Secret In The Dirt - Golf's Greatest Social Network

Okay, I sliced the drive -- no surprise there. The ball got into the hardwood trees 10 yards right of the fairway on the top of a hill on a short par 4, and I had a clear shot out 200 yards to the green. So I pulled a metal five wood, took dead aim, and busted it good! The ball started a little right and KAWHOK! hit a tulip tree dead center about 7 feet high up the trunk 15 or so yards ahead of me. Shucks-Fire! But then it ricocheted STRAIGHT BACK AT MY FACE AT 150 MPH from 15 yards away -- LOOMING .. the little ball LOOMING at me face!!

I just busted out laughing at how ridiculous it was as the ball kept ZOOMING straight at my face. Must have been a bit of a time warp or something. At the last possible second, I dipped out of the way and the ball went SWOOSH right over the part of my hair!

Wow.

And then it hit the tree right behind me! KAWHOK! And then it popped me in the back!

What the ...

I took a snowman just to make sure.

That will get the blood pumping, that's for sure!

One time I had a similar situation, hitting out of some trees from the pine straw. Smacked the ball good, it hit a tree 10 yards ahead of me and ricocheted straight back and nailed me at my belly button. Luckily I had a 'nice protective layer' in that spot!

I bet most of us have has similar experiences.

This happened to me when I was a novice golfer ... a true story.

Setting up in the tee box, my ball was teed up close to the marker ... a slightly conical, octagonal, wooden block, spiked into the softish ground. My hands got way behind me and I drove the ball into the block causing it to spin round and round!!! I never found the ball which fortunately caromed away, but I did get a big applause from my playing partners, who unanimously awarded me a mulligan ..!!!!

I shall never forget the image of that tee box marker getting thwacked and spinning like a roulette ..!!!

Ha! That reminds me of another incident:

A buddy of mine and I were standing just off the tee directly behind another player in our group. The guy on the tee took a choppy, hard cut at the ball...the ball shot out through his legs, behind him and square into my buddy's leg.

I've never seen anything like this since. Amazingly bad shot!

One time me and my buddies were standing on the tee waiting for the hailstones to stop ( no kidding!) and a ball was on the tee. One of the guys hopped over to kid on taking a swing at it whilst aiming at (luckily not me) us and Thwwwak he hit it and got my friend Alan in the butt.

He peeled his pants down to check the damage and we could see the ball dimples indents on his backside and I still swear you could read the words Titliest too!!! For a second a red haze took over and I think murder would have been commited if the guy who hit the ball hadn't run off really fast down the fairway.

<strong>geoffmangum wrote:</strong>


What no video!!

I have two stories. I was playing a round at Makena North in Hawaii some years back. I was playing well and went to the next tee wanting to really put some mustard on the next tee shot. OHHH there was mustard, ketchup, tomato and relish...a massive hook was released and it was heading toward the road on the left of the hole.

The ball was airborn for seemingly 30 minutes when a car came into view...oh crap it was a Ferrari!!! The ball in slow motion heading closer and closer to what was sure to be the most expensive accident I have ever heard of. That hook had a mind of its own.

The ball hit!!!! Hit right in front of the Ferrari and bounced just over it with both objects moving at full speed.

My favorite ball that went astray is my favorite because it wasn't me. I was playing with my buddy at Pebble Beach 3 years ago went he sliced his ball through a window of a mansion sitting off the 18th. That window was floor to ceiling probably 10 feet high by 10 feet wide and his ball shattered it!!!

We looked at our caddy and asked what we should do. His response, "walk faster that window probably costs more than your house."

My high school golf coach was an grizzled old-timer named Roy Spofford whom we called Spoff. Spoff taught the degenerate math class, avidly played the ponies, and suffered terribly from emphasema from years of smoking. Picture Burgess Meredith from his later movies and you'll have the mental image.

Spoff loved angles. Litterally and figuratively. While he wasn't much of a golf coach, he was a great judge of character and situations, and he would do what he could to exploit an angle.

Anyway, we'd get out of school early to go play our matches, which were 18 holes. The coaches, many of whom were teachers, loved the perk of playing some very nice courses themselves. Spoff, who no longer played, often volunteered to serve as the starter. The other coaches LOVED this.. they would head out for a quick round in advance of their teams, and they would finish early and "coach" their teams at the finish. This meant that old Spoff was often the only coach of any team around the first tee box.

Old Spoff carried an original PING A1 putter, using it upside down as a cane mostly, and next to his racing forms he always had couple rock hard pinnacles in the pocket of his old windbreaker.

After he'd get the groups organized on the tee box and go over any local rules, Spoff would wander over to the putting green (seems most of our local courses had the practice putting green next to the first tee.) He would drop his pinnacles on the green and softly putter about...

...but there was a very unusual correlation, a subtle pattern, which was discernable only to those in the know... just as some kid from the opposing team was taking it back off the first tee, old Spoff would hammer one of those pinnacle rocks with his PING A1 to the far end of the green... and a shrill tuning fork PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGG would pierce the air exactly at the moment it was too late for the poor kid to bail out of his swing.

Many times we would start a match one-up after one against some brash kid who was just lucky to find his errant first tee ball.

Sportsman like, it was not, but that was old Spoff. All about the angles.