Wenham CC Head Pro Darrin Chin-Aelong (far right) and Assistant Pro Jason Greene (second from left) recently played 100 holes for charity. Also pictured are WCC members Steve McCulloch and Ralph Brown, who served as their caddies.

By Bob Albright

The final scorecard read like a fantasy outing for the ages: 29 birdies and four eagles. Not too shabby for just one twosome, but ask either Darrin Chin-Aelong or Jason Greene and they will tell you that the only numbers they really care about are the nearly $3,000 they were able to raise for local charities earlier this month at Wenham CC, all by simply doing what they love.

Chin-Aelong, the WCC head pro, and his assistant, Greene, hit the fairways at 5:30 in the morning at the picturesque course in Wenham, and just over seven hours later the duo had not only played 100 holes, but had helped raised a considerable sum for the Beverly Firefighters Relief Fund, Windrush Farms and the Plummer Home in Salem.

Starting on opposite sides of the golf course, one on the first hole and the other on the 10th, both pros could have easily been poster boys for the USGA’s new initiative to speed up play.

“To be perfectly honest if I went out here with nobody in my way I would play a full 18 in something like an hour and 10 minutes,” said Greene, who carded 10 birdies and one eagle (the 18th) in his 100 holes. “Darrin and I are both pretty quick players so our routine really did not change that much.”

“By 7:30 (a.m.) we already had two rounds in and we hadn’t run into any golfers,” added Chin-Aelong, who had 19 birdies, three eagles, and a stroke average of 66.5 for his five-plus rounds. “Everybody let us play through throughout the morning and they were all kind of rooting us on.”

Aiding their cause were a pair of WCC members, Steve McCulloch and Ralph Brown, who served as capable wheel men as both pros zigzagged their way through the popular course off Rt. 1A.

It’s the second year that the duo has hit the century mark for charity. Last year, both Greene and Chin-Aelong played 100 holes in the rain and raised a substantial amount for Ernie Els’ national autism endeavor, Els for Autism.  The charity hit home for WCC General Manager Norm Tarr whose daughter, Kaitlyn, 15, suffers from autism. This year, however, Tarr, Chin-Aelong, and Greene shifted their focus towards more local charities.

“The Plummer Home for Boys in Salem is a great charity and Windrush (Farms) is near and dear to my heart,” said Tarr of the therapeutic riding center in Boxford  and North Andover for adults and children with special needs or with debilitating injuries.

“I have been involved with them for six or seven years now and almost all of the work that happens in their environment involves volunteers.”

Tarr says the trips to Windrush Farms each Friday is a weekly highlight for his daughter.

“For her it takes a horse and three people to go horseback riding. Somebody leads the horse and one person is on either side because she gets so excited and they want to keep her on there.

“Last year we probably raised a little more, but in our opinion it didn’t make a dent with it being such a large charity. With these charities they will feel immediate impact from it.”

Similarly, the work that the Beverly firefighters and their peers fearlessly do each day is not lost on either Chin-Aelong or Greene.  As was chronicled in the spring issue of NSG, it was just this past January that Chin-Aelong and his family of four were displaced by a fire that gutted their home on the Wenham CC grounds. Coincidentally, Greene’s brother, Rick, also lost not only his house in Woburn, but three dogs as well, to a blaze three years earlier.

“That hit home for both of us, so we both kind of decided on that one,” Greene said.

Both pros are already looking forward to hitting the century mark again next year for the three same worthy causes and both report not even a blister from their exploits.

“I went to the chiropractor the day before and when I was finished I went to the chiropractor again,” said Chin-Aelong with a laugh. “That’s my secret.”