Fife golf cousins battled torrential rain to complete six rounds in a day for charity
Having set a target of completing six rounds back-to-back at Glenrothes Golf Club in the space of 18 hours to raise money for charity, Fife cousins Michael Cunningham and Conner Wood managed to finish the daunting challenge in just 14 hours 15 minutes.
Monday’s golfing marathon at the 6406-yard, par 71 course saw the pair tee off at 4am and eventually wrap up their six rounds at 6.15pm, raising over £1300 for Autism Rocks as a result.
And 18-handicapper Cunningham, 45, who does accounts for Kirkcaldy-based Glen Fisheries, told the Fife Free Press: "Playing all that golf was quite challenging on the knees particularly, but we survived and I managed to enjoy it.
"The weather was miserable for the first three hours, when it was raining. It was a mixture between really heavy rain, downpours, showers and then that drizzle you get in Scotland that just goes through absolutely everything.
"So the two of us got soaked but we did have changes of clothes and we changed our socks every round and dried our feet a bit.
"We just got our heads down, got moving and were kind of averaging two hour, 10-minute rounds. We thought we were probably going to slow down, but we didn't.
"We were playing quite well. I played probably just below my handicap and Conner was brilliant to be fair, making quite a few birdies.
"We sometimes had a quick break, water and food and then away we went again.
"As we were getting kind of stiff and sore as the day was going on, we just found it better to keep moving. We didn't stop playing for too long in case we didn't start again.
“By the time we got to the sixth round I was thinking: ‘Thank God that's over with’.
“We managed to get around quite quickly. We were a bit shocked to finish the challenge three hours 45 minutes under what we expected.
"I take great pride in us finishing this challenge.
“As much as we were suffering at times, we had each other to pull us along.
"Obviously we went through highs and lows because we were playing golf for 14 hours. There were points where each of us was feeling a bit low or whatever but we kind of slapped each other out of it as such.”
Cunningham, who said that he and Wood increased the pace of their play by not taking practice swings before hitting, revealed that other than a bit of knee and hip pain, he was feeling all right in the aftermath of playing the 108 holes.
He added that Wood – a professional golfer who plays off a +3 handicap – was also feeling “a bit achy”.
Cunningham said: “Feeling like that is ok to be fair as we walked about 35 miles and did 70,000-odd steps.
"It was great to have both my wife Anna and Conner’s wife Natalie there at the course cheering us on with the kids.
"And it’s wonderful to have raised so much money for a great charity. My mum and dad and two pals met us at the end, as well as Colin Davie from Autism Rocks.”
See https://donate.justgiving.com/campaign/108holes1day/donation-amount to donate to the charity effort.