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On Friday 23 December with the greatly appreciated support of my home club of Commonwealth, I'll be taking part in the Longest Day of Golf Challenge to raise funds for Cancer Council Victoria, specifically for research into skin cancer.
With golf being an outdoor sport, skin cancer is certainly something which hopefully all golfers are aware of, especially in taking preventive measures during the warmer months such as applying sun cream and wearing suitable clothing and headwear.
As well as being a fantastic cause, the Challenge offers the opportunity to attempt four rounds of golf in the one day. As a sport crazed youth, I often ventured out with mates during summer holidays and played 54-holes in a day enjoying each other's company whilst trying to come to grips with this wonderful, multi-faceted, addictive and many times frustrating game.
That was over 30 years ago and while reasonably fit and healthy as I descend into the second half century of life, I'm especially curious to see if I can physically meet the challenge as well as mentally cope with 72-holes of competition.
I'll be playing four rounds of stableford and with a playing schedule carefully crafted by Commonwealth General Manager & good friend Peter Parks, will navigate around and through pre-Christmas course users.
The intention is to play each round with one playing companion and take no longer than three and a half hours for any one round. I'll set off at 5.45am and roll straight into the second round just after 9am. After a short lunch break and perhaps some liberally applied Deep Heat to the back and arms will take off for rounds three and four at around 1.30pm.
With daylight until at least 9pm and a lessening of course traffic as the day unfolds, I'm quietly confident about making it. Hopefully I'll also make peace with my putter and dodgy putting stroke during the day as well.
My regular Commonwealth friends have been great with a number volunteering as either playing partners or caddies for each of the rounds. While I'm doing the playing, it certainly feels like I'm representing the whole club to a large degree.
At the time of writing, there's now 44 people and/or teams signed up to undertake the Challenge. Any interested person that would like to make a contribution can simply visit the 2016 Longest Day Challenge page on the Cancer Council Website at:
https://www.everydayhero.com.au/event/longestday2016
Alternatively if you’d like to support my own Longest Day attempt, please visit https://longestday2016.everydayhero.com/au/david-greenhill
Thank you in advance for your generosity, it means a lot!
Some interesting facts about Cancer Council Victoria:
- Each year more than 750,000 Australians are treated for skin cancer. Cancer Counci. Victoria needs $100,000 for research at Monash University that could lead to breakthroughs in the treatment of tumours including melanoma.
- With more than 200 types of cancer, it is the only organisation in Victoria that works to find answers to all of them through research, prevention, and support.
- Our specialist cancer nurses responded to more than 11,700 enquiries from patients and families. We provided information and support and connected them to our many services such as financial and legal advice, peer support, holiday break program and free wigs.
- It is the largest provider of non-government research funds in the state. Every year it spends almost $19 million on cancer research.
- It provides well-known prevention and education programs like Sun Smart and Quit to help people reduce their cancer risk.