Playing my usual Sunday morning game with the gang, and I tee it up on the home hole -- a par 5 where the ladies tee sits about 50 yards in front of, and to the left of, the regular tee. I play for my usual fade -- which means aiming left, essentially right over the ladies tee, which also features a bench and one of those round wire wicker waste baskets, painted bright red. I crank a straight pull that zooms out no more than three feet off the ground, whereupon it hits the waste basket, rips through the wire mesh, zings around the waste basket about a dozen times, and settles at the bottom among the trash and soda cans. To date, my only hole in one!

A few weeks later, said waste can shows up in my front yard (courtesy of one of the witnesses, although there have been no confessions to date). I still have it in the garage; it's become something of a traveling trophy among the gang. We still laugh about it.

OK, second time for me.
This is a story I rarely, if ever tell.
But hey, its for my sake.

I play a lot of golf at the Nile CC.  Its a semi-private course, short, and lots of older people play there in the summer.  Due to the shortness of the course it is a good place for young folks to learn the game.  So here I am, with my best friend, playing golf, back three years ago in one of the first rounds of golf of my life (really!).

We're doing fine, having fun, and get to the eighth hole, a longish dogleg left.  Hole sixteen turns parallel to the eighth hole and is a pretty close replica of the hole excpet for being about 60 yards shorter.  However, to the right of the fairway, the sixteenth green is wide open--meaning a slice or something of the like will end up on the sixteenth hole.

So, both of us actually hit good drives, God forbid, and my friend is 20 yards in front of me.  I'm about 160 out, to my green, and to the right about 100 yards away is the sixteenth green, with three older ladies putting (about 70 years old, for some perspective).  I go to hit my second shot, with a 5-iron, and completely shank it (that was not uncommon back then).  It going right for the sixteenth green, and my friend and I start yelling, "Watch out", "Heeeeeey!", stuff like that, because the ball was heading for the ladies.  We did not know what "Fore!" meant at this time, because we were so new to the game.  So my ball is heading straight for an old lady, with rather large hair (If this makes any sense, it was like an old lady afro...I'm sorry, thats the only way I can describe it).  The ball goes directly through (!) her hair.  I froze in the fairway, as the ladies looked over and started yelling.  The lady drove over in her cart and proceeded to give me the finest word whiplash I've ever received, including explaining what "Fore!" meant.

So, she leaves, and goes back to putting (keep in mind it is 9:00 in the morning, and the course is wide open, and the ladies began on #10).  My friend goes up to hit his shot, still laughing at me, and completely shanks his ball as well!  Well, apparently he still did not know what fore meant, so he yelled nothing.  But, immediately after hitting the ball he yells oh crap.  I look up just in time to see the ball hit the ladies putter, and bounce off the putter directly to her forehead.  Well, I was scared as I've ever been and immediately bolted, clubs and all in hand.  This same lady had just had a golf ball go through her hair (how many people can say they've done that!?), and not a minute later had another ball hit her forehead, off her putter.  So, I was not about to take another whiplashing, though I did not hit the ball.  Thankfully the course is surrounded by some really thick brush which is impossible for a cart to get into, so my friend and I hid in that.  Of course, after we got into the bushes, we moved our spot so the ladies could not keep track of us.  We hid, doing our best to camoulfage with the bushes.  Low and behold, within thirty seconds of getting into the bushes, four golf carts begin to follow along the ob line, where the edge of the brush is, searching intensely for us.  After five minutes of searching, or about that, they gave up and left.  I called my Mom to get a ride home, because there was no way we were finishing our round.  Once she got in the parking lot, which took about twenty minutes, my friend and I bolted straight through three fairways and immediately into the car, and safe we were.

It was a long while before I played there again.
Now I play there quite frequently.
But I have never seen that lady again.

And thats about the only time I will ever tell that story, because while I laugh pretty darn hard each time I think about it, I feel very bad for that old lady.

I have mentioned that my first round of golf was at Medinah No. 3.  However, my first attempted round of golf was actually a few weeks earlier on Medinah No. 2.  My buddy took me to the range and then to the first tee, lined me up, and stepped back.  I shanked my first shot into his right ankle, and then my second into his left ankle, carried him up the hill to the clubhouse and called his mom for a ride home.......

I have a laughable shot...and a laughable non-shot.

