"Some golf courses are longer than others, but the one chosen by Floyd Satterlee Rood boggled the mind. His course was the entire United States of America!
On September 14, 1963, Rood took his first shot from a point just east of the Pacific Ocean surf. His game ended a little bit west of the Atlantic Ocean surf, on October 3, 1964. Thus Rood’s course was 3,397.7 miles long.
For the record, he made it in 114,737 strokes, and he lost 3,511 golf balls" (taken from Strange But True: Cross-country Golf – DeadSplinter).
At the time, Rood was a professional golf teacher at the St. Mary’s Golf Club in Berwick, Louisiana. On Sept. 4, 1963, Rood teed off next to the Pacific Ocean and on Oct. 3, 1964 he finished the hole with a tap-in par into the Florida surf. All the way across the continent covering 3,397 miles — it took Rood around 13 months to finish the hole.
In addition, Rood believed that golf was a means to a better life for all. He has many accomplishments including developing a foolproof putter as well as constructing golf holes at correctional institutions, where he taught boys the fundamentals of the golf, caddying and course maintenance.
The longest real golf hole — with a tee, flagstick and a hole — is reportedly in South Korea. It is the third hole on a course named Gunsan Club. The hole is 1,100 yards long and is a par seven
After further research into Floyd Rood, I came upon this short article in a 1958 Sports Ilustrated..:
"PutterInnovation
Floyd S. Rood,the golf pro at the St. Mary Golf and Country Club in Morgan City, La., drove up to New Orleans the other day, taking with him a gun case which contained a golf club. It was a putter, and a rather special one: Rood had paid a jeweler to make its head of gold, embed a one-carat diamond in it and engrave upon it the words: Presented to Dwight David Eisenhower. For some time Rood has been trying—unsuccessfully—to obtain a White House appointment so that he can present his club to the President. (Less ornate versions of it are in commercial production.)
In New Orleans, he stopped in a cocktail lounge, drew his glittering putter from the gun case and showed it off to admiring friends and strangers. Once or twice he left the table. Then, when he moved on to another cocktail lounge and brought it out again, he discovered that the one-carat diamond had been pried loose from the clubhead and was missing. "Whoever took it," said Rood with understandable satisfaction, "cut himself while digging it out. There was blood all over the blade."
But if the club's head was bloody, Rood's head was unbowed. He will have another diamond mounted in his golden putter, he says, and keep on trying to give it to the President."