ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia (JP) - Andre Tolme, 35, finished his last round of golf in Mongolia, losing 509 golf balls, and hitting 290 over par. His course? The entire length of Mongolia, where each "hole" was up to 179,222 metres long. The course took 9 months to traverse Mongolian steppes with nothing but a Jeep, a tent and a three-iron.

His caddy, Khatanbaatar, drove the Jeep and supplied water along the course which followed the land once ruled by Genghis Khan. Along the way, he encountered bubonic plague-carrying marmots, constant heat, 65 km/h gusts of wind, and howling wolves.

Tolme, a civil engineer from New Hampshire, divided the 1,986 kilometre length of Mongolia into 18 holes - a course he estimated at having a par of 11,880. His final scorecard shows a total of 290 over par, with a 'handicap' score of 506.

Why did he do this? Officially, Tolme stated that he wanted to raise the awareness of Mongolia, to pioneer the sport of extreme golf, and to expand his "artistic imagination." We @ joe-ks.com think that his real motivation came from his newfound phrase, "If Genghis Khan, why can’t I?"