First the one that made contact.  Our old super used to drive his pickup around parts of the course.  It was a nice silver Ford.  One day we were playing the first hole at my home course.  Three of us hit nice drives in the fairway, and our fourth blocked it way right into the 9th fairway.  The course was pretty open back then, so he had an open shot into the green with a short iron.
Our super was in his truck just off to the right of the first green wanting to drive across the fairway to the second hole.  We were only 100 yards from the green so he made eye contact with us and we waived him to go.  As soon as he slowly moved forward we heard, "got him" from our friend on the ninth.  We had forgotten about him.  Ball hits right on top of the cab and flys over the green.  Brake lights go on, and three guys in the first fairway hit the ground laughing.  Would have been a pretty good shot too.

The second was the funniest shot not hit.  We were playing in a team event in a driving rainstorm.  We step onto our seventh tee, a reachable par five.  One of my teamates, about a 10 handicap, announces that he's going basically hit his drive into next week.  He whiffs.  Now this guy can make a sailor blush when he wants too...and after a brief "what just happened" look he has some quiet, but stern words with himself. He steps up and whiffs again, but this time the driver slips too.  It goes 30 yards down the left side and the ball is still sitting on the tee getting rained on.  He picked up that hole.

I'm sure I told this before but on the Old Course (2nd time) I was scoring well but playing 30 yard hook with my confidence getting shakier as the round went on.

On 16 it finally caught up with me. I hit a right by right out of bounds.

On 17, I hit a right by right over the highest roof of the Old Course Hotel

On 18, the 100 yard wide fairway looked like a narrow sidewalk.  I hit a grounder that somehow managed to go under the stone bridge but over the water.  

It left me an 8 iron into the green.  I promptly hit the 8 iron on the road right and hit my caddie's car with his wife and young child inside waiting for him to finish.

No one was hurt (as far as I know).

 It was Billy and me versus my brother and his best friend in our annual challenge match. Billy and I started out winning the first seven holes and then the B.S. really started to flow. Billy can be characterized as a loud Irishman, with a quick golf swing who loved to play golf with a few beers in his golf bag. He was really needling my brother and they actually stopped talking to us at the turn. We got to the back side and suddenly my oponents won seven holes in a row and the match was even on the 18th tee. My brother and his partner hit big drives down the middle and I pulled Billy aside for a pep talk. I said “Billy just swing easy and hit it down the middle-don’t try to murder it.”

 Billy waddled over to the tee box, took a mighty practice swing then loaded up for his final tee shot. He took a huge swing and we all looked down the middle and nobody could see anything in the setting sun. We looked down and we saw that Billy had hit his tee shot 1 inch. We laughed so hard we couldn’t talk, but Billy decided to play it as it was, and he hit his next shot, an unteed driver, about 25 feet.

 I got up and duck hooked it, we lost the match, and Billy made it into the lounge in time to down a few Jameson’s before we got to see him. It was the only time I ever saw him speechless.

I was playing last summer with my 7-yr old daughter.  She had a putt of about six feet and hit a screamer, just torched the thing.  It must have hit the exact back of the cup because the ball shot up about a foot, then dropped into the hole.  I was able to keep from laughing until she walked to the hole and removed her ball as if nothing at all had happened.

On the next hole she decided to do a cartwheel in the fairway.  She was halfway through it, with her skirt flopping down about her eyes, when it became shockingly apparent that she had forgotten to put on underwear.

I had just gotten home from work.  I was changing clothes, my wife was finishing dinner and my 5 year old daughter, Palmer was playing in the garage.  All of a sudden, Palmer came in the house crying and upset.  
 
She had filled up the drainage plate from a terra cotta pot (the water catcher part) with sand.  She was taking practice swings with her nine iron like she was hitting bunker shots but after several swings hitting the sand and the pot, she broke the pot.  As she was crying she said, "I was practicing my shots out of the sand trap and I broke it."
 
That's my daughter!!!!
 
Oh, she was wearing some of my wife's high heels at the time!!!
 
That's her daughter!!!

I was also proud that she made her own bunker!!!
 

Brock,

I am impressed that you got to name your daughter Palmer! Any chance her brother is named Nicklaus?

Just don't name her sister Player, ok?

Joe Hancock,
Nice friend. I was running across the street after school to head out to the golf course when a safety patrol boy stuck his flag between my legs. Result was three breaks in my left wrist, which in profile looked like a fork.

