This guy’s agonizing hole-in-one quest is hard to take your eyes off

UPDATE: Jerry did it, making an ace with his 2,627th swing, just before 11 a.m. Thursday.

***

At 8:16 a.m. Thursday, more than 10,000 people were watching a live stream of Barstool Sports personality “Jersey Jerry”— née Gerard Gilfone — sleeping on an air mattress in front of a white screen.

If you had randomly happened upon this YouTube page, you might rightly have been mystified by why such a large audience was riveted by a grown man cloaked in blankets. The numbers on the screen offered some explanation:

Strokes: 2496
Time Elapsed: 1:08:53:28

As in: 1 day, 8 hours, 53 minutes, 28 seconds, which is the amount of time that Jerry thus far has expended trying to make a hole-in-one on a Golfzon simulator.

Goofy stunt? Perhaps. But also a window into the golfing soul. Not to get all Shivas Irons on you, but Jerry’s quest is a microcosm of the golf experience playing out in real time: the challenge, the frustration, the bursts of (false?) confidence, the agonizingly near-misses. It’s an oddly gripping and wholly addictive watch, and I’m not the only person who thinks so. On Wednesday night, more than 60,000 viewers — Max Homa and Brooks Koepka among them — were tuned in as Jerry tried to jar a tee shot on Pebble Beach’s iconic 7th hole. That hippo from the Cincinnati Zoo has nothing on this guy.

Ace chases aren’t a new idea. The DP World Tour has a series in which it dispatches pros to par-3s and gives them 500 balls to try and make a 1. But an average weekend hacker taking on the challenge — even if it is in simulated form — adds another wrinkle. So, too, does Jerry’s commitment to the cause. He has no swing or time limit. He will keep going, or has pledged that he will, until a shot finds the bottom of the cup, or his faculties can endure no more.

When Jerry stirred at about 8:30 Thursday morning to begin Day 3 of his journey, he did not look or sound good.  

“Oh my god, bro,” he said as he rose from his mattress, groaning like a linebacker the morning after an overtime game. “I can’t get up, bro.”  

As he clenched himself, he added, “I’m shivering. Oh my god, it’s so cold in here.”

This, we now know, is what happens to the human body after nearly 2,500 more or less consecutive golf swings, which, if you haven’t already done the math at home, is the equivalent number of swipes and putts that a 90s-shooter would take in roughly 28 18-hole rounds. That’s more rounds than most golfers play in a year. Jerry has done it in a little more than 30 hours.

Also elevating the show is Jerry’s persona: self-deprecating, unassuming, leaning toward hapless. Way more Eeyore than Pooh. As the swing meter has climbed — along with Jerry’s general angst and exasperation — you can’t help but pull for the guy.

There have been painfully close calls. Just after the 2,000-swing mark, Jerry launched a shot that landed 20 feet short of his target then rolled out to what looked to be within an inch of disappearing. As Jerry dropped to the ground in disbelief, a small gallery of his coworkers were equally stunned.

“Jerry…oh no, Jerry,” one moaned in a funereal tone.

Swing number 2,302 was another soul-crusher, as Jerry’s effort burned the right edge of the cup before stopping a couple of inches behind it. Gutted, Jerry buried his head in a curtain.

As the hours and minutes ticked by Wednesday, though, the bad swings far outnumbered the good. In his last hour of action before he retired for the evening, Jerry not once hit the green. Hard to watch, yes, but also in a morbidly fascinating way, also impossible not to watch.

If you’re into this kind of thing, Jerry’s still at it. You can tune in here.