“We finished at 8.30pm so it was around 15 hours. Surprisingly, we were still having good scores on the eighth round.
“I don’t think I swore at all. In fairness, it wasn’t really about the score, it was just about finishing. There were a couple of (club) members who said it couldn’t be done so we had to prove them wrong.”
No one managed a hole-in-one on the day but there were three eagles and “plenty of birdies”.
The day was tough mentally and physically, with the golfers walking 74km - 95,000 steps - to complete the holes, Donaldson said.
“I don’t think we’ll be beating that record anytime soon.”
In 2019, Donaldson and his brothers Jack and Ryan braved wet weather and completed 101 holes to raise money for a defibrillator at the Castlecliff club.
“This is the third time I’ve managed 100 holes in a day,” he said.
“My partner said 102 would have sufficed this time but no, we went for the 150. We ended up doing an extra hole (151st) just for fun.”
The team was hurting by the end of the challenge but it was nothing compared to what cancer patients had to go through every day, he said.
“Before Christmas, we set ourselves a goal of $5000 and I didn’t think we’d get to that, but now we’ve done it and people saw what we were putting ourselves through, some more money got thrown our way.
“We’ll recover in a week though. They (patients) go through a lot worse than what we did.”
Donaldson said the team’s effort could be a Whanganui record but it was “not even close” to national or international honours.
“Jamie Reid from Taranaki, the world speedgolf champion, has done 230-something in a day.
“I think the world record is around 420 holes.
“It got dark just after 9pm so technically, we could have carried on for another 40 minutes or so. I think 151 holes was enough for us.”
Fellow club members kept them hydrated throughout the day at Castlecliff, he said.
The golfers walked the whole way but volunteers carried their clubs in carts.
“People were holding the flags for us and looking for golf balls - doing anything they could to help.
“We had a support crew and it was much needed. They are just members of the golf club and they were out there from 5am to 9pm. To have them come and support us was just amazing.”
Donaldson said outside of a few blisters on his feet, he finished relatively unscathed.
“To be honest, I’m the best of the five of us and I’m the oldest. I did okay.
“I feel like I could play again today but it’s bucketing down. We’ll all be back out soon I’m sure.”
Donations to the We are Family team can still be made via longestday.org.nz/t/we-are-family
Mike Tweed is an assistant news director and multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present his focus is local government, primarily the Whanganui District Council.
