Playing Golf For 27 Hours Straight, A New Record
Marco Nichau and Tim Sassmannshausen met on a golf course in Germany nine years ago, became fast friends over a shared love of the game and a mutual tendency to push each other toward increasingly ridiculous challenges, and have been escalating ever since: first 72 holes in a day, then 90, then 100, then 144. When they looked up the Guinness World Record for the longest golf marathon and found it was something they were fairly confident they could beat, the conversation that followed was brief and to the point. In June of 2024, the two friends teed off at Wittgensteiner Land Golf Club in Sassenhausen, Bad Berleburg, and played for 27 hours, 52 minutes, and two seconds, setting the new world record for the longest golf marathon in history while raising more than 5,500 euros for a local children's hospice. The attempt was officially certified by Guinness World Records and published this week.
The conditions they played through were far from ideal for what Marco described as what could have been a relatively manageable challenge. It was mid-June, but the evening and overnight hours brought cold temperatures, heavy storms, and driving rain that made playing in the dark both physically unpleasant and technically demanding, with the two men grinding through holes well past midnight with only course lighting and their own determination keeping them moving. By the final hours, Marco's arms had grown noticeably heavier and the occasional blister had made itself known, and both men were using one or two more clubs than usual to reach their usual distances. But Marco was honest about how it all actually felt: they were still feeling pretty good after 28 hours of golf. Under Guinness marathon rules, participants earn five minutes of rest for every hour of activity, and the pair banked as much of their rest time as possible before taking it in one long block. They chose to raise the money for the children's hospice because it mattered to them personally, and when the final number came in at 5,500 euros, they said the record was the bonus.
