SYRACUSE – Wawasee Golf Club PGA professional Matt Maloni is a pretty mellow fellow. He just sat back and laughed as his golf clientele hit tennis balls off the first tee, used a baseball bat to crack balls on the third tee, and didn’t bat an eye at the flock of flamingos on the sixth Saturday morning.

Andy Kryder takes a swing with the baseball bat on the third hole during action at Goofy Golf Saturday morning at Wawasee Golf Club. (Photos by Mike Deak)

Why wasn’t Maloni on the courtesy cart chasing down the lewd and misguided? Why, Goofy Golf, of course! The hijinks were all part of the second annual event which is designed to be far from serious on the course, but fully created to be a serious fundraiser for a worthy cause.

Goofy Golf, organized and executed by Syracuse Elementary teacher Jace Stewart, was built as a function of fundraising for cystic fibrosis. Inspired locally for the battle young Ethan Clem of New Paris deals with each day being mired by the respiratory disease, the overall awareness does not just limit to locals.

Stewart is thrilled to know the community will come together to help its own.

Dina Coverstone sends her tennis shot down the fairway towards the first green.

“We have no aid from the national government,” Stewart said of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, to which the donation from Goofy Golf will be made. “The Clem family obviously is close to all of our hearts, and we are here for Ethan. This is just a fun way we can fundraise for them, and show a little support.”

The golf itself was modified from what most fundraiser outings look like. Rather than just a normal Florida Scramble, golfers were given circumstances per hole. Instead of choosing between a six or seven iron off the first tee, golfers cracked open a fresh can of pink tennis balls and a tennis racquet and took a mighty swing to send the pink Penns down the fairway. Once on the green, normal putting resumed.

Also of note were teeing from inside a tire, teeing and putting on one foot on the flamingo hole, using a baseball bat to tee off three then throwing the ball down the 500-yard fairway, and so on for nine holes of goofiness.

Happy Gilmore would have been proud of Travis Steele’s tee shot on the fourth.

“Organizing the event this year was much easier since we had a layout from last year,” Stewart said, who also headed the event last July. “We changed around a couple of the holes but otherwise kept it pretty much the same on the course. We had a lot of returning players and they loved it last year. I thought the course was a fair balance of challenging obstacles and ranged from easy to hard.”

Stewart cried no foul as captain of the top team for the second year in a row, partnering with John Shock, Todd Lovellette and Garet Becker, shooting an even 35 for the day. No team shot worse than a 43 of the 10 teams active Saturday, but more important, the collective raised over $900, which topped the 2013 total.

“Our main goal was $1,000 and we came close to that, which is great,” Stewart said.

Stewart is also part of a cystic fibrosis fundraiser in November through the Wawasee School Corporation in its No Shave November campaign that even superintendent Dr. Tom Edington has joined. Another Wawasee graduate, Tommy Locklin, is currently on his cystic fibrosis fundraiser mission as part of his More Than Just Mountains campaign, preparing to climb Mt. Elbrus in Russia.