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Everything you need to know about Michael Furrh you can learn from his outgoing voicemail message: Caddie Master at Caddie Club; golf ambassador for Rolling Hills Country Club; Guinness World Record holder.
Hopefully you didn't get bored and hang up, because that last part is key. At Arlington's Rolling Hills Country Club on Monday, Furrh used a 19-foot, 5-inch golf club to drive a ball 89 yards, thus penciling his name in the record book as the human who used the world's "longest usable golf club." We say penciled because records are made to be broken, this one in particular.
See also: Watch an Arlington Golf Pro Swing 14-Foot Golf Club, Break World Record
The previous record, held by Danish "Trick Golf Artist" Karsten Maas, lasted all of about two months. In September, Guinness crowned Maas as long-golf-club-champion for successfully using a 14-foot, 5-inch driver, or just long enough to edge out the 14-foot, 2.5-inch club swung by -- who else -- Furrh at the end of 2012. Furrh's 2012 attempt shattered the 13-foot, 5-inch record set in 2009 by -- you guessed it -- Maas.
With each iteration, the golf clubs themselves, and the men who are swinging them, look stupider and stupider. In Monday's effort, Furrh looks like he's swinging a limp, 20-foot spaghetti noodle and compensating for....something.
Maas, in his interview with Guinness, explained his motivation thusly: "Many years ago, I was thinking about what kind of world record I could do, and by coincidence I came to this there was someone in South Africa that had the longest usable golf club, and I thought that I could do better."
Furrh's motivation is similarly inspiring no doubt. Unfortunately for him, Monday's shot came too late to get him into the Guinness World Records 2015 book, which has already gone to print.
Send your story tips to the author, Eric Nicholson.
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