The objective was clear: to play a hole of more than 450 meters in less than one minute and fifty seconds. If achieved, it would have broken one of the world records registered in the famous Guinness Book, in this case the one that is or was in the hands of the British Steve Jeffs.
The challenge was to be faced by four golfers from Marbella and the stage chosen to carry it out was the 10th hole of the North Course of the Real Club de Golf Guadalmina, a par 5 of 478 meters, handicap 2 with a straight layout in slight decline and a green protected by three bunkers.
Rubén Holgado, Antonio Arjona, Javier Luque and Manuel Aceña got down to work. The first three are professional golfers and the fourth, amateur handicap 6.7.
The premises to achieve this were simple: carry a bag with at least four clubs and start and finish with the same clubs, that the hole should measure more than 450 meters and always hit with the ball stationary. And run, run a lot. The rest would follow the same rules of any golf game, although with the difficulty of sprinting.
And the race against the stopwatch began, and the foursome overcame it and completed the hole in less than one minute and fifty seconds. The fastest was Holgado, who, with 1:35, lowered the world record held by Jeffs by fifteen seconds. Luque completed the hole in 1:37; Aceña did it in 1:40 and Arjona got it in 1:46.
For the Guinness Book of Records to recognize this new world record we have to wait a while. The four Marbella golfers have sent to the organization a video without cuts that shows the whole scene of the hole and also a certificate from the Real Club de Golf Guadalmina confirming that the distance of the hole in question is more than 450 meters.
One of the four protagonists, Arjona, a native of Seville but based in Marbella, where he works for the company Holiday Golf, tells how they came up with the idea of trying to beat the record.
“The idea came when one of us saw on Facebook that this record had been broken and we started talking about it. We got ‘itchy’ and said we were going to break it.”
The preparation to beat the record was not strenuous at all. “The truth is that we didn’t do any,” he admits. “In fact, the four of us went to the course, chose the hole and what we did do was make several attempts each, some three and others four. None of us got it right on the first try because the balls didn’t go where they were supposed to go.”
But after several attempts, the decisive moment finally arrived and they achieved their goal. On the run and carrying a light bag, the four managed to funnel under one minute and fifty seconds.
Now they will have to wait at least three months for the Guinness organization -if it admits as valid the evidence provided, which is what it requested- to accept their record. This time they are in no hurry, especially considering that if they had wanted to be served in just a few days to obtain the certificate of the new record they would have had to pay 15,000 euros, an amount that would include a large on-site deployment of Guinness World Record. Slowness, in this case, has its reward: they won’t have to pay a single euro. They just have to be patient.
Arjona says that for the moment he and his golfing friends are not thinking about breaking a new record, although “if one appears on Facebook, we’re sure to ‘bite’ again”.
Leave a Reply