Anyone got an weird/unusual golf stories?

[magicratx]

I'll start of with one.

About eight years ago i was playing in a pub society day out. cant remember the course soemwhere in berkshire I think. Anyway i was playing pretty poorly when i got to the 16th. It was about a 400 yard par four but had a massive dog leg, which made me think i could take the "Tiger line" and get there in one. had to carry over a load of shrubbery then could easily make it.

So I teed up nice and high took out the driver and literally belted the hell out of this ball. As soon as i hit it it didnt quite feel right and as i looked up i couldnt see it. Asked my playing partners they too hadnt seen it. Not a big deal, round was awful anyway, so i walked back to my bag (about ten yards from the tee), got out a new ball, and walked back up to hit another. Just as i was placing the ball on the ground my ball came thudding out of the sky and landed about 2 feet away from me.

We concluded that the only possible explanation was that my ball had thudded into the angle of a temporary tee mat a few yards ahead and had shot almost vertically upwards!

Scared the crap out of me!

Just thought it might be interesting to share a few strange happenings.

[jupiterpig]

One time on the course I play here in Raleigh I hit the ball left playing my fade/slice...well the ball went strait. Straight means right at a creek with trees...well i looked back and cussed and turned back around and saw the ball bounce off a tree and onto the green to 15-20 feet...

and another time when i had a bad slice, I set up way left and killed the ball out over a construction site. The ball started left then came back right and then WAY RIGHT...but i ended up in the fairway...the funny part is that I figure that my ball went as far across as it did long...

[brandofo]

This one time I thought I hit a really bad shot and it ended up being a good shot.

[Sluss]

130 yard downhill par three over water. One of those hit a nice three quarter pitch and put it next to the hole. Of course, I blade the wedge and hit a line drive that nails the rocks at the front of the tee box. Everybody on the tee box including myself hit the deck.

Nothing. No ball flying by, nobody gets hurt. We all stand up and start to look around. About sixty yards behind us there is a splash as the ball lands in the creek.

Re-teed and hit the next ball real close and tapped in for a crowd pleasing bogey. I'm still not sure if re-teeing was the proper rule call there.


When I was first playing golf I used to play a nine hole city course for 36-45 holes a day. Early evening and I am playing with some guy and his girlfriend. We get to the sixth which is a par four with a blind tee shot from the bottom of the hill. The ladies tee is at the top of the hill. She goes up and stands behind a tree until we tee off. I hit mine down the middle. Guy hits his, girl walks out after it passes, ball hits off of a tree branch comes back and nails the girl in the head. She goes down like a ton of bricks and is out cold. Ambulance had to drive onto the course.

[magicratx]

Oh yea,
Just remebered after reading the post above.

Par three 170 yards, lake about 30 yards in front of the tee. Thin my iron badly and kill a swan! Stopped the ball getting wet though. Pitch and putt for par!

[tuq]

Try to keep this short, but it is definitely weird.

When I was nine I was among the favorites to win the 10-and-under age group at the Junior World tournament in San Diego. Our age played at a little par-3 course in Old Town called Presidio Hills. Although it had no sand bunkers, there was plenty of grass bunkering, small, undulating greens, and they would get the course and the bent grass greens in great shape for the tournament.

The day before we went to pick up my brother at Balboa Park, where his age group was playing. The next morning I can't find my clubs anywhere, and my father (who took my career more seriously than I did, we'd prep for this event weeks in advance) completely flipped out. However, I was able to get some rentals and had a pretty respectable start through the first six holes.

Well right about that time a course assistant named Doug came riding out onto the course on his motorcycle, my clubs strapped to him. Turns out after hearing what happened he took a guess that maybe my clubs were left behind at Balboa Park (why I took them out of the car and how he guessed this I don't remember), called over there to find out they were, rode his bike a few miles over to the course, grabbed them and brought them out to me.

The grouchy old club pro, who hated that I played for 12+ hours a day for the flat $5.50 daily fee for weeks prior to the tournament came storming out onto the course, making up a rule on the spot that I couldn't keep my putter...? In retrospect I'm sure I should have been DQ'ed for completely switching equipment mid-round, but we were only nine and no parents cared enough to make a stink. But since he didn't like me he took my putter, let me keep the rest of my clubs, and on I went.

At the turn my brother, who was still at the course, told me to go into the bathroom. My father was under the stall and slipped me my putter under the wall, which the pro had given to him. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I finished the round with it and was leading after the first day. After the second day I set a course record (since broken) and had a six shot lead. The last day I managed to lose the entire lead by the tenth hole, a lead which was evaporating but which completely disappeared when my opponent hit a hole-in-one and shaken I took a double bogey. But the events of that day are for a different, "worst things that ever happened to you on the golf course" thread.

[magicratx]

I once had an arguement with my societies committee because on a course that we were playing ( i had never played before, most others had multiple times), for the longest drive hole they picked a hole that ran out of fairway at 300 yards. They couldnt understand why i was so miffed that my huge drive (probably 50 yards past 2nd best) didnt win the brand new Callaway driver that was up for grabs.

Mind you they were all getting on a bit and 120 yards was probably a good effort for them!

[HDPM]

I've seen all kinds of weird stuff, and I don't see that I could have any corner on the market. Played with this woman who was a bodybuilder and not very good at golf She had this ball that was really old, turning yellow, almost brown really. She hit it in a ditch. A ditch that was marked "Caution, Rattlesnakes" She went in for the ball, even though a couple of us warned her. She got confronted by a rattlesnake. Surprised she stayed calm and didn't soil herself. She backed out slowly and didn't get bitten. People go nuts for finding a ball. Another guy had mail order balls, I think the kind that used to be advertised as super long in the back of golf magazines. Cheap, nasty solid balls. How do we know they were solid? Well, after he bragged about them they kept busting into about 19 pieces. His swing speed was maybe 70, but it was cold out. I think the balls just got cold and were so cheap they just crumbled. He was very sad.

Guy came into the pro shop covered in blood. His head had this nasty slow leaking wound and his bald head had a lot of caked on blood. We asked what happened and he said he got hit in the head by somebody's errant tee shot. He described what happened and it didn't sound right, the way he described the 4th hole or whatever was wrong. So we asked how could it happen there, and he explained it was at another course that morning. See, he was playing 36 holes at two different courses and was too into the golf to wash off the blood between rounds, let alone go to a doctor or quit playing or anything.

Cart accidents? Sure. Carts going into rivers or lakes? yeah. Guy driving a cart in rush hour traffic from one course to another sipping a beer? Yeah.

Gambling proposition shutting down play at one hole on a muni course that eventually led to a political scandal that got coverage on the local news? Yes.

Balls hitting cop cars and bouncing back in bounds? Just one.


Weird stuff happens out there.

[magicratx]

great post HDPM, esp like the gut covered in blood!

[westhoff]

I grew up on a nice 9-hole course in the middle of Kansas. One winter we had a bad ice storm. So that spring, everytime it was moderately windy (like everyday [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] ) we would have branches down everywhere. So we get to hole 3, a 260 yard downwind par 4, and there is a fairly big elm by the tee box. I step up and on my downswing a branch about the size of me breaks off and falls on me knocking me to the ground. My playing partners found this extremely funny. I did too once I realized what had happened and I wasn't injured. I hadn't made contact with the ball so I regrouped, hit my 3wood to eight feet and drained the eagle putt.