Getting into Guinness

by Larry Olmsted

  Given the small amount of space the book devoted to golf, there was not a lot to work with. Existing records included the Most British Open titles (six, Harry Vardon); Most U.S. Open titles (four, a four-way tie including Jack Nicklaus); Lowest Score (59, a three-way tie including Annika Sorenstam); and Highest Career Earnings (over $41 million, Tiger Woods). Obviously, I had no chance at any of these—or any skill-based golf record. I’m just not very good. Given a year and a lot of funding, I am pretty sure I could break the 27-hole-a-day average, but the downside was that my wife would leave me. I was getting desperate and contemplating calling my editor back to beg for permission to create a new record when I saw it, near the end of the golf record section: the Greatest Distance Traveled Between Two Rounds of Golf Played on the Same Day. A wordy title if ever there was one, I had to read it three times just to be sure what it meant. The current record was held by one Nobby Orens of the United States, who in 1999 had played twice on the same day, first in London, England, and then Tarzana, California, spanning a distance of 5,954-miles between the two rounds. Bells went off in my head. If a professional travel and golf writer couldn’t find some way to better Orens’s mark, I certainly did not deserve to get into Guinness.

  I immediately filed my request to break the record through the Guinness World Records website, the only way to do it in this information age. Just as quickly, I began to learn of the organization’s plodding mechanics and penchant for red tape. To register, first you file a request online, whether you want to break an existing record or petition them to set a new one. Several weeks later, they send you a form to sign, mainly a legal document giving them all sorts of rights to publicize your record without compensation and so forth, down to limiting your ability to call yourself a “Guinness World Record Holder” for commercial purposes, should you succeed. You then sign and fax or mail this form back, to which they respond in four or more weeks with either a thumbs up or down on your record attempt, and if the answer is positive, they also send a lot of rules. The website says to expect four to six weeks for the entire process, but six to eight weeks or even longer is more common in my experience.

  The frustrating bottom line is that it takes two to four months from start to finish to get an answer, and if the answer is no, you have to start all over again. This is why pros like Ashrita Furman send in proposals regularly and always have multiple record attempts in the pipeline, rather than just trying their luck one at a time and wasting months in between. To further confuse matters, if you do try for a new record, like my idea for the most countries golfed in one day, there is the very strong possibility that it is in fact not new at all, since more than 90 percent of all records aren’t available to the public, in which case one of two things will happen. They might give you approval, but you were hoping to play in four countries and you find out that the current record is already up to seven or something totally preposterous that you cannot match. Or there might be a similar record, in which case they could come back and inform you that you cannot set the record for most countries golfed in a day, but you can have a go at breaking the one for the most continents golfed in a week, or some such derivation.

  I also learned some other important truths about the application process. First of all, Guinness World Records is a marketing-driven company, and they like seeing their records broken on television and in print. That means that if you contact their public relations people (they have both in-house staff and an outside agency) and tell them you are trying to write a high-profile feature for the nation’s largest golf magazine but things are moving too slowly, things suddenly begin to move faster. This is not to suggest they are any less lenient about the actual standards of achievement for media, but they were able to expedite both the application process before—and the approval process after—my attempt. I have since confirmed this habit with several other media outlets, but I also know that while they do respond faster, they still sometimes say no, even when it means losing a lot of publicity, which is reassuring in a purist or egalitarian sense. If you are not involved with the media, there is still a way to get quick and easy service when it comes to applying for records. Every would-be record breaker has the option of paying an expediting fee for what Guinness World Records calls Fast Track service. This guarantees you a response to your query in no more than three days versus somewhere around six weeks, a tempting convenience. The catch is that as of this writing, the Fast Track fee was £300 per record request, well over $500, and while they reply faster, they might well still say no. If that happens, any further requests you want expedited, even in the same category or record setting vein, require additional Fast Track fees. An unprepared or unlucky record seeker could run up thousands of dollars in fees before getting permission to try a single sanctioned attempt. I cannot imagine this route appeals to any but those most desperate to be in the book and to be in it quickly.

  One more optional expense is to pay for a Guinness adjudicator to attend your attempt and certify your record on the spot, if successful, saving you another slow and detailed paperwork (and often video) process. Like expediting record proposals, having an official verify your feat is another expense large media outlets, such as the Today Show, will get for free but that regular record breakers have to pony up for. Prices vary but are substantial because you will have to transport, feed, and house the official. Thus, if you go first class all the way, rushing your application, and having the event witnessed by Guinness World Records, even a no-cost record like juggling in your living room can end up costing thousands of dollars to break. The company is a for-profit enterprise, after all, as current editor Craig Glenday reminded the Wall Street Journal: “We get seen sometimes as a public service, as if the tax payers expect it from us.”

