Kelechi Ezihie teed off at Huntington Crescent Club at 6 p.m. on a Sunday evening with a plan: play golf, without stopping, for 24 straight hours. He had learned the game only two years earlier, working as a caddy before picking up clubs of his own. By the time he sank his final putt roughly a day and a half later, the plan had changed twice, the sun had risen and set and risen again, and Ezihie, 27, of Inwood, had a Guinness World Record.

The shift happened around 3 a.m. that first night. Ezihie was deep into his attempt when word reached him that a British golfer, playing in Norway, had just logged 32 consecutive hours on a course, blowing past the 24-hour mark Ezihie had trained for. Rather than pack it in once he hit his original target, Ezihie kept walking. He kept swinging. Under portable lights and with glow-in-the-dark golf balls to track his shots through the overnight hours, he pushed his own attempt to 36 hours, teeing off Sunday evening and playing into Tuesday morning before Guinness adjudicators had enough footage to review.

"This is a test to my energy to see how far I can go," Ezihie said of the attempt.

The rules were unforgiving. Golfers attempting the record are allowed a five-minute break each hour and nothing more, meaning Ezihie spent the better part of a day and a half walking a golf course in the dark, in the heat, and in the dark again, playing round after round of the same 18 holes at Huntington Crescent Club with no real chance to rest his legs or his swing. Guinness World Records requires video evidence of the entire attempt, and it typically takes reviewers 12 to 15 weeks to confirm whether a record has actually been broken. Ezihie's marathon round has since been recognized as the new record for the longest golf marathon, edging out the mark set in Norway just days before he began.

Golf was not always Ezihie's game. He picked it up as a caddy, working courses and watching from the periphery before deciding to play himself, a path that shapes how he talks about the sport now. Golf carries a reputation, fair or not, as an expensive hobby for people with country club memberships and time to spare, and Ezihie has been open about wanting to push against that image.

"People assume that golf is for the wealthy, and I'm trying to change that," he said.

The record attempt doubled as a fundraiser for Life's WORC, a Garden City-based nonprofit that serves people with disabilities, where Ezihie works as a day habilitation supervisor at the organization's Family Center for Achievement. The golf outing that hosted his attempt was structured to raise both money and awareness for the nonprofit's work, giving Ezihie's marathon round a purpose beyond the record book. He pursued the feat while also working toward an MBA through LSU Online, splitting his attention between coursework and a 36-hour walk around a golf course.

By the time he finished, Ezihie had spent more time on a golf course in one continuous stretch than most players log in a full season. He had also, without much warning, become the answer to a very specific trivia question: who currently holds the world record for the longest game of golf ever played. For a guy who only picked up the sport two years earlier, on Long Island's North Shore, that is not a bad way to make an entrance.