My golfing friends and I are mediocre golfers at best. One day we were playing one of our favorite courses which has a fairly short par 5, 14th hole, only about 490 yards. You tee off uphill to a blind pond that is, most days, just out of our reach. The pond is about 30 yards across to a wide open approach into a large, rolling green. I had hit two of the best shots I've ever hit on that hole and was about 30-yards off the green. One friend, tending the pin, said to me, "You can chip that right into the hole." Now he never talks to me like that, so I just laughed, aimed about 12 feet to the left of the hole, (rolling green, remember?) and watched the ball curl right into the cup. The only eagle I've ever had, and my good friend loves to take credit for it.
Here are some other golf stories, but they are not mine...
Kevin Burress's tee shot on the 130-yard 16th hole at Arroya Del Osa in Albuquerque, New Mexico, came to rest near a tree. A white duck waddled over to the ball, nudged it into her nest next to five eggs, and settled down to defend her domain. Kevin's father distracted the duck while Kevin retrieved the ball.
A goose sitting by a water hazard on a Massachusetts golf course was hit by a player's shot. The goose waddled over to the ball and kicked it into the water.
During the 1972 Singapore Open, Jimmy Stewart approached his ball for the second shot on the third hole while a 10-foot-long cobra approached it from the other side. Stewart killed the snake, only to see another emerge from the mouth of the first one. He killed that one, too.
On August 12, 1975, the opening day of grouse season, the first kill was made by eleven-year-old Willie Fraser of Kingussie, Scotland. He got his grouse with a tee shot on the local course.
Prentiss Cole of Palo Alto, California, put his 3-wood second shot, in the rough on the 465-yard, par-four, 10th hole at Spyglass Hill Golf Club. A doe emerged from the woods and began nibbling the grass around the ball, clipping it to fairway length. This gave Cole an easy third shot; he struck the pin and had a gimme putt.
The 14th hole at Scunthorpe Golf Club in England is called "The Mallard." On April 24, 1965, Jim Tollan's drive on that hole struck and killed a female mallard in flight. The mallard was stuffed and is now on display in the clubhouse.
A high-flying tee shot by Dave Hickler on the par-three 17th hole at Bangkok Country Club dropped in a water hazard - and bounced out onto the bank. The shot had struck a 12-inch carp, which he found floating next to the ball.
Art May left his tee shot a little short on the 200-yard seventh hole at Pruneridge Golf CIub, San Jose, California. The ball was just above a small hole, and as May was about to chip, a gopher popped out, slapped the ball with its tail, and disappeared. The ball rolled onto the green, where May putted in.
Dr. A. Vedros, a veterinarian from Merriam, Kansas, was playing golf at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs when he noticed a female buffalo in an adjacent field having a hard time calving. He climbed the fence, assisted the birth, cleaned the newborn calf, climbed back over the fence, and finished his round.
Monty Whitaker was playing from a bunker at Beachwood, Natal, South Africa, when a large monkey leapt from a bush and grabbed her around the neck. Her caddie hit the monkey with an iron, driving it off.
While playing in Zimbabwe, Nick Price once thinned a tee shot on a line drive - and struck a nearby bush pig in the rear end. His ball was not recovered.
A land crab crawled out of its hole near the fifth green of the Dania Country Club in Florida and grabbed the ball of Bill Graves. The crab won a tug of war and took the ball back underground.
Thomas D. Jones III of Charlotte, North Carolina, topped his tee shot on the par-four 12th hole at Peach Valley Golf Club in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The ball headed into a water hazard but struck a large turtle and bounced 150 yards down the fairway. Jones made par.
A local rule at the Glen canyon course in Arizona provides that "if your ball lands within a club length of a rattlesnake, you are allowed to move your ball."
On April 22, 1924 at Duddington, England, a ball became embedded in the back of a sheep. The sheep was chased for a few minutes and the ball fell free.
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