‘Hardest thing I’ve done’: Golfer breaks world record for most courses played in year

Imagine a year set aside for golf only. No work obligations. No family commitments. Nothing to do but hit it, find it, putt out on 18 — and then drive to the next course and do it again.

Does this strike you as dream-like or dystopian? A blissful year of guilt-free self-indulgence, or an overdose of a good thing?

For Josh Simpson, it had elements of both.

But now he’s done it. It’s official. On a gray Monday afternoon about an hour-and-a-half west of London, Simpson, a 27-year-old Englishman, completed a loop at The Caversham to establish a new benchmark. The round — his 581st of 2025 — set the world record for most 18-hole rounds played on different courses in a single year.

“It’s easily the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Simpson told GOLF.com. “It’s also the best thing I’ve ever done.”

If his feelings about the feat were mixed, so were his emotions when the odyssey began. The inspiration for it was Simpson’s mother, who succumbed to cancer in 2023, just months after being diagnosed. For Simpson, a self-described mummy’s boy, her death sent him down what he calls a “wormhole” of reflection. Life is short, he realized. Tomorrow is promised to no one. With urging from a friend, Simpson left the family lawn-care business and set off on a moveable feast of golf, raising money along the way for charities tied to his mom’s memory.

The quest began on Jan. 24 with a 36-hole day at the two courses at Woodhall Spa, in England. From there, it was pretty much nonstop. He lived out of a camper van, crisscrossing England, Wales and Scotland. The kilometers blurred. So did the rounds, though some stops were unforgettable. Roving from one course to another, Simpson ticked off dozens of big names, many of them Open Championship host sites. An exception was the Old Course, which was given over to an event on the day he’d hoped to play it.

Simpson carries a single-digit index, though his handicap toggled throughout the trip. Good rounds. Bad rounds. A near albatross. In more than 10,000 holes, Simpson never made an ace, though he witnessed several close calls. He just can’t remember exactly where they happened.

What he recalls more clearly are the people. His playing partners ran the gamut — greenskeepers, CEOs, poker players, arms dealers — the human carnival that marches across golf courses everywhere.

Bad-weather days stand out in memory, too. At Royal Porthcawl, he made it through 18 in heavy, horizontal rain with a jovial club member who produced his own sunshine. In Glasgow, he pegged it in a downpour and 50-mile-an-hour winds, shooting his worst score of the year. Not that he worried about the number. He was thinking only about staying on pace.

Golf marathons are hard on the body. But the more persistent pains were logistical headaches: booking times, mapping routes, abiding by requisite criteria. Guinness supplied plenty of those. To be eligible for the record, each course had to be an 18-holer longer than 6,000 yards, a standard that knocked out scores of courses in the UK, which is rich in 9-hole layouts and designs that predate the long-ball era. According to Simpson, more than half the courses in Scotland didn’t qualify.

On top of those requirements, Simpson had to play every hole in order. No mulligans. No gimmes. No starting on the 10th tee. Every round needed a witness and a club signature. As if following the Rules of Golf weren’t enough.

“You got the sense that these criteria might not have been written by someone who actually plays golf,” Simpson said.

Anyone who does play knows that packing for a big trip can be a hassle. Simpson’s approach to this was pragmatic. He didn’t overthink it. Clubs? Balls? Gloves? Check, check, check. He knew that rain gear would be a must. Ditto a motherlode of socks. Otherwise, he figured, he could pick up what he needed at his next stop.

Across the year, he burned through 30 gloves and who-knows-how-many balls. But he’s only on his second pair of shoes. His first, a pair of G4s, lasted 500 rounds before he finally put them to rest.

One possession that was with him every day was a custom ball marker, emblazoned with his mom’s name and images of bees, which she loved.

“It’s a bittersweet feeling,” Simpson said. “I would have loved mom to see what I was doing, but none of this would have happened if she hadn’t passed.”

The record is now his. Done and dusted. But Simpson isn’t finished. He has a few more weeks in the year and plans to knock off more courses. How many, exactly? It’s hard to say. On the one hand, he’s in a grove and might as well keeping on. 

On the other hand, he concedes, “I’m pretty sick of golf.”