Speed Golf in 18 Holes? Fast Chance : Back Nine at Big Canyon Is Rapid-Play Heaven

The numbers whizzed around in the darkness between my face and the ceiling, leering, sticking out their tongues. 60 minutes, 6,400 yards, 18 holes.

An hour?? How was I going to do it in an hour?

I tried to sleep, but it was no use. Midnight came, then 2 a.m., then 4, and still the numbers razzed me: nearly 6,400 yards--that’s about 3.6 miles--uphill and downhill and through trees and around lakes and sand. Eighteen holes in one hour. That’s what? About 3.5 minutes per hole? Less?

Yes, less. I’d never make it. Why did I tell everybody I could do it in an hour? I mean, I’d have a cart and everything--I’d be driving the course instead of sprinting it with a bag over my shoulder. One hour seemed to be the magic time. After all, most weekend foursomes don’t get around a regulation course in less than four hours. I would be playing alone. The math seemed simple.

But still, there was that matter of getting the ball from the tee to the green and into the hole.

This was something I’d wanted to try for years: a round of what might be called speed golf. Playing a regulation course as fast as possible. I’d had it worked out, theoretically, for a long time. Tee off before the first group in the morning, so no one would get in my way. Drive a nice, juiced-up cart. Get to the ball almost before it stops rolling. Set up quickly and hit. Then move on and do it again. Beat the clock.

I decided on Willowick Golf Course in Santa Ana, my local track. I had played it dozens of times and knew it well. It was flat, broad, not terribly dangerous.

But I didn’t count on darkness. Sure, said course manager Chris Donovan, I was welcome to try it. But to be first on the course I’d have to tee off about 5:20, in the dark.

“We get some real fanatics out here who like to start that early and still get to work on time,” Donovan explained. She suggested that if I wanted the luxury of daylight I might want to try to talk someone at a less busy, private course into the idea.

I called my friend Joe De Franco, a founding member of Big Canyon Country Club in Newport Beach. He agreed to intercede on my behalf with the head pro, Bob Lovejoy, who called back within the hour and agreed, if I could do it the next morning, Saturday, at 6:30.

I arrived, bleary and yawning, at 6. There would be no practicing on the driving range. Still too dark. Affable assistant pro Dennis McGavack arrived about 10 minutes later, opened the starter’s shack and gave me a few navigational tips, most of which I was too sleepy to hear. Photographer Henry DiRocco showed up shortly after to ride with me for the first nine holes and record the carnage.

Finally, still in half darkness, Henry and I drove out in a comfortable but less-than-supersonic cart to the first tee (after taking a wrong turn) and, at exactly 6:30 by my watch, I stroked an anemic pop fly into the gloom.

Neither Henry nor I saw it fly or land, but I guessed it was on the left side of the fairway. I rammed the driver back in the bag, dived for the cart and gunned off after it. It was indeed where I thought it would be, but I ruined the good luck by dashing up to the ball, setting up in about .00006 seconds and punching the ball on a low line drive across the fairway far short of the green.

I swore for the first of dozens of times that morning and sped off after it, down a short little hill. I applied the brakes at the bottom, near where the ball came to rest . . . and nearly ended the day with Henry and me in the hospital. The brakes locked and, NASCAR-like, the cart spun on the dewy rough a full 180 degrees and slid down the rest of the hill backward. I sat, pop-eyed, clutching the wheel. Henry hugged his cameras and stared at me as if I had just taken a swing at him with a 5-iron.

*

The next eight holes didn’t get much better. I never spun the cart out again, but after the first three holes I was 15 minutes into the round, and I found myself panting while standing over putts--far from ideal. Nearly every second out of the cart was spent at a trot. The combination of fatigue and my frantic state of mind (“Faster, faster, you’re behind!”) made for truly chaotic golf. Few shots went where I wanted them to. Putts skittered around the green like water bugs.

Henry dove out of the cart at the clubhouse turn, pleading another assignment, and I accelerated off for the back nine--in the wrong direction. McGavack darted out of the starter’s shack and rescued me.

But he couldn’t save my elapsed time: 59 minutes and change. Front nine score: 57.

But suddenly the evil golf gods took a coffee break . . .

Fatalism is a wonderful quality in a golfer, and it suddenly kicked in with a will.

“Well,” I thought to myself, “You’ve already made a hash of it. Why not change your tactics and think of the back nine as an experiment? Slow down. Be deliberate. Don’t rush. Don’t run. Analyze. Strategize. Take an extra few seconds at the address and hit it cleanly.”

I stepped up the the ball on the 10th tee, waggled comfortably into place . . . and clouted the ball straight down the middle. A long, long way out there. I grinned like a fool, watching as it arced gracefully into the dawn.

Two holes later, I had given up rushing around, I had stopped sweating, and, a few minutes later, I canned my first par of the round on the par-3, 176-yard 15th hole after hitting a dead straight shot to the green and into a flock of feeding ducks, who turned and scowled.

It began to be fun. Really fun. Weekend golfers are fond of complaining about slow play, and here I was in rapid-play heaven, and I was scoring acceptably on one of the loveliest courses I’d ever seen. I bogeyed all the rest of the holes save one, which is pretty usual for my standard of play. It was wonderful.

When I finally put my putter in the bag after finishing 18, I looked at my watch and found that I had finished the full round in--almost to the tick--one hour and 45 minutes.

Elapsed time on the back nine: 45 minutes. Back-nine score: 48.

Total time: 105 minutes. Total score: 105. Who says golf isn’t poetic?

Back in the clubhouse, the traditional excuses started almost immediately, as De Franco and I puffed on cigars. With faultless golfing logic, I decided that:

* If I had gotten sufficient sleep the night before, and

* If I had not been playing the course for the first time, and

* If I had hit a few warm-up balls and tried out the putting green, and

* If I had had the smarts to settle down and play deliberately from the beginning, and

* If I hadn’t gotten lost twice on the back nine and once on the front, and

* If I hadn’t nearly killed Henry and myself in the Cart Incident, and

* If Henry hadn’t kept telling hideous jokes, and

* If I had been a decent golfer in the first place . . .

Then I might have shaved the time down from 105 minutes to, oh, 100 minutes.

(Note to those who think they’re fast: The quickest 18-hole round played by an individual--with the ball coming to rest before each new stroke--is 27 minutes, 9 seconds. James Carvill did it at Warrenpoint Golf Course, County Down, Ireland (6,154 yards) on June 18, 1987. Carvill was 21.)