Mike Heenan, Dean Kuntz and Randy Smith play golf for a living.
On Monday, the three pros at Vancouver Golf Club will be joined by club member Bob McCusker for an epic day of the game so people stricken with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) might stand a better chance of living.
The golf-a-thon has been an annual June ritual at more than 30 golf clubs around British Columbia for 13 years. Teams of golfers play as many rounds as they can from dawn’s first light until it’s impossible to see the ball in the last rays of twilight. For the Coquitlam foursome, that means a 6:30 a.m. start, and they won’t be able to put up their spike shoes until sometime after 10 p.m.
Staying focussed that long can be a challenge, said Heenan, the assistant pro at the private club on Austin Avenue. But the four golfers make it fun and keep it interesting by starting fast and then inviting other members to join them along the way.
Heenan said his group will polish off the first few rounds of 18 holes in about 90 minutes each, much quicker than the usual four or five hours. They’ll move from hole to hole on electric carts, running down the charge on three of them over the course of the day.
Heenan said other members of the club already on the links readily let them play through so they can stay on pace.
“It creates a camaraderie amongst the membership,” Heenan said, adding the club first got involved with Professional Golfers Association of BC initiative in 2014 after one of its members was stricken by the disease that slowly degenerates a victim’s motor neurons until they’re completely disabled in two to five years and they eventually succumb. There’s no known cause or cure yet.
But as the day wears on, the golf-a-thon becomes more of a marathon, said Kuntz, the club’s associate pro.
“You just try to take it a hole at a time.”
Some of those holes might even see a small wager or two, just to keep everyone engaged, he said. Winnings are rolled right back to the cause.
By the end of the day, the foursome expects to complete as many as 80 holes. All told, the club will play almost 400 holes, each stroke counted on scorecards.
But the most important number will be the $15,000 or so raised that day, in addition to the $130,000 the club has already contributed to the ALS Society of BC through various events over the years.
“It’s a blast,” Heenan said. “It’s for a good cause.”
• To donate by the hole, by score or even by round, go to alsbc.ca.
