Bernard Lagat and Nick Willis Take on Speedgolf

Published by Runner's World on September 11, 2013

Because track and field now operates chiefly in metric distances, Bernard Lagat and Nick Willis won't have a chance to surpass Steve Scott’s world record of 136 sub-4:00 miles. But later this fall, they’ll venture into a hybrid sport which Scott may not have invented, as some credit him, but for which he certainly did create the first boomlet of popularity. Lagat and Willis (left) will participate in the Speedgolf World Championships on October 26 and 27 at the Bandon Dunes Golf Course on the coast of Oregon.

Lagat, the two-time Olympic medalist and three-time world champion, told Spikes that speedgolf is “golf played very quickly .… Scores are calculated by adding the time taken to complete the round and the total strokes taken. For instance, if a competitor shoots a golf score of 80 shots and it takes 60 minutes to complete their round, their speedgolf score would be 140 (80 + 60).”

Lagat, who has often regaled the media with tales of his golf soirees with four-time Olympian Abdi Abdirahman in Tucson, boasts a best 18-hole score of 89. He claims, “As a runner, the thing that golf has allowed me to work on is my patience, which is something I don’t normally have much of. I always have to be quick, quick, quick after I hit the ball. Even when I’m playing golf it’s intense.”