooting a 75 is about as common on a golf course as loud pants.

What made that round a bit different, however, was that Lange previously had played an astonishing 82 holes at North Ranch that day. The final putt capped a 100-hole golfing marathon for Lange, El Caballero assistant pro Tim Caldwell and 30 other pros in a fund-raiser for junior golf associations.

When Lange walked off the 18th green for the last time, he had played golf nearly nonstop for 11 hours. “The first 10 holes were practice,” said Lange, 47. “But we kept score for the last 90.”

Lange and Caldwell, 44, led the fund-raising efforts in Monday’s event, collecting $4,500 in pledges from El Caballero members. The money went to that club’s junior golf association and the Southern California Junior Golf Assn.

It was, Lange said, a surprisingly enjoyable day. “I had never played more than 54 holes in a day,” he said. “Tim and I wore out three golf carts. . . . It was like pit stops in an auto race. They put sandwiches and drinks in the carts, and other than a very few stops, we played without a break.”

The day of endurance golf taught Lange something. “We played so fast that we didn’t have time to think of anything bad,” he said. “You just stand there and hit the ball without any thought at all.”

Only once, Lange said, did he have to deal with the mental strain.

“We had been playing for five hours or so,” he said, “and it occurred to me that we still had 55 holes left to play. I had to stop thinking about it.”