By Larry Coffman
This is the saga of four guys’ 31-mile trek over tough terrain that began at the crack of dawn and ended 16 hours later at last light—and by the way—they played 72 holes of golf to boot!
Participants in this unique odyssey at the challenging Chambers Bay Golf Course on July 1 are all members of the Trossachs Golf Group (more about it later). In Photo 1, taken after the first 18 holes, are, from left, Peter Wengert, Michael Lynch, a Chambers Bay member and spearhead of what he called his “quest,” Paul Schweitzer (aka “the energizer bunny”) and John Scholl, my long-time and closest golf buddy, who provided the details and photos for this improbable story. [One wag quipped that if Michael had been named Mark, they could have called the event “The Four Apostles At Chambers Bay!”]
John had just over a week to prepare for the uncommon challenge (the original idea was a mere 36 holes on the June 21 Summer Solstice) and started six straight days of carbo-loading, during which he gained five pounds. He also stepped up his normal morning-walk regimen by adding a hill that matched the grades he’d encounter at Chambers Bay.
Peter warmed up for the more-than-a-marathon by playing 36 holes the day before at Suncadia! He also was the designated driver to and from Chambers Bay and the Newport Hills Park-and-Ride lot, where they met and carpooled.
Michael scheduled the order of play and time targets for all 72 holes—a Rubik’s Cube that took into account that the public would begin arriving early in the day and slow them down, if they had followed the normal sequence of holes. The routing was further complicated by their self-imposed rule that no hole could be played twice in the same round for each of the four rounds.
Michael said a re-routing in the afternoon, with the help of a porter (Skip hole #13 go to #1 then return to #13 to complete 13-18 before 9:30pm), was “key to our success.” He emphasized that the event was pre-arranged with the course as a special test run for a possible outing in future years, around the time of the Summer Solstice.
They had begun playing from the 6,500-yard Sand tees the first round, did a combo Sand and the 6,000-yard White tees the second, a combo 6,900-yard Navy, Sand and White tees the third, and the Whites on the fourth. By the end of the day, Peter’s pedometer registered 65,825 steps (see Photo 2), which translates to just over 31 miles—equal to the distance from Chambers Bay in University Place to the south end of Sea-Tac Airport, and that’s without all the elevation changes!
All four had their coolers with food and drinks strategically placed around the course before they teed off. During the ordeal, John consumed nearly 5,000 calories (see his stash in Photo 3)—in every-two-hour mini-meals, while burning about 9,000—showing the wisdom of his earlier carbo-loading.
Chambers Bay is well-known for not allowing the traditional electric golf carts, despite the rolling terrain that goes from a low of 25 feet above sea level near the Bay to a high of 190 feet—repeatedly. And there’s one lone signature tree on the course, which is why John is carrying an umbrella on a dry, sunny day in Photo 4.
Note that John is pulling his cart up one of the many hills. Backstory: He’s a sales exec at Rainier Industries, which is best known for its tent and awning products. He asked one of the workers in that section to make him a custom harness so he could pull his golf cart up the hills, in order to employ different muscles than those used in pushing the cart on level and downhill stretches. Talk about preparation!
Much has been made of Chambers Bay’s change from the original fescue to poa anna grass on the greens, in the aftermath of complaints from the golf pros during the 2015 U.S. Open there. Paul said the new greens were “very consistent 1 through 18,” but he noted that the pace of the putts was noticeably slower, due to the day-long growth of the grass, by the final round.
The four all finished the feat without incident. John admits he “hit the wall” about 2:30pm but got his second wind and felt fine at the end. And they all finished blisterless, thanks to three sock changes and plenty of foot powder. Photo 5 also shows the three extra pairs of shoes (cleats/no cleats/cross-trainers) John packed in case the footing became a problem, but he ended up sticking with the ones he wore at the start.
Knowing super-competitive John’s keen interest in scoring as well as I do, the most amazing thing to me was that he still had not added up the scores when we had breakfast two days later (when he was well-rested and five pounds lighter). He estimated that he shot an average of just under 100 per round for each of the four rounds. This only proved to me that the whole experience was about much more than a golf score to all four of the guys.
John still struggles to explain why he decided to undertake the challenge. “I guess the best thing I can say is that—once I agreed to do it—I felt accountable to the group.” As promised above, Trossachs is a neighborhood on the Sammamish Plateau and this foursome, and others in the group who live there, annually demonstrate that they’re indeed gluttons for golf punishment by playing six rounds (108 holes) over four days (27 both Thursday and Friday, 36 Saturday and 18 Sunday) at courses like Suncadia and Gamble Sands.
Tom Cade, the foremost local golf historian and senior director of communications for the Pacific Northwest Golf Association, offered some perspective: “Seventy-two holes in one day is very unusual. Lots of players try to do something during the longest days of the year, but to play four rounds in one day, and to play them over and around one particular course, takes some ingenuity (and a little bit of madness) to do.” Tom also collaborated with author Blaine Newnham on the full-color coffee-table book titled America’s St. Andrews, which was published in 2015 at the time of the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay. It chronicles “how against all odds, Chambers Bay, in 2008—just an eight-month-old publicly owned facility in University Place—was selected to host the 2010 U.S. Amateur Championship as well as be the first course in the Pacific Northwest to host the U.S. Open.”
P.S. Full confession: John Scholl and I have been serious golf buddies for the past 15 years and about 12 years ago invented a scoring game that we call Lewis (me) & and Clark (him), for which we even have laminated rules. There’s also a rotating L&C trophy (which mostly rotates to John) that we award at an annual dinner for just the two of us each Winter. And each year we go to Spokane during the British open, playing our L&C golf competition during the day and getting up at 4am to watch golf from the British Isles.
John also is a legendary scorekeeper and statistician in our golfing group, having been known to keep the score of three games (Nassau, L&C and Stableford) among four players on a single scorecard! And even the losers look forward to his analysis of multi-day golf outings, replete with charts and graphs.
In the midst of all the Chambers Bay prep, John and his wife, Kristine, celebrated the birth of their first grandchild, Riley Lynn. The parents are their son, Michael, and his wife, Kelly Koopmans, a morning anchor on KOMO-TV. Congrats to all.
P.P.S. The last time John appeared in a post here was to record his hole-in-one (aka “Scholl in one”), scored on June 17, 2016 with a pitching wedge on the 133-yard Par 3 fourth hole at the Home Course in Dupont, home of the Pacific Northwest Golf Association.
