How golf’s best silent auction is making a difference in lives

When the Take a Swing Fore Batten auction goes live Feb. 19, nearly 18 months will have passed since the last time golfers had an opportunity to bid on some of the rarest outings in the game. For most players, the Fore Batten event presents their only chance to score a round on some the country’s most exclusive and prestigious courses, including Oakmont (ranked fifth on America’s 100 Greatest Courses and host of this June’s U.S. Open), Crystal Downs (14th), Oakland Hills South (20th), Prairie Dunes (23rd), Olympic Club (35th), Sleepy Hollow (59th), The Quarry at La Quinta (91st), Interlachen (the 2024 Golf Digest Best Renovation winner) and dozens more.

This and each of the previous six Fore Batten auctions have given golfers a chance to fantasize about playing on courses, or with celebrities, they could normally only dream about. But those fantasies can come true for the individuals or groups that win the bid. The auction, however, does far more than grant wishes. For parents across the United States and around the world, it helps provide something far more important: hope.

Click here for the full list of auction items.

Long-time auction observers will be aware that the proceeds of Take a Swing Fore Batten go to the ForeBatten Foundation to research and develop treatments for CLN3 juvenile Batten disease, a rare, fatal and incurable congenital neurological disease. Since the first auction in 2018, more than $6.4 million has been raised for the foundation.

Batten disease and the world of golf intersected nine years ago when course architect David Kahn and his wife, Karen, learned their formerly healthy and active twin daughters each had Batten. Batten dismantles the nervous system and over time leads to intellectual disability, severely impaired speech and motor functions, seizures and blindness. Most children with Batten don’t survive their teenage years.

As we’ve reported in Golf Digest since 2021, the conditions of the Kahn’s daughters, Amelia and Makenzie, now nearly 15 years old, have steadily deteriorated. Both girls have experienced cognitive decline and dementia, suffered the loss of physical mobility (Amelia is confined to a chair) and lost vision. Seizures are common, and any ordinarily small illness can have mortal consequences to their immunocompromised bodies. When we last reported on them in Fall 2023, Amelia’s condition was dire—she was being nourished with a feeding tube and had suffered through weeks of intensive care, her condition so severe her parents and doctors believed she would not survive, and they said their farewells to her on more than one occasion.

Much has happened on the research and development front since then, and for the first time we can report slivers of hope for Amelia and Makenzie, which may in turn lead to further breakthroughs and treatments for other children.

A research team, funded by the ForeBatten Foundation, has developed a synthetic nucleotide sequence that early studies show may help repair a defective gene linked to CNL3 juvenile Batten disease. Amelia and Makenzie have been patients 1a and 1b in early treatments, which are injected into the spine. The treatments began in the summer of 2024 continue every several months, with increased dosages. The results have been encouraging for the Kahns.

“The girl’s doctors to this point have been ecstatic about the impact,” says Stan Kahn, David’s father and the organizer of the auction. “The goal for the treatments was always to prevent or slow the disease’s progression, not reverse it, but they feel like it’s actually made an improvement. That’s the dream.”

The family has noticed a change in the behavior of the girls as well. “For the last few years Amelia literally had two stages: sleeping and screaming,” Kahn says. “Since the injections have started, she’s smiling, she’s laughing, she’s communicating. I can literally make her belly-laugh now. I tell her that she steals my hat and she just laughs, and I call her ‘Amelia’ McGillicutty’ and she giggles. She obviously still has her challenges but the need for constant help has gone down significantly.”

The road ahead is unknown, and it remains to be seen how the treatment might be adapted to other Batten-afflicted children.

None of this would be possible if the auction items didn’t compose the game’s ultimate wish list. In addition to the aforementioned 100 Greatest courses (just a few among many), highlights include:

• A day at The Bear’s Club (ranked 180th) and lunch with Jack Nicklaus.

• Two days of golf and one night lodging at Sand Hills (8th), including a course tour with Bill Coore.

• Round for three at Chicago Golf Club (13th).

• Round for four at Squire Creek (Golf Digest’s No. 1 ranked course in Louisiana) and a day at The Ranch, an open-ended, forking path private estate course designed by David Kahn and Tim Jackson that no one outside the owner’s family and small circle of friends has played.

• Rounds at The Tree Farm and Old Barnwell.

• Golf and lunch for three at Michael Jordan’s Grove XXIII in Hobe Sound, Fla.

• A major league bat signed in 2012 by over 40 Hall of Fame players including Ernie Banks, Yogi Berra, Bob Gibson, Tony Gwynn, George Brett, Brooks Robinson and Willie Mays.

• A round of golf with guitar great Alex Lifeson from the band Rush (this is annually one of the highest-earning bids at the auction).

The ForeBatten Foundation is in perpetual need of funding to support the research and development of new treatments for Batten disease. The best and most direct way golfers can help is to visit the auction and participate. Every click and every bid makes a difference and helps keep the hope alive for families suffering from this cruelest of diseases. With the continual investment from the world of golf, we get closer to finding a cure.

Click here for the full list of auction items.

Do donate an item to the auction or inquire about special, high-value non-publicized lots, please email Stah Kahn at stan@forebatten.org.