For more than a century there has been a “sport” involving combining ultrarunning with golf. No, this isn’t a joke. In 2016, Karl Meltzer of Utah, who has more 100-mile trail wins than anyone, set a world 12-hour speed golfing record of 230 holes, covering about 100 kms in the process. This created attention in ultrarunning circles and we were left to wonder, how long has such a thing been going on?

Running my local golf course
What has been called “Marathon Golf” is the art of playing as many rounds or holes as possible in a certain amount of time, usually a day (24 hours), recording strokes for each round. Golf purists have despised this activity over the years. Ultrarunners are amused and fascinated by it. n 1923 a marathon golf frenzy spread across America and again in 1934 several athletes were contending furiously for the world record.

How many miles is covered by playing a golf round? It depends on the length of the course of 18 holes. Today courses average about 6,500 yards. When I run every hole of my local 7,000 yard golf course straight line using a GPS, the distance comes to about 5.5 miles. But no one golfs in a straight line and there are distances between greens and tees. Today for the average course, an average distance for a round is probably about five miles. Years ago, before golf technology improved, average courses were shorter with a length closer to 4.5 miles. There were and still are very short nine-hold courses where playing 18 holes could be as short as 3 miles.