Golf Marathon. Belated.

Drew rightly pointed out to me this afternoon that I have YET to post about Golf Marathon, which is horrible of me, because it was a GREAT DAY.

Golf Marathon was held a week ago Monday (August 29th) at the Avalon Golf Course in Burlington...what Golf Marathon required of me was waking up at 4:30am, throwing myself into the car, driving the 35 minutes to the course, and prepping for a day-full of caddying. My buddy for the day was Senior Pastor Verlin Elmore, who is a very funny man, and who was very excited about the hundred holes of golf he would get to play. He was intense. He was driven. He was focused. I, on the other hand, was nursing a chain of espressos and driving like a madwoman as our cart swerved down the fairway.

So since Golf is a very numbers-driven sport (Hole 7. 487 Yards. Par 5. 3 Wood.), here's my Top 5 list for things one should know in order to effectively caddy for a Golf Marathon:

1. When caddying one-hundred holes of golf, the caddy is expected to be awake at all times. I do recall Pastor Verlin asking me at least four times in a row for the yardage of our hole, and I incorrectly answered him all four times because I was too incoherent to properly read the score card.

2. Golfers do not appreciate it when you call attention to their bogey's. At Golf Marathon, we give out all kinds of awards, like, for "Lowest Score," "Highest Score," "Most Birdies," "Most Shots in the Woods," etc. Verlin had a lot of bogeys, and everytime he shot one, I'd get excited and sing "Bogey, bogey, bogey, bogey, boo-gaaaay," to the tune of the "Money" song from "The Apprentice" in a falsetto...because I thought we were in the running for "Most Bogey's." I don't think it was an award he cared to win. I had to sing the song at least 52 times before he found it endearing. And we didn't win anyways. We had 52 bogeys and someone else had 63.

3. Golf courses have lots of unwritten rules that caddies get in trouble for breaking, even if they didn't know about them, like, "You may not drive the cart on the tees," and "You may not drive down the middle of Par 3's," and "You may not let your friend Heidi hitch a ride on your rear bumper." I also got yelled out by the court marshall for driving on the fairway, which is really weird because supposedly you're allowed to drive on the fairway. I got the last laugh though, because it said you were supposed to lose cart privileges after two violations, and I still had mine after FOUR.


4. Golfers have more fun when they play in groups. Verlin and I golfed alone for 85 holes, but for the last 20 or so, we golfed with Dr. Spencer and Dr. Cavanaugh. When men are golfing together, they like to ha-ha each other when they make better shots, or ooh and ahh each other's awesome shots. Plus, it's a confidence builder to see your buddies out in the woods more than you.

5. Golfers at the YD Golf Marathon work really hard at fundraising. For instance, for the day as a whole, $75,000 or so was raised in pledges. Just for Arlington area, over $21,000 was raised by our nine golfers. Dr. Spencer raised $4000 which will go towards my personal support, and Pastor Verlin raised $3700.

So...by the end of the day, I was ready to sleep for days, but it was an awesome way to raise $75,000. I already have plans for how I can be an even more awesome caddy next year. Heidi suggested we do a "Pimp my Golf Cart," and deck it out with a stereo, plasma screen, and lots of streamers. I don't know what the Course Marshals would have to say about that. Wait, yes I do...