  However you choose to apply, things are easier when you go after an existing record, since it is hard to justify refusing you when somebody else has already gotten approval for exactly the same thing. But a final complication is that the record may have already been broken one or more times since the mark you just figured out how to break was set—or worse, after you break it but before the book comes out. This happened in 1978 to a frustrated 1,223 Notre Dame college students who played what they thought was the world’s largest game of musical chairs, to the tune of Jackson Browne’s Running on Empty, only to find out when the new edition came out that they had been upstaged by a Salt Lake City high school that had turned out 1,789 students, music unknown, causing one Notre Dame student to lament, “We thought we were in the book for sure.” In a similar vein, Ashrita Furman told me, “I saw a picture of the orange pushing with your nose mile in the book, and it was 70 minutes for the mile so I trained for it, was ready to break it, and I was going to do 60 minutes when I found out some other guy had broke it and did 44 minutes. Right before you do the record you have to check again, like a week before, to make sure someone else hasn’t already bettered it. So my training got much more intense, I was really hitting it with my nose, jumping up and running after it, much more intense. So I got ready again and was going to break it in Barcelona when I found out someone else did it in 29 minutes. While I was training for it, the record got broken all the way from 70 minutes down to 29. So I got really intense, starting to work on technique and oranges and I finally did it in 24 or 26 minutes.” His secret was switching to a green, unripe orange, which is harder and rolls better.

  Fortunately, golf is not as popular as pushing an orange with your nose for a mile, so no one else had decided to go after Orens’s record. After giving me the go-ahead to try and chase it down, the record management team sent me lengthy rules and instructions detailing what I could do (complete my two rounds in the same calendar day) and what I could not do (utilize private jets). I also had to play both rounds with credible witnesses, who had to sign my scorecards and supply signed, original written statements describing having played eighteen holes with me, under the official rules of golf. I also had to turn in copies of my airline tickets, boarding passes, hotel rec
eipts, and anything else Guinness could think of that would substantiate my actual trip. This is one of the reasons Guinness heavily suggests record breakers get local media coverage, as well as video or photos, as they consider clippings or newscasts of your feat credible evidence.

  Now for the hard part. After more than a month of paperwork, I still had to figure out how to break the record. Studying Nobby’s feat, I realized that he had used the time change to his advantage, playing in London in the morning and then traveling eight hours back in time en route to California, negating most of the flight time. But it was still a very tight schedule, and I couldn’t go any farther west than California. Hawaii, the next stop, was too far to arrive and still have light to play. Whatever route I chose, the basic limitations were clear: I needed to play somewhere close to a major airport, where I could tee off first thing in the morning and catch a flight by around noon, one that would arrive at my final destination early enough in the day for me to get to another course near that airport and still have time to play eighteen before dark. Nobby had already pushed the limits of what mere time zones could do to help, but I realized I could do him one better if I also crossed the international date line and gained back an entire day. The rules stipulated only that my record must not exceed a single calendar day and thus did not limit me to twenty-four hours. To use the dateline to my advantage, I’d have to go west to east, and I wanted a nonstop flight to reduce the chances of missed connections or airline delays. Sunrise, sunset, flight times, and the distances between golf courses and airports and the airports themselves were my limiting factors. I began studying dozens of routes and long-haul flights from Australia to the Western Hemisphere. Tempting routes, like Singapore to New York, one of the longest nonstops, were tossed aside because they landed at night, when golf courses are closed. I eventually hit upon the Sydney to Los Angeles Qantas flight, which met all my criteria. If I was going to break my very first Guinness World Record, I would do it in as much style as possible. The finest course in greater Sydney is the New South Wales Golf Club, one of the most famous in the game and perennially ranked in the World’s Top 50. What better place to start? Likewise, the highest-ranked public layout around Los Angeles was the North Course at Pelican Hill in Newport Beach, a perennial U.S. Top 100 course, and not too shabby a finishing venue. It did mean a longer drive, about an hour from LAX, instead of a nondescript course just fifteen minutes away, which would have given me more of a cushion, but if you are going for a world record, you might as well go big. These were two world-class courses most golfers would be lucky to play in a lifetime, much less a single day.

