It really is moving day in 'The 72 Club'

Seth Waugh, CEO of Deutsche Bank Americas, and his son, Clancy, made brisk work of a four-round, one-day tournament. (Wendy Maeda/file/Globe Staff)

It was somewhere on the back nine of their fourth and final round when 13-year-old Clancy Waugh turned to his father.

"Dad, this has been great," he said. "Can we do it next year?"

With that, Seth Waugh had to laugh and he thought to himself, "I guess it works," but there wasn't time for more reflection. It was, after all, the back nine of their fourth and final round of the day. That's right, four rounds in one day was the order of business for Waugh and his son, which is sort of the point to why they call the assigned day in April "The 72 Club."

It takes your favorite PGA Tour golfer four days to do 72 holes and you may need a week or two, or even three, to squeeze in that many, but to the dedicated chaps at Littlestone Golf Club on the southern coast of England, down on the shores of the English Channel, it can be a day's walk. A brisk walk, perhaps, but still, they've been proving for years the game can move along quite nicely, thank you very much.

"I read about it when they were celebrating the 25th anniversary of 'The 72 Club' said Waugh, "and thought, 'Wow, that sounds cool.' "

That was more than 10 years ago and Waugh sent an inquiry to see if he could join in. They were glad to have him and he was honored to have at it for four years, not to prove the game could be played at such a pace, but for the flavor it provided.

"There was a neat mixture of local people, some of them blue-collar, some not. There were characters, a little bit of everything," said Waugh. "It was fun."

Waugh knows a thing or two about moving at a fast pace in life. As the CEO of Deutsche Bank Americas and Chairman of the Americas Committee, his business dealings can take him from New York to Europe to South America like some of us commute the Route 128 belt.

Under his leadership, Deutsche Bank in 2004 took on the sponsorship of the PGA Tour tournament at TPC Boston in Norton and it has become a smashing success, much to the pleasure of the sports-happy Boston citizenry.

A onetime passionate baseball player at Groton Academy, Waugh is now a rabid golfer, as is Clancy. Like so many busy parents, he cherishes spending time with his child and golf offers a perfect landscape. So one evening a few weeks ago, when Waugh intimated at a dinner conversation he might like to return to "The 72 Club" after an absence of several years, he was thrilled to hear Clancy ask, "Would they let me play?"

Seth Waugh thought about it, smiled, and said, "If you're ready, I'm ready."

The thought of having his son's undivided attention for a round of golf is appealing. But for four rounds in one day? Waugh loved it, though he concedes he wondered how his teenage son would hold up. "I figured we'd give it a shot, but if it didn't work out, it didn't work out," he said.

As it turns out, there was no need to worry. Clancy not only loved every step of the 12-plus-hour day, his youthful power and skill enabled him to nearly win the darn thing. That in itself was fun to watch, but mostly Seth Waugh and his son loved the camaraderie with their English friends, all sharing a love of a game that sometimes doesn't need to move as slowly as it does.

Since Littlestone is a "twosomes" golf course, that is how the golfers went off one day last week. The first tee time was 6:30 a.m., though the Waughs were in one of the last pairings, at about 7:30. Staying focused on the group ahead to make sure they kept pace, "you've got to hustle," said Seth, "but you don't ever feel like sprinting." When two rounds were complete, there was a half-hour for lunch, then onward to the first tee for Round 3. By then, the back twosomes were playing their rounds in perhaps 2 hours 45 minutes, but with the lead players going in anywhere from 2:15 to 2:30, Waugh said the pace of play was crisp.

"And it wasn't like we weren't lining up putts or taking a practice swing or two," he said.

By late in Round 4, the cool rain of the early morning was a distant memory. Warm sun had emerged and while the feet were a bit sore and the arms a tad tired, the Waughs were most content. Sure, an eagle at the 72d hole in a settling dusk - driver, 4-iron, "and somehow I made the putt," said Waugh with a laugh - served as a fitting exclamation point to the long day, but the only Americans in the field understood what the day had been about.

"It's never about the golf," said Seth Waugh. "That's just the excuse to get together."