SCGA member Dawood Ashe: 2,000 rounds and counting.

THE FIRST THING TO KNOW about 76-year-old Dawood Ashe is that he can be both alarmingly impulsive and incredibly committed at the same time. That would explain why he quit his job as an accomplished aircraft engineer, packed up two cars, divided his two young sons between he and his wife, Emma, and drove from New York’s Long Island to Salt Lake City to start a new life.

He’d fallen in love with Utah’s capital city because the snowy mountain ranges reminded him of his childhood in Tehran, Iran. There, the family stayed until moving to San Diego when the boys were ready for college.

Though Dawood didn’t take up golf until he was 60, the game similarly shook his world with one singular decision.

The Ashes spent many more hours in the gym than on the golf course until the COVID-19 pandemic hit. On April 11, 2020, feeling lost and disconnected, they showed up at their nearby home course, the high-end public The Golf Club of California (GCOC) in Fallbrook, and asked if they could “sneak on.” The facility was closed due to a county order, but they got a hushed “yes.”

That was more than five years ago, and the circumstance turned a time of desperation into nothing less than a later-in-life calling — an obsession, really — for Dawood. By late June 2025, through frosty mornings, wilting heat and pouring rain, Dawood had played more than 1,900 rounds, with no end in sight. Emma, who played the first 550 rounds and several hundred more alongside her husband, meticulously keeps a calendar and says Dawood’s 2,000th outing should come on October 2.

The Ashes never stepped foot in the gym again, and they didn’t need to. For the entire journey of more than 34,000 holes, Dawood has walked GCOC, pushing a cart packed with accessories on a hilly course with some stretches of hundreds of yards between holes. Dawood says it takes between 19,000 and 20,000 steps, or more than eight miles, to cover the track, “depending on if I’m playing Army golf.”

Dawood, who only keeps his scores in friendly games, has made a pair of holes-in-one during his streak, and his best score is 75, but he’s yet to shoot his age. “That’s going to happen this year,” he predicted.

“If I had out this effort to my study, I would have two PhD’s” he says with a laugh. “I am eating, sleeping and watching golf. It is everything.”

His stamina is nothing short of incredible. Over the first 60-plus months, Dawood missed playing only 13 days. The first came after he and Emma celebrated 365 straight rounds; the other dozen were forced absences because of bad weather — the last coming in March 2024. In one deluge while he was playing, Dawood walked into a low spot and his cart got pulled away in a calf-high current. He ditched his boots, rolled up his pants and saved his clubs.

Brian Sangster, GCOC’s director of business operations, says golfers regularly call or show up to ask if they can play with Dawood, even if they only know him through social media. Two years into his streak, Dawood’s story went national when Golf Digest profiled him, and not long after he received mail at the club that contained a whimsically drawn picture of Dawood pushing his cart. The artist was Gene Haas, a past president of the Wisconsin Golf Association, whose note read, “You’re the envy of the golfing world.”

Dawood is a prime subject for a caricature because he is a true character. His eye-catching outfits are color-coordinated and always include suspenders. His most striking feature is the long gray beard he started growing during COVID that makes him look like a tall and lanky gnome.

He is a self-proclaimed golf nut who watches hours of play on TV and can’t wait to get out to try some tip he’s culled from YouTube. “If I had put this effort to my study, I would have two PhDs,” he says with a laugh. “I am eating, sleeping and watching golf. It is Everything.”

Says Emma of the attention Dawood gets: “He’s not cocky about it. This is what he thoroughly enjoys right now. When he walks with people, young men, he talks with them. He entertains them and tells stories. They tell him, ‘When I’m older, I want to be like you’.”

As the summer wore on, it was clear that Dawood probably was going to need a new license plate for his Volvo. The current one reads, “1000RND.” Will his quest be satisfied at 2,000? “If he stays the way he is now, I cannot see him stopping,” Emma says. “There will be no immediate ‘I’m glad it’s over.’ Absolutely not.”