  I honestly expected my first foray into the Guinness book to be easy. There was no human endurance factor, no fitness or coordination requirements in this goal. It was a record of logistics, with jet lag being the only physical challenge, and I was used to traveling. On paper, my plan was easy: play, fly, play, get certificate. I had already played thirty-six holes dozens of times in my life, so the golf itself was of no concern, and my friends at Qantas were good enough to bump me up to business class for the high-profile record attempt, so I could recover between rounds in the airborne equivalent of a La-Z-Boy recliner while drinking whisky, eating fresh lamb chops, and watching movies, maybe even napping. It would be easier than my normal recreational thirty-six, which does not allow for a fourteen-hour rest break and lavish meals between rounds. In my naive eyes the only thing that lay between me and fleeting fame was the on-time performance of Qantas Airlines, which was statistically reliable. If my flight was on time or even close, and barring an earthquake or a carjacking on the LA freeways, the record was mine. But I quickly learned that in the high-pressure world of Guinness, things do not always go as planned. The day of my record attempt, things immediately got off to a rocky start when the car service driver taking me from downtown Sydney to the golf club turned out not to know where the unmarked course in the suburbs was, and while driving around frantically trying to locate it, I nearly missed my 7:30 AM tee time, which had been specially arranged as the first of the day so I could hurry along with no one ahead of me. Immediately after me was a member’s tournament, so I simply had to be on the tee on time—which, in the end, I accomplished only by sprinting from the pro shop.

  When I finished the hurried round and signed the card with my playing partner, the club pro, I found unexpected guests waiting for me in the clubhouse. A well-known reporter and television crew from Sydney’s Channel Nine News had shown up for an un-scheduled interview, drawing a crowd of onlookers. To this day I have no idea how they found out about my record attempt. After the interview, they insisted on filming me walking into the Qantas international departures terminal, so they would have an artistic closing shot for their piece, setting up the second half of my journey. What this meant in practical terms was that I waited for about ten minutes at the golf club while the news team went ahead in their van to set up, and then I was driven to the airport. By the time I arrived curbside in a black Mercedes sedan with smoked windows, a large crowd had gathered alongside the satellite truck and news crew, obviously expecting Russell Crowe or Nicole Kidman. When I got out, there was a collective exasperated exhale of disappointment, and the onlookers might as well have been holding signs reading “Thanks for wasting our time.” Minutes later, hurrying through the terminal, I overheard a woman muttering to her friend, “I don’t know. It was just some American.”

  My next challenge was at the Qantas check-in counter. Despite flying business class and traveling very lightly, and having decided to leave my clubs home and rent in order to forego checked luggage and the wait it would mean upon arrival, the airline’s representative steadfastly insisted that I check my carry-on bag. Since I cover aviation and travel, I knew with absolute certainty that my bag was smaller than the maximum dimensions for an allowed carry-on. But despite my most polite entreaties, the agent refused to give me my boarding pass until I turned over my tiny piece of luggage, containing just golf shoes, a glove, a toilet kit (in the days when you could still carry those), and a change of socks, underwear, and golf shirt. Now I’d be faced with an additional, unplanned wait at the other end, and given my tight schedule, I decided that if my bag did not emerge promptly, I would simply leave the airport and abandon it. This is the kind of price you have to be willing to pay to join Neil Armstrong and company as a world record breaker.

  The reception was not much warmer on my side of the Pacific, as I landed at LAX in an unexpected and uncharacteristic downpour. People don’t go to Southern California for the rain, and, at least in my case, they also do not bring raingear. At least my bag came out fast and I had my shoes. My playing partner, the general manager of the course, took pity on me and lent me a rain suit to wear, commenting that in six years he hadn’t played in weather like this. So we slogged around the sloppy but beautiful Tom Fazio–designed layout. Instead of begrudging the horrid weather, the Aussie lynch mob, the luggage debacle, or the clueless sedan driver, I took these setbacks in stride, realizing that world records, even esoteric and possibly foolish ones, were records nonetheless and thus deserved some drama. If it was truly easy, what would be the point?

  So it was that on February 18, 2004, I shattered Nobby Orens’s record by about 1,500 miles, playing in Australia in the morning and California in the afternoon, covering a distance of 7,496 miles. In the process I earned myself a coveted spot in the 2005 gold-covered, special fiftieth anniversary edition of Guinness World Records, proving yet another piece of advice I had been given: breaking records already printed makes it far more likely that you too will be among the less than 10 percent of record breakers to appear in the book (historically, about three-quarters of the published records typically repeat from one year to the next). To cap a memorable feat, I even birdied eighteen at Pelican Hill, the thirty-sixth hole of my very long day, to seal the record in memorable fashion.