A chat with two-time World Speed Golf champion Rob Hogan had our out-of-shape Mark McGowan contemplating a mad dash at the 2025 Speed Golf Irish Open in Castlebar.
Five minutes into a conversation with Rob Hogan, and I was genuinely considering entering the 2025 Speed Golf Irish Open at Castlebar Golf Club. That I’m the wrong side of 40, in arguably the worst physical shape of my life, would only have had a couple of weeks to prepare – one of which will be spent sipping cocktails and sampling the copious local delicacies in the Caribbean – and that I’m not actually that great a golfer to begin with only serves to highlight the infectious nature of his enthusiasm.
“I’d need four pints waiting behind the 18th green and an ambulance too,” I informed him.
“Done, and done,” he responded.
“Those are non-negotiable,” I countered, clearly unprepared to have already had my diva-esque demands so quickly acquiesced to.
“Well, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” he snaps back.
“All the best features back in the day came from journalists or writers who got involved and tried it out. They got the best insight. You’ll see that for yourself.
“And what better way to cleanse the body and soul than by getting a good sweat on?”
This was entirely not the way I’d envisioned the conversation going when I called up the two-time World Speed Golf champion for a chat about the then upcoming event in Castlebar. But spontaneity is what you get with Hogan, and over the course of our chat, some words come out in a whisper, others can be heard four doors over, and anybody who’s seen his shamanic golf lessons on social platforms – it’s all organic, he claims.
What comes out, just comes out – can attest to that.
By the time you’re reading this, I’ll either have come to my senses or will have followed through on my bold claim. A quick check for my name on RIP.ie will probably provide the answer, because Speed Golf, for those unaware, requires players to play 18 holes of golf in as fast a time as possible, while also taking as few strokes as possible.
So being out of shape and an average-at-best player is not a winning combination. It’s not even a losing combination – it’s a recipe for absolute disaster and total embarrassment.
Yet when I sit to pen this article days later, it’s become an itch I can’t scratch, and again, that’s down to Hogan himself.
By his own admission, he wasn’t in top physical shape when he claimed his first world title back in 2013. “It all depends on how hard you want to push her,” he explains.
“If you want to take it easy, that’s fine and dandy, but if you want to step it up and push the limits, you can. That’s what I did because I was mad enough to do it.
“Halfway through the 2013 Masters, there was a picture of me legging it up the third hole at Bandon Dunes broadcast on CBS sports and, how do I say it, my man-boobs were flying all over the shop.
“I was in no shape to be there, but I kept on going.” Hogan, of course, had the skills to overcome his fitness drawbacks, even if the man-boobs he claimed to possess were considerably smaller than Yours Truly’s.
A PGA Professional by trade, it was at Bray Golf Club back in 2008 for charity that he first dabbled with Speed Golf.
“A 73 in 56 minutes – the best golf I’d ever played in my life,” he declares.
“Hitting driver into the fairway had become a bit of struggle before that, but I was three-under for the last 15 holes and didn’t really hole any putts.
“That’s the hardest thing to do, putting with a high heart rate, but I hit the ball better than I ever had because it slipped me into a rhythm. And there’s precedence for that. I’m talking Lee Trevino speed-golfing before one of his Open Championship wins, I’m talking Jack Nicklaus speed-golfing in the off-season when he was back home in Ohio.”
The following year, he did it again for charity, this time at Foxrock Golf Club.
“I was so nervous the night before – and I used to eat when I was nervous – that I ate 18 bags of Tayto,” he recalls.
“18 bags for the 18 holes you were going to play?” I query. “I never thought of that,” he laughs.
“I just had three of those six-bag multipacks at home, so I ate all of those. I still somehow ran Foxrock in 30 minutes.
“Fast-forward to 2012 and I was sitting on the couch eating a Cornetto, and I just had the desire to do it again. So, down to Galway Bay I went, and the same thing happened again. I started playing really well. I went down to the library in Oranmore, logged onto the internet and a few months later I found myself on a jet engine over to Southern Oregon to play in the 2012 World Speed Golf Championships.”
You could say the rest is history. Speed Golf is a rapidly evolving concept too, not just in terms of the scoring rules – players have been judged purely on time taken, and on time and score combined (Hogan’s first world title at Bandon Dunes came in this format, shooting rounds of 77 and 79 in 39:31 and 41:24 respectively, giving him a final score of 236.55) – but in how the clubs are carried and how many are permitted, and more often than not, it’s at the tournament organiser’s discretion.
“The old-school San Diego method had you running around but with somebody driving a buggy with your clubs on it after you,” he explains.
“For that 56-minute round in Bray, I had Mark Pete, a Scottish fella who is a PGA Pro in Ireland driving after me. Then for that round in Foxrock, it was Big Bad Bob in the cart, and it was absolute mayhem. Big Bad Bob is a buddy of mine from way back and we were lucky enough to actually do the San Diego method in San Diego back in January.”
But typically, you’ll see Hogan dashing around with what he dubs the ‘Hogan Holster’ on his hip. His dad’s creation, he first started using the double-plastic pipes back in 2014 so that he could carry up to four clubs and still swing freely with whichever ones weren’t being used still attached.
And in Castlebar, everybody is free to choose their own method, and strategy will more than play its part because the innovative new format being employed will see birdies knock a minute off your time, pars and bogeys counting the same, and double bogeys or worse seeing a minute added.
“There’s a buddy Marooch [just about everybody is a ‘Marooch’ or ‘Maroochi’ to Hogan] coming from Australia, James McMaster, and he’s not the fastest runner historically. So, if he wants to make his mark in this tournament, he needs to make five or six birdies, but he can do that, and he might use four clubs to do so.
“Another fella who’s not as good a golfer but is extremely fast, he might be thinking ‘I can outrun them if I can keep the double bogeys off the card’, and he might just bring 3-wood and a wedge.”
Whether I was involved or not (Editor’s note: not as it surprisingly turned out!), the Speed Golf Irish Open was an electrifying weekend with more than a hint of international flavour with entrants from Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Germany and the United Kingdom among others, but it’s the potential for Speed Golf to grow that’s where Hogan’s animation shines through best – and that’s no mean feat.
“Watch this space,” he asserts.
“Give my two years, baby! We’ve got great sponsors in Hard Metal in Bray and Poison Darts which is a burgeoning Californian clothing brand, and we’re going to be on Netflix. We have a large crew from Los Angeles coming over to shoot the first episode of a documentary set around the Irish Open, and these people are prominent in the film industry and have backgrounds in making Netflix documentaries.
“When triathlon started, there were about eight Buddy Marooches over in Hawaii taking part and the Maroochis pulled it over the finish line.
“That’ll be us.
“Next stop the world, Caesar!”
And it would take a brave man to bet against it with Hogan’s passion, his eccentricity, his magnetism, and his talent all driving it forward. The smarter money would be (and was) on me spectating rather than participating.
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