We were playing on the waterlogged first fairway at Salishan GL in early January. Someone else hit a shot that went inches before it dug in and the backspin snapped it bacvk about ten feet behind him. We had just picked ourselves up and it was my turn to hit. Ditto.

My own most laughable shot (off front tee markers, whistled past my own ear, flew over the road out of bounds) is apparently a dime a dozen.

The funniest I've ever witnessed was a woman friend, with a big, powerful swing, who took a big, powerful swing at the ball with her driver ... and "hit" it so minimally that it just tumbled off the tee -- just as it would fall off the tee if one could blow hard enough to blow a ball off a tee.

I don't think Tiger Woods could pull it off in a hundred tries.

Had a long wait with my college buds before playing an uphill par 4 with a small pond in front of the tee. We spent our down time increasing our level of inebriation. Hey, I'm not proud of it, but it's the truth. My friend Mario proceeds to hit 12 balls in a row into that pond. You could easily throw a ball across it, but he cannot get a driver over. By the time he finds success (barely) with ball number 13, I'm in pain from the laughing. I'm next on the tee, address the ball while chuckling, and proceed to hit it directly off the toe to the right where it bounds down the cart path directly at an older fellow pulling his pull cart, head down. My friends and I scream "fore!" at the top of our lungs, to no success. He doesn't even lift his head, and the ball catches him squarely in the crotch. Aw Jesus, we were laughing. The man paused for a moment, wavered a bit, and then continued trudging up that path, pulling his cart, head down............it was wrong, but..........

Just send this around to the studios, and you'll end up with a two-picture deal.

You might want to move the crotch reference a little higher, though.

 1.  I was playing at Canaan Valley  State Park back in the 80s with three other guys.  One was a terrific athlete (call him A), but not much of a golfer.  Another was a pretty good player but slow.  And the better he played the more deliberate he became.  Slow to the point that someone once described it as like having a painting in your group (so we will call him P).  

We reached the 18th  (a long par four played into the prevailing wind with a large impoundment guarding the front of the green), and he had a chance to shoot his best round ever if he could par it.  P was up and so was the wind.   So, in addition to his usual deliberation, P now was trying to outwait the considerable and freshening breeze.  

After what seemed like five minutes to the rest of us but was probably like 30 seconds, the wind began to die.  At that time P launched his swing.  And as he swung the wind gusted.  What followed was the highest shortest pop up I ever saw.   A, the terrific athlete, took off running and shouting, ?Mine, mine, I got it, I got it.?  

And he could have too, but  wisely let it drop through his hands.  Everyone was on the  ground except P, and I don?t know that he ever did see the humor in it.  Oh, and he didn?t make par on the last hole.

2.  More years ago than I care to recall, I was playing with my father and uncles at what was known as Par Mar Pines just north of Parkersburg. W. Va.  Dad had a monumental slice and spent a great deal of time on the right side of the golf course, but he also hit some superb recovery shots out of  what seemed like solitary confinement rather than just jail.  

On this occasion he had cleared the trees and was playing out an adjacent fairway.  His intention was to hit something low through the trees back into the proper fairway.  His shot negotiated every tree but the last one and ricocheted  directly back at him.   Simultaneously swearing and stepping into the pitch, he swung at the high inside fastball.  I?d like to say  he smacked two hundred yards greensward, but, alas, he didn?t even manage to foul it off.  I think this was the longest retrograde shot I ever saw as the ball finished at least fifty yards behind him.

3.  Playing at Canaan Valley in 1988, on the 9th hole I found myself in the trees to the left.  I had a gap if I could keep the ball low and straight for about forty yards.  I almost made it, but the last tree once again interfered and the ball kicked off of it heading left, hit another tree and triangulated back and ended its career with a yard of the point where I struck it.  

The following spring at Pinehurst #2, I was in agroup with a club pro and two friends of his who were pretty good sticks.  Their level of play was so superior I was intimidated and tense.  On the fourth hole trying to play it safe with an iron off the tee, I hit a hideous push fade slice  into the trees to the right.  Sizing up the shot, I saw that I had a gap about forty yards ahead if I could keep the shot low, etc.  Well, yes, just as I had done the previous fall I hit an even more perfect triangulation shot that came back to with six inches  of my previous lie.  The club pro was awestruck, ?I?ve been playing golf for thirty years and I never saw anything like that.?  I told him that not only had I seen it before, I had now done it twice within six months.  Evens though I made an 8 on the hole, the incident loosened me up and enabled me to relax so I could play better.

