Connecticut man on pace to crush Guinness World Record for most rounds of golf played in one year

Meet Barry Gibbons, a man who will play more rounds of golf this year than many golfers will play in their lifetime. That’s not an exaggeration. By the end of 2016, the Ridgefield, Conn., resident hopes to play 850 rounds of golf. That’s right, eight HUNDRED and fifty rounds of golf.

We know what you’re thinking: This guy has to be retired. Yep. This guy has to be single. Nope.

Gibbons’ wife, Joy, has supported her golf-fiend husband in his attempt to break the Guinness World Record for most rounds of golf played in a year. In fact, she’s played many of the rounds with him and even started a website, breakthegolfrecord.com, to track Barry’s progress. At the time of this post, he’s completed 572 rounds. By the time you finish reading, he’ll probably have gotten another 18 (or two) in.

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The record is a measly 611 rounds, set in 2010 by Richard Lewis, a retired Texas insurance executive. Gibbons also began his quest in Texas, where he owns a second home. He played nearly three rounds per day for the first few months of the year, and returned to Conn. in June with 350 under his belt. There, his pace has slowed down (public golf in the Northeast isn’t fast) while playing two rounds per day at Ridgefield Golf Club, which is located a convenient three minutes from his house.

“‘Are you the guy?’ they ask me,” Gibbons told The Ridgefield Press. “Then they usually follow it up with, ‘are you the crazy guy?'”

Gibbons walks and carries his bag, a requirement to break the official record. So far in 2016 he’s walked 4,220 miles, another stat his website tracks.

“The golf isn’t the hard part, it’s the walking,” said Gibbons, who worked at IBM for 30 years before recently retiring. “My biggest expense is golf shoes — I’ve used 11 pairs.”

Keep it up, Barry, you’re almost there.

Source: www.golfdigest.com