Four friends have gotten together for a “speed golfing” challenge by playing more than 300 holes over two-and-a-half days – and it’s all for a good cause.
The group played 324 holes across all 18 golf courses in Taranaki – the equivalent of a marathon every day for three days - for Kidney Kids, a charity helping children with kidney disease.
The friends’ inspiration is Kidney Kids ambassador Adelle McBeth, who’s on her eighth kidney after being diagnosed with Nephrotic Syndrome at the age of 12.
“The easiest way for people to know what that is is — it's the same as Jonah Lomu," she said.
One of Adelle’s transplants was with a deceased donor when she turned 15.
"I used to go to school here in New Plymouth and leave about lunchtime on a Thursday, get changed out of my uniform on the way to the airport, mum and I would fly to Auckland, I’d have plasmapheresis treatment and pop on a plane back home that night," she said.
The flights were her weekly routine for three years but eventually, her Nephrotic Syndrome claimed her donated kidney, too.
It had lasted 12-and-a-half years, she said, before it “failed completely and I went back on dialysis”.
Then her brother Reeve - one of the men taking part in the challenge - offered to save her life.
“It's probably one of the best things in the world you can do," he said.
Now, along with three others, including McBeth’s husband, Reeve is once again putting his body on the line by playing 18 courses across the length and breadth of the Taranaki – and at speed.
"To raise quite a bit of money you have to do something of magnitude, something that people will be like, ‘That's crazy, that's hard work,’” he explained.
On the first day of the challenge, locals have showed up at each course to show their support, while others joined in.
"Runners would understand what it means to run a marathon a day, golfers would understand how huge it is to play that many courses in a day - there's not many people who will understand what it is to do them both.
"Kidney Kids aspect and kidneys and renal failure and all that is big to our family. To know that the community’s there with your family, and you’re kind of one big family, that's probably the best thing."
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