Like plenty of avid golfers Steven Dashevsky had always dreamt of playing golf around the world, taking on some of the best courses and seeing some spectacular sights. Then, when he hit 50, he took things to an altogether different level when his competitive nature took over. Along with his good friend and professional, Nick Solski, he had the idea of eclipsing the world record to play a round of golf on six continents.
"Unless you are competing seriously, you are just hitting the ball around and you are just a tourist. Whereas here it was the only feasible golf-related sporting record that I could reasonably beat while achieving my dream of going around the world and doing something that nobody else has done," explained the financier Dashevsky, who was born in Kharkov in Ukraine and now resides in London.
Months of planning settled on a route of Perth-Dubai-Casablanca-Madrid-Bogota-Miami, there was even a practice round in Singapore, with a number of rules and regulations to stick to. Among them you couldn't drive yourself to the course, it had to be at least 6,000 yards and somebody at the golf club had to verify your start and finish time.
Back in London was Dashevsky's colleague, Nadia, who would spend the four-plus days helping to co-ordinate the pair's movements while, on the ground, a bundle of people helped Dashevsky enter the Guinness Book of Records with a six-continent time of 104 hours, 15 better than the previous best. But that barely touches upon the story of what happened..
1) SECRET HARBOUR GOLF LINKS, PERTH
We were meant to be playing another course in Perth but that wasn’t in great condition and we ended up seeing a sign for Secret Harbour and playing there instead – and it was fantastic, a great design. Everybody moves at a slower place in Australia and it just calms you down. The people were super friendly, they bought into the idea of what we were doing and it made for the perfect and spontaneous start to the record bid. In our short time in Perth we met a lot of people, this seems to be what happens in Australia, and I learnt the words ute and joey and discovered how Aussie Rules works. Whether it was kids selling balls by the side of a hole or a chat in the clubhouse, it's very easy to see what makes Australia such a memorable visit. And, as it quickly transpired, Perth would turn out to be the calm before the storm, literally.
2) THE ELS CLUB, DUBAI
If you were making a TV programme about this leg of the trip, you could not have scripted it better. Part of this challenge was about being able to adapt and react and we certainly had to do this in Dubai. Planning this there was only Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday where we had direct flights from Dubai to Casablanca, and for the logistics to work we picked the Tuesday. I woke Nick up with three hours of our 11-hour flight Perth to Dubai as we had a problem. The weather in Dubai was forecast to be biblical with thunderstorms coming in and we considered switching things to Oman or Qatar but the weather looked to be the same there. We arrived at Dubai Creek at 6am and the course was closed and, after more discussion about getting another flight, we headed to the Els Club which was half an hour inland. The weather looked OK, we played three holes and, in the space of a few seconds, we got absolutely soaked. Like a bucket of water had been dropped over our heads.
For some reason we played two more holes before calling it a day when the lightning arrived. The trip looked to be scuppered, we had some breakfast and a shower in the clubhouse in which time things began to brighten up a bit. The club gave us two caddies, one with a buggy and one with a little truck, because there were tunnels where the buggy wouldn't be able to pass because of the rain. So the buggy would drive us, we'd get loaded to the truck and go through the tunnel, and the buggy would go around. The caddies were something else, coordinating the next two hours and somehow getting us round.
On the 18th it started raining again and we took a taxi to the airport but many highways were already closed due to the storm and we missed our flight by five minutes which actually turned out to be a miracle in itself because those people on the plane soon had to abort and they then got stuck at the airport for three days. As there were no taxis out and there were hundreds of people in the taxi queue, we had to scramble and catch a tram, got stuck midway in Dubai and ended up in the Ritz-Carlton after a walk through knee-high water. I've never been wetter, the water was coming in from the ceiling and we had a drink at the bar to consider our options. Everybody was trying to get a taxi and, after an hour, we came to an agreement to take us to Abu Dhabi. We met the vehicle in the now underground boating station and set off. The drive from Dubai to Abu Dhabi was like one of those catastrophe movies where people were trying to escape the city. You would see abandoned vehicles, there was nobody on the road and there was a huge lake on the middle of the highway. It was like the end of civilisation. Our big break came when we got the last tickets on the flight from Abu Dhabi to Morocco.
3) CASA GREEN GC, CASABLANCA
The original plan was to have arrived in the evening, have dinner with my daughter and her boyfriend and play at 7am the next day before having a nice lunch and boarding a plane to Madrid. We had to be able to play in Spain or we couldn't then get the flight to Bogota the same day. The reality was that we were now due to land from Abu Dhabi at 7.30am, which turned out to be an hour late, and then we had a 12.45pm exit to Spain. So we had four and a quarter hours to get through customs, get a 30-minute cab, play 18 holes, get back to the airport and fly out.
I called Nadia to look for alternative arrangements but, as I got off the plane, there was no line at passport control and my golf bag was already there literally within five minutes. I grabbed a taxi, negotiated the fare to the course and told him that I would happily pay extra if he could get me there in 20 minutes. His beaten-up Mercedes did the job and my daughter was already waiting for me in the club. She got everything – the green fee, scorecard and cart – and off we went. By the time Nick arrives at the course I had already played 10 holes.
The other stroke of luck was meeting Eddie, the caddy master. Every French word I knew came out as I tried to explain the rush and he got so switched on. He would drive the cart, give me a line on the greens, hand me the right club and then meet me as I came off each green. And then he called a cab to get us back to the airport, it was just perfect. People really wanted this to happen, like the taxi driver, Eddie and my daughter and her boyfriend. It was always more than just me and, in particular, I really wouldn’t have been able to do it without Nick. It was such a big collective effort because they wanted to help somebody fulfil this ridiculous middle-age dream.
We were the last people to check in but we made it to the airport and they then told us that we hadn't paid for the golf bags. She printed something off, I ran off to pay and we were ready to board when the lady told us that we had only paid for one bag! After some fairly frantic back-and-forth negotiations they were really helpful and we headed to Madrid.
4) SANTANDER GC, MADRID
The guy who picked us up from the airport in Madrid looked like a contract killer; tall, bald, black suit, Mercedes. We arrived at Santander and there was a beautiful clubhouse and nobody was playing which was perfect for our plans. So this was a chance to breathe out a little bit after everything that had happened. And in the middle of all this chaos we just had a pleasant round of golf. I think we had a tie on the last hole and then off we went to Bogota, as you do.
5) LOS LAGARTOS GC, BOGOTA
We arrived in Colombia after a nine-hour flight and, for the first time, we stayed in a hotel albeit for four hours in which time we had to dry our clothes which were still wet from Dubai. Golf courses here are private but Nadia has a Colombian friend and we got to play one of the most exclusive private clubs for around £100. The course is in the mountain jungle, hard but beautiful, and was the best course that we played. We started on the back nine and first nine was OK but our back nine had some of the most beautiful holes that I have seen. Likewise the clubhouse which was very picturesque and really gave you a view of the good life in Colombia. In the afternoon I even managed a couple of museums in Bogota before heading to our final destination in Miami.
6) TRUMP NATIONAL DORAL, MIAMI
My parents live in Miami and my brother and his wife flew in from New York so this was a great place to end it. We wanted to end this trip on a high so we took a BMW X7, everyone in America drives big cars, and we wanted to arrive in style at Trump National. Everything is plastered and covered in Trump's images, there is a picture of him in the hallway, locker room, pro shop, coffee shop and of course there are the 'Make America Great Again' hats so you immediately get a sense of where you are. It's expensive but it runs like clockwork and the level of service is just impeccable.
In the excitement of our final day we realised that we had left the duty free bag in the airport but, thankfully, the Trump employees came to the rescue and we had champagne and four glasses waiting for us on the 18th green of the Red Tiger course. We actually played with an American couple who were having cocktails on the 3rd hole and didn't care about their golf. I'm probably the opposite and slowed the record down by driving back to one tee when I couldn't see any red stakes after a pushed tee shot. But, after 104 hours, we putted out, celebrated with a glass of champagne, surrounded by my family.
The following morning, at 7am, I booked another tee time as I wanted to break 90, just for my peace of mind. On the last hole I began to cry, not because I hadn't shot in the 80s, but, for the first time, the enormity of the past four and a bit days, finally began to hit home.
The 24 hours without almost no sleep in Dubai was like nothing else. Someone could beat the record of playing golf in six continents in the shortest period of time but nobody could beat the record of being able to play 18 holes, on the day of the worst storm in Dubai for 75 years because you will have to wait another 75 years to do that. So that is the record inside the record and that is unbeatable.
THE NEXT TIME...
Of course we have already thought of how we could shave some time off if we were to try this again. You would start at Papua New Guinea, which is Australasia, and from there you can fly to Istanbul which gives you Europe. From there it is a two-hour flight to Antalya (Asia) and then you can go to Cairo which would be Africa. Then you would fly again to Bogota and then on to Panama. This way it could be done in three or three and a half days as the Guinness Book of Records define Panama north of the canal as North America and that would be the shortest route. The world really is quite smaller than you think. It took 104 hours and we had around 10 hours sleep overall. It doesn’t matter where you sleep, how you sleep, you’re not tired, you’re always focused and my body crashed only 24 hours after we finished the last hole. After we finished I went out to have lunch and in the evening I went to my friend's restaurant in Miami and stayed out to midnight. I have some back problems but I felt no pressure, no pain and no need to sleep. It is like your body just gets elevated to a different level. We got on the plane and just woke up wherever, it didn’t matter what the time was as your body just rearranged itself. The mental focus and feeling of excitement triumphed over the middle-aged body needs – and that's what this trip was ultimately all about."
