The study of dreams and the obsession that drives them has become something of a hobby of mine. A few years ago I was a hacker golfer who couldn’t break 100, but I had a dream to shoot a level par round within a year. 70,000 golf balls later, I achieved my dream but not without delving deeply into the sometimes dark world of obsession. It’s easy to see obsession as a negative fixation but if you want to achieve something great, perhaps a little out of the ordinary, it’s a pretty essential tool to have in your bag.
During five days at the Legend Golf & Safari Resort in South Africa I met a collection of soulmates — an eclectic group of individuals who have taken a variety of impossible dreams and turned them into reality. I boarded a plane with the desire to win a million dollars from one golf shot and arrived home invigorated and in awe of a truly amazing accomplishment.
Set in the Entabeni Safari Conservancy in the Limpopo Province, a two-hour drive from Johannesburg airport, Legend features spectacular scenery and an amazing diversity of wildlife. It also has what is arguably the most talked about hole in golf, the Extreme 19th. With its tee accessible only by helicopter, it’s easily the longest par three in the world. A perfect drive struck 400 metres horizontally will take nearly 20 seconds to fall 430 metres vertically onto a green shaped and contoured to resemble the African continent.
A YouTube video of Padraig Harrington playing this hole has been watched more than four million times. It’s well worth seeking out, not just because it shows the first par three being shot on the hole, but also for the sheer joy etched on Harrington’s face as he plays it. There is a further twist in the tale, though. Any golfer, professional or amateur, who shoots a hole in one at the Extreme 19th will win one million dollars.
My task was to go out there and win that million. The year spent hitting 70,000 golf balls in my obsessive quest to shoot par hadn’t exactly endeared me to my wife, Lesley, and daughter, Aimee. If I could just arrive home with that million, I reckoned I’d be forgiven.
But first there was an awful lot to do and see before I got to stand on the famous Hanglip mountain with my driver in hand. First on the agenda was a round with Pete Richardson, the head of PR and marketing at Legend. As we strolled up the first fairway, he started to fill me in on the history of the course. Each hole has been designed by a famous golfer, including the likes of Retief Goosen, Vijay Singh, Bernhard Langer and Harrington himself. The concern with 18 individuals designing one course is that it might lack coherency. But this isn’t the case. The course flows beautifully.
Golf at my local course in Northern Ireland is often enriched by the sight of a strutting pheasant or two, or a rabbit bounding across the fairway, but at Legend the animals you are likely to come across are a little different. Over the first few holes we spotted mongoose and antelope in the distance, but it was when we reached the 15th hole, designed by Vijay Singh, that the round took on an almost surreal edge.
Two zebras drank quietly from the water to the left of the fairway as we stood on the tee and a small herd of wildebeest (or gnu) crossed the fairway in the distance. Struggling to find an accurate line for me to aim at, Pete came out with a phrase I doubt I’ll ever hear again on a golf course: ‘Aim at the second gnu on the left.’ I was a long, long way from Northern Ireland.
