So you think you’re a hardo. A grinder. You and the assistant greenskeeper are on a first-name basis. You spend more time in the pro shop than in your own living room. You’re like the postal service—neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow can stop you. Maybe so, but you have nothing on Nolan Krentz, a Wisconsin man who just set the unofficial world record for golf holes played in a calendar year at 17,820. Well, we didn’t misplace the comma.
As you’ve probably already guessed, Krentz is a man of singular, obsessive purpose. According to Wisconsin.Golf his life is like Bill Murray’s in ‘Groundhog’s Day,’ but instead of clairvoyant marmots, his life is filled with all golf, all the time. Each morning, Krentz wakes up, drives to Norsk Country Club, and plays as many holes as possible with his trusty pushcart. After that, he works a couple shifts at the local Hy-Vee Grocery Store and coaches the boys and girls golf teams at Mount Moreb High School, not to mention boys basketball at Iowa-Grant High School when in season. Then he plays some more.
“He’s been playing over 15,000 holes every year since he was basically 20 years old,” says Brandon Larson, a bartender at Norsk and high school classmate of Krentz’s at Mount Horeb High. “He’s in our parking lot an hour before sunrise. As soon as he can see anything at all, he’ll be out there playing.”
And yet, despite that dedication, which has seen Krentz loop the same nine holes thousands and thousands of times a year, his record remains unofficial. Guinness World Records requires a logbook and witnesses for the record to be considered “official” and Krentz is too busy playing golf for any of that. Technically, the official record still belongs to Canadian Chris Adam, who walked 14,625 back in 2012. Technically.
That doesn’t matter to Krentz though. After averaging nearly 48.82 holes per day in 2021, he has set his sights on the mythical 18,000 mark.
“The joke is that I should have my mail delivered here,” the scratch handicapper says.
But why stop there? Get the man a mattress and a hot plate and he’ll be hitting 20,000 by Christmas.
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