00:00 Hello everyone, Mike Harris from Golf Monthly,
00:02 and you join me at the Springs Golf Club in Oxfordshire.
00:07 It is a fairly ungodly 6.30 in the morning.
00:12 Set my alarm for 4.45 to get up to get here.
00:16 This is not just a general easy Friday morning knock though.
00:21 I'm playing 18 holes of speed golf
00:25 with PGA Pro Luke Willett, aka The Iron Golfer.
00:30 Luke is an incredible athlete along with being a PGA Pro.
00:35 He's able to play 18 holes.
00:37 I think his record time is 44 minutes
00:40 and having only 78 shots.
00:43 I don't think I'm gonna get anywhere near that today,
00:46 but I'm out here to find out
00:48 what it's like to play speed golf.
00:50 I'm playing with Alex Neri,
00:51 one of my colleagues from Golf Monthly.
00:53 We're not athletes, we're not runners.
00:56 We do a bit of fitness and we play quite a lot of golf,
00:59 but how are we gonna get on?
01:00 What are we gonna learn today?
01:02 Luke says he loves speed golf
01:04 because it disconnects him to make him feel connected.
01:07 It's all about being stripped down,
01:09 really eyeballing shots, not overthinking golf.
01:13 Certainly something that I probably struggle with.
01:14 So today, really light pencil bag,
01:18 just got a half set of clubs.
01:20 Interestingly, you'd see Luke has only got four clubs.
01:23 He told me not to take a driver
01:24 because not to waste time pegging it up,
01:27 but I'm afraid the driver is my straightest club in the bag.
01:30 I'm worried about spraying it around.
01:32 We'll see how I get on out there,
01:34 but just a minimal half set of clubs.
01:37 It is literally hit it, find it, hit it again,
01:40 keep on going for the 18 holes.
01:43 It's about four and a half miles round the 18 holes.
01:45 Luke reckons we might be able to do it in about 17 minutes,
01:48 which is an awful lot quicker
01:51 than I normally play 18 holes.
01:53 Let's get to the first tee and see what happens.
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02:51 We are halfway round in 31 minutes.
02:54 And that was for a five, a par.
03:02 I'm actually playing quite well.
03:05 Short and straight off the tee, definitely the play.
03:08 It doesn't matter if you duff it.
03:11 It's much harder if you are running offline
03:13 looking for balls.
03:15 Although a couple of times Alex has hit it offline,
03:18 has allowed me a chance for a breather.
03:19 So, just about to go on the 10th hole.
03:24 This is unbelievable, I'm loving it.
03:26 Par three, how far?
03:29 (laughing)
03:32 Oh, great swing.
03:33 - Yeah, I love your shot, 180, I guess.
03:35 - Okay.
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04:08 Hole 15, 55 minutes.
04:12 Think we might break that 70 minute target that Luke set.
04:15 Definitely, nudge it down the middle is the play.
04:22 Every time, I'm actually playing all right.
04:24 I overthink my golf and in this format,
04:27 you just can't overthink it.
04:29 Can't be looking at your hard edges,
04:30 can't be reading putts from both sides.
04:33 It's brilliant, I am loving this.
04:35 It's hard work, hamstrings are feeling really tight.
04:38 But I'm buzzing, it's great.
04:41 Final push, last three and a half holes.
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05:14 - Yes, come on, go on, Luke.
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05:25 - 70 minutes, 31 seconds.
05:39 So we just missed our target time of 70 minutes.
05:44 Gonna catch my breath, gonna catch up with Luke
05:47 and try and work out what we've learned
05:50 from playing speed golf this morning at the Springs.
05:53 But that was a lot of fun.
05:56 So we have finished our round of speed golf.
06:00 We've had a chance to have a bit of a rest,
06:02 a little bit of a lie down, had a full English breakfast,
06:05 which I think I thoroughly deserved.
06:08 Luke just had a cup of coffee and a water.
06:11 He is an athlete, unlike me, but that was a lot of fun.
06:14 We've had a chance to reflect on it.
06:16 Didn't quite break that 70 minute target.
06:19 We were 70 minutes and 31 seconds,
06:22 but still that is an awful lot shorter
06:26 than a regular three ball to play 18 holes of golf.
06:30 I'm just looking at the scorecard.
06:31 Luke shot one under par.
06:34 He was five under at the turn, turned in 31,
06:39 then made a birdie, chipped in for a birdie at the 10th.
06:43 But yeah, incredible.
06:47 I shot 87, but with a quadruple and a treble.
06:51 So could have been all right without that.
06:54 And Alex, third member of our group,
06:57 got it in under a hundred, which was great.
07:00 Wheels came off a little bit for him,
07:01 but then it was interesting, Luke,
07:02 you helped Alex get the wheels back on really.
07:06 And that was like, you told him to put the driver away
07:09 and start playing.
07:10 Tell us, how do you think we got on in our,
07:12 I mean, obviously for you, we slowed you down a lot.
07:15 You would normally get round in, what,
07:16 sort of about 35, 40 minutes?
07:18 - Fingers crossed.
07:19 Yeah, yeah, fingers crossed.
07:21 Look, you guys were great.
07:22 You embraced the unknown.
07:23 You tried something new.
07:26 Golf is one of the oldest sports around.
07:27 That's what's beautiful about it.
07:29 And guess what?
07:31 You can always experience a new version of golf,
07:33 and that's what you guys did.
07:34 Golf is for anyone.
07:35 And these guys rocked that today.
07:37 (both laugh)
07:38 - Yeah, it was really interesting.
07:39 I think one of the things that I probably,
07:41 I love my technology.
07:42 I've got a laser, I've got a GPS.
07:45 I'm forever looking at the yardages.
07:47 And a couple of times, I think you laughed at me
07:49 when I go, "What's the yardage here?"
07:50 And it's like, "Just hit it, just hit it."
07:53 How often do you go through the back of a green,
07:56 certainly missing a green, shorten at the front,
07:59 just bump it up, have a putt?
08:01 Sam and I wouldn't have been that far off my handicap.
08:05 Take out the quadruple and the treble,
08:08 and I'd have been okay.
08:10 What do you think next time, Luke?
08:12 Is there anything else?
08:13 Because I know you said at the start,
08:15 you wouldn't hit a driver
08:16 'cause you didn't want to peg it up.
08:17 That would take a bit.
08:18 But I felt I drove it quite well today.
08:21 I had that little cut going on,
08:23 just almost like a little chippy one,
08:24 180, 200 yards, found the fairway.
08:27 Anything that I could do,
08:28 or Alex could do differently next time?
08:30 - Yeah, going forwards, speed golf is all about
08:34 trying the unknown, like we just said there.
08:36 And it's about exploring.
08:38 Have a little experiment, try stuff out.
08:41 Never stop trying stuff out.
08:42 And that's why, look, today was a great round for me.
08:44 One under par, I feel great.
08:46 We had a good time, that's world record stuff.
08:49 Where did I get to, how did I get to that?
08:52 Well, it was by exploring.
08:54 So all I would actually say is,
08:56 I would just say embrace that, explore.
08:58 I will come around with anyone.
09:01 I will leave that open to you guys.
09:03 Pick up the phone, ask me, and I'll take you around.
09:06 But the point is, just explore.
09:08 It might not always be, I want to have a fast round.
09:13 But that's kind of cool.
09:14 It might be, I want to improve my golf.
09:16 You can do that.
09:17 You can do whatever you want, but explore,
09:18 and then you'll find stuff out.
09:20 I go around this great place here,
09:22 there's red kites flying around.
09:23 Your course might be armadillos, who knows?
09:25 You know, explore.
09:27 - It was brilliant.
09:28 It was a really fantastic experience, a really great buzz.
09:32 I was just chatting to Luke afterwards over breakfast,
09:34 and sort of said, how does that compare to other rounds?
09:37 What did I feel like at the end?
09:38 And I reckon the only time that I felt more of a buzz is,
09:42 I played the old course once in a competition,
09:45 finished par birdie to break 80.
09:48 But today, the elation I felt, finishing on the 18th hole.
09:53 And it was interesting chatting to Alex as well.
09:55 Alex has done a lot of really intense cycling,
09:58 cycled up a place like Alpe d'Huez.
10:00 He was saying, similar sort of buzz
10:02 once you finish that round of golf.
10:04 The elation you got.
10:05 Really good workout.
10:07 Good, it's, what's the time now?
10:11 It's sort of half nine.
10:12 I'm going to head home, going to go and do a day's work.
10:15 But it's been absolutely brilliant.
10:16 Luke, thank you for having us.
10:18 - Thank you.
10:18 - Been a brilliant morning at the Springs Speed Golf.
10:22 I don't know, give it a go.
10:23 It's a bit of fun.
10:24 It's a bit of something different, but a lot of fun.
10:28 Definitely going to try it again.
10:30 But from the Springs Golf Course, it's goodbye.
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