The previous time he had gone to the golf course after working the graveyard shift, the fatigue he had brought with him put him way behind on the early holes. Ramon McAnderson wasn’t going to make that mistake again, not with all those quarters at stake. So he jacked coffees all night and morning at his job operating a press machine for Hallmark during the graveyard shift.

Fifteen holes later, McAnderson had trouble breathing, consumed by dehydration, and was on his way to spending the night in the hospital.

McAnderson, football coach at South Junior High and the father of Kansas University fullback Brandon McAnderson, has preached to his players for years to stay hydrated on hot days.

On that mid-July day when the temperature reached 107 degrees in Lawrence, the coach didn’t follow his own advice.

“In my haste to go out there and win some quarters, I almost came to the end of me,” McAnderson said, looking back on that scary day at Eagle Bend Golf Course. “Since I’m a coach, I should know better. All the things that I preach, I wasn’t doing. I was thinking, golf’s not a sport, it’s just a recreational thing.”

Instead of riding a cart, McAnderson’s foursome walked.

“We were trying to save a little money, get some exercise in, lose some of that belly,” he said.

Ramon McAnderson learned the hard way about keeping his body full of liquids while playing golf in the summer heat. McAnderson suffered dehydration during a round on the links in July and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. McAnderson now drinks plenty of water before golfing and downs sports energy drinks during the game.

The water in the coolers staggered throughout the course tasted that day like “hole water,” McAnderson said.

“It was nasty,” he said. “And the cart girl didn’t come around until the 13th hole.”

By then, the damage had been done. As he stood at the 16th tee, McAnderson had trouble breathing and tried to hit two shots that went nowhere. He said one of the other foursome members, Sherwood Archibald, called the pro shop.

A marshal picked up McAnderson and took him to the pro shop, where Eagle Bend pro John Morris and Free State athletic director Steve Grant tried to cool him down with drinks and ice.

As the players were finishing up, they noticed an ambulance coming to the course and wondered if it was for McAnderson.

It was. Paramedics attended to him, and he was taken to Lawrence Memorial Hospital, where he spent the night.

“They had trouble finding a vein to stick for the IV because when you’re dehydrated, your veins shrink,” McAnderson said.

Telling an addicted golfer it’s too hot to play is akin to trying to convince a relentless stage mother her child is too homely to model. You’re just wasting your breath. So take a different approach. Tell a golfer how to prepare himself or herself to play safely in hot and humid conditions. Better yet, let McAnderson tell them.

“On a hot day, what you should do is hydrate yourself 24 hours before you go out to play,” McAnderson advised. “It takes 24 hours for your body to get hydrated. You can’t just go out there an hour before you play, so if you know it’s going to be hot, and you trust your forecaster on Channel 6, watch the weather report if you’re going golfing. Get hydrated the night before. Don’t drink any caffeine. Drink electrolytes – your Gatorade, your Powerade. All the stuff I knew already.”

McAnderson, who said his body temperature soared to “103 or 104” that frightening day, can now be spotted driving a cart at Eagle Bend. The night before he golfs, he said he puts two bottles of Gatorade in the freezer.