Freshmen Alex Buehrer and Joe Varkat (left to right) pose for a photo at the statue golf tournament.
Alessia Sandala | Collegian

A student played the Star-Spangled Banner on a kazoo to open the Statue Golf Masters Tournament for a final round of the campus tradition before quad construction scheduled to begin on March 9.

Forty-three men played, according to freshman Alexander Buehrer. The game’s rules are the same as traditional golf, but instead of trying to get the ball in the cup, players aim for Hillsdale’s Liberty Walk statues. 

“I’m not good at golf,” Buehrer said. “It’s so much fun.”

Senior Justin Peterson said the key to statue golf is not necessarily in hitting the statue itself.

“The goal is to hit any concrete connected to the statue, so the bases count,” Peterson said.

The winner of the tournament was awarded a black jacket with the tournament’s logo glued on the back.

Buehrer said Assistant Director of Admissions Ben Strickland won the tournament, but the prize was given to freshman Francesco Reale because Strickland is a college staff member.

“Franc now has the jacket,” Buehrer said. “And then we’ll give it to the guy who wins next year.”

Freshman Joe Vankat was a participant in the tournament. 

“We’ve been playing for the past couple of weeks,” Vankat said. “It’s an official tradition, it’s even on Hillsdale’s website. People haven’t been doing much recently, and so we started playing a little bit, got kind of hooked and we’re trying to get everybody else in on it.”

Buehrer said he also started playing this semester and got invested. He said Strickland first introduced him to the game. 

“I kept on seeing him around, and you’ve probably seen him around playing sometimes, too,” Buehrer said. “And then, some nice day in January, he’s like, ‘Alex, gonna play?’ and I’m like, ‘Bet, let’s go.’ So I played the whole thing.”

Freshmen Evelyn Shurtliff and Katharine Reyes said they have witnessed the game before when the weather is nice.

“We’ve passed by it several times as we walked through the quad,” Shurtliff said.

Peterson said he became involved with statue golf through his friends.

“Alex and Joe are friends of mine, and they just started out playing statue golf in their free time,” Peterson said. “Then they set up this tournament, and so it was kind of just something they wanted to do before the quad got torn up, and that’s how I got signed up.”

Buehrer said that the golf course takes between 30-45 minutes to play.

“You just have a good time, enjoy the outdoors a little bit,” Buehrer said. “It gets you moving, you take a study break, all that.”

“We have a kind of full suite of statues on campus,” Buehrer said. “So you take your tour of all of them while playing golf.”

Buehrer said the golf is played with foam balls in order to not hurt anyone or break a window. 

“You just make your way around: Margaret, Thomas Jefferson, Washington,” Buehrer said. “You head down to the Civil War Statue, the eagle as well, make your round of Liberty Walk and then end at the fountain, so it’s a big loop.”

Buehrer said the removal of the Ronald Reagan statue altered the typical statue golf course.

“Reagan was one of the OG statues. So we had to adapt,” Buehrer said.

Vankat said statue golf will change all the more once construction of the Diana Davis Spencer Classical Education Building begins.

“It is kind of sad,” Vankat said. “We’re gonna do our best to put together some kind of course on that side of campus when everything over here is closed. This is the last time we’re going to be able to play the full course, which is a little unfortunate.”