4.  On a three hole course (with sand greens) where I learned to play the first hole played over the railroad tracks.  The second hole paralleled the second but crossed the third, and the third crossed both the 1st and 2nd.   I was playing the 3rd, when a car zipped into the parking lot.   A guy jumped up, took his clubs out of the trunk, teed up and smashed a shot that struck the tracks and ricocheted back at him.  He ducked well after the ball had passed  him, put his driver back in the bag, walked to the car, threw his bag in the trunk and drove off without even looking for the ball.  I guess it?s like deer season, when the target starts shooting back it?s time to leave.

5.  I?ve also played golf with a man who is a walking laughable shot factory.  I?ve seen him hit the ball every conceivable direction except off the back of club.  More than once I?ve seen him drive a ball underground with fairway shots.    Once during a ?crucial? golf league match that was already out of hand, he topped his tee shot and didn?t quite make it past the ladies tees.  Using a fairway wood, he somehow hit the top of the ball so that it popped  up chest high.  Reflexively, he reached out and grabbed the ball. Goggle eyed, he stared at it for a second and then dropped it like it was hot.  ?Do you think they saw me grab it, if they did that?s two strokes.?  I looked over at our opponents toppling first to their knees and then to the grass.  ?Yeah, Harley, I think they saw it.?




6.  Player A on the tee and Player B says ?I wonder what those tee markers are made of.?  Player A then hit?s a low pull that causes  the left tee to break into a dozen pieces.  Turns out it was made of something similar to terracotta.  Player A acted as though Player B?s word had caused the result.  To disprove it, Player B spent the next few holes saying ?Wonder what would happen if A made a hole in one on this shot.?  Player A didn?t find it as funny as the rest of us did.

The 3rd hole at Clarksburg Country Club has a steeply uphill tee shot.   Crossing the fairway some fifty to seventy-five yards away  are some electric lines.   Any tee shot  hitting them must be replayed.  Come to think of it, any shot hitting them must be replayed, but I?ve never seen them hit with any shot other than a tee shot.  In well over a hundred rounds at Clarksburg I?ve seen them hit no more than five times.  Then a couple of years ago, I?m playing in a group with a good player, close to scratch, who has never had a good bounce in all of his golfing life.  Even though he?s a much better player than I am, I?ve always had his number, and probably have beaten him two thirds of the time. Moreover, Butch is a large guy with an over inflated sense of dignity and a tendency to harbor a grievance.  Indeed, it?s this tendency to linger over misfortune that has enabled me to beat him.  I never mention his bad bounces, but I?m always willing to talk about when he brings them up.  Okay, the stage is set.
     His first tee shot is smoked, but it dead centers one of the electric lines and drops straight down.  When he goes to reload, he moves his spot back and right by about a yard.  One of the guys in the group whispers to me, ?I don?t think he?s that consistent.?  At this point I?m set up to crack up.  

Second tee shot is also smoked but this one just barely ticks the top of one of the lines.  He gets about two hundred yards out of it, but not only does he have to replay he wants to replay.  The wise guy  who has already whispered to me now says out loud, ?Looks like you need to back up another inch, Butch.?  This is not well received.  

Did I mention that Butch hit?s a power fade and so aims down the left.  I didn?t think so.  I also didn?t mention that there is a large tree guarding the left side of the fairway .    And on that tree is a prominent limb protruding over the fairway.  

The third tee shot is also smoked but it is pulled, hit?s the prominent limb and caroms high in the air coming back toward the electric lines.  On the tee Butch is chanting ?Hit the f***in? wire, hit the f***in? wire, hit the f***in? wire you sonuvabitch, hit the f***in wire.?  Needless to say, the sunuvabitch didn?t hit the f***in? wire, and Butch is left with the shortest tee shot any of us ever saw him hit.  By this time I?m hiding behind the golf cart and hanging onto it to keep from going to the ground.    From there I managed to slink into the woods and hide behind a tree until I regained most of my composure.  And yes, I commiserated with Butch for the remainder of the round on my way to an resounding victory.