Wacky Golf Fact – Getting Lost in a Bunker

Everyone has heard about getting lost in the desert. In some countries, it’s even considered a common occurrence, especially when a violent sand storm is raging.

But have your ever heard about getting lost in a bunker (or on the beach as some say)? Not in a military bunker but rather a golf bunker a.k.a. a good old sand trap!

Many clumsy or impatient golfers lose a lot of strokes in them...but actually losing your ball in a bunker is rare.

Beware these special bunkers that seem to act like quicksand and swallow your ball.

Multiple Attempts to Get Out of the Trap

It almost happened to a fellow competitor once. In a tournament, he had to hack out 3 different balls from the same bunker before finally getting his own out of the hazard.

Wacky Golf Fact – Unsuspected Members of the Thieves Guild

When you play golf, you’re bound to see animals here and there. Some are beautiful, others less so; most may seem the shy-quiet type, yet some rare ones are proud and loud. Most golfers simply view them as innocent by-standards. But stay alert because, when you least expect it, some of these poor creatures may sneak up on you and literally try to get a piece of the action. Watch out before they reach their ultimate goal: to steal your precious ball and ruin your game!

You may not notice the most stealth subtle ones that utilize blind spots beyond high hills or in lower valleys. It may even be too late when you detect the noisy ones as they might fly away with their price and steal the show.

Getting Lost in the Middle of the Fairway

It’s curious how two unique holes on two separate courses can generate such similar stories.

Wacky Golf Fact – Hitting Forward Tee-Markers with Hedgehopping Drives

For this month’s chronicle, our main suggestion would be quite opposite to Lee Trevino’s advice on putting in strong winds: “Keep it low!”

Like power lines are a grave danger for low flying aircrafts, forward tee-markers can be hazardous to low altitude tee-shots.

At some point, hitting tee-markers happened to all of us, respectable golf enthusiasts. Sometimes, it can transform decent drives into horrible ones. Other times, they were already terrible strokes to begin with. But most of the time, it can be funny and even hilarious, especially to less penalized playing partners.

So, next time you intend to drive you golf ball close to the ground, remember to still give it some kind of elevation and beware those nasty tee-markers; they can get both good and bad tee-balls into ugly trouble and transform you, in an instant, into the laughing stock of your “friendly” group of golfers.    

Driving in Reverse

On a brisk fall Saturday morning a few years back, Eric experienced that type of out-of-the-ordinary misfortune. In fact, it was the first time I meet and played with him. Let’s just say he left a most entertaining first impression.

Wacky Golf Fact – Generate Humongous Drives Using Cart Paths

Today, we’re gonna mix driving and hard bouncing cart paths. Driving as in hitting a tee shot and opposed to trying to control a vehicle. You’ll see that these trivial ingredients can produce ridiculously explosive long drives but also ridiculously funny situations.

Most golfers love (or would love) to hit the ball long. Some are even willing to try almost anything to add a few extra yards to their drives. Aiming at cart paths and benefiting from big bounces off them sure can be an excellent way to hack it much longer. Any passionate golfer worthy of the name must have tried it at some point during his illustrious career.  

We hope you’ll think about this post next time you make an attempt at it. But beware this aggