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Thursday, June 12, 2014

Golf trivia - driving the golf ball

According to The Golf Hall of Shame, in 1954 Harry Leach hit what, looked like a normal drive off the first tee at St. Andrews. That is until his ball landed in a garbage truck crossing the fairway. His drive stopped moving at the town dump a mile away.

Greg Norman's level of anxiety rose when the first two rounds of the 1983 Hong Kong Open were rained out. He found relief by driving one hundred golf balls through the open window of his hotel room into Hong Kong harbor. The practice paid off: Norman won what became a 36-hole event.

It's remarkable that Norman L. Manley made consecutive holes-in-one at Del Valle Country Club in California on September 2,1964. What's unbelieveable is that the seventh and eighth holes are 330 and 220 yards long.

Before the 1977 Lancome Tournament in Paris, Arnold Palmer drove off the second tier of the Eiffel Tower - 300 feet off the ground. The longest ball went 403 yards, while one of them hooked and hit a bus.

Craig Wood's 430-yard drive on the par-five fifth at St. Andrews during the 1933 British Open is thought to be the longest drive in major history. It didn't help Wood win - he lost in a playoff to Denny Shute, 149 to 154.

John Daly hit the longest hole in U.S. Open history in two monstrous shots during the second round of the 1993 Open. He tamed the 630-yard 17th on Baltusrols Lower Course with a 321-yard drive and a 310-yard one-iron.

One of John Daly's biggest drives was hit during a practice round for the 1993 British Open at Royal St. George's. Daly drove the 431-yard, dogleg left fifth hole.

The starter at the Eden course, St. Andrews, Scotland, once witnessed a visitor slice his tee shot as a northbound train was passing. The ball went through a window of the train and was thrown back immediately by a man in the car, who waved cheerfully to the golfer.

In 1962, Nils Lied, an Australian meteorologist stationed at Mawson Base, Antarctica, drove a golf ball a record 2,640 yards (1.5 miles) across a sheet of ice.

The longest recorded non-straight hole-in-one par five was made by Shaun Lynch. Shaun holed his tee shot on the 496-yard 17th hole at Teigh Valley Golf Club in Newton Abbott, England.

The longest straight hole ever aced is the 1Oth at the aptly named Miracle Hills Golf Club in Omaha. On October 7, 1965, Robert Mitera's tee shot found the cup 444 yards away.

Arnold Palmer was seven shots off the lead in the 1960 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills when he hit his opening tee shot of the final round. That drive reached the green 346 yards away. Palmer birdied the hole on the way to a 65 and his only Open title.

According to The Guinness Book of World Records, Kelly Robbins struck the longest recorded drive by a woman, 429.7 yards at the Elmira Corning Regional Airport in Corning, New York, on May 22, 1995.

The longest tee shot ever may have been the ball hit at John O'Gaunt Club in England. It flew into a vegetable truck and didn't hit the ground until the truck was unloaded 40 miles away at Covent Garden in London.

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