Xtreme Golf

When you think of golf you might think of Tiger Woods, green fairways, old men in golfer pants, or young men breaking golfing irons. But I bet you don't picture playing a golfing match over 4 days and across 842 miles. Leave it to the Aussies to make a golf course that would impress Happy Gilmore.

The course name is Nullarbor Links and it starts at Ceduna in the state of South Australia (1,300 miles west of Sydney) and finishes at the mining town of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia - you'll probably want to rent the golf cart for this one Dad!

Green fees are a reasonable $40 for a full 18 holes, but with a course this big, I wonder how they monitor if you are a paying customer or not. The Australian government footed 1/3rd of the $640,000 bill to create the course - hmmm, maybe Harry Reid's train from Las Vegas to, uh, where does it go again? has some promise!

The true purpose of the course? To increase tourism.

According to Bob Bongiorno, the man with the idea:

"I had lived on the Nullarbor for 10 years, and I always felt that people just connected east and west along our highway, and traversed the distance quickly.

"They endured rather than enjoyed the trek. They missed what I called a lot of the 'self-find' stuff along the way. The whole idea was to try to create something to slow people down, and make it part of the holiday."

So next time you are in Australia and feel like hitting a few poor golf balls, make sure to check out the links at Nullarbor!

In the meantime, anyone feel like helping me create a golf course from Las Vegas to Boise (a mere 770 miles going on I-15 and I-84)?

Here's an article I found about the new golf course and here's a link to the course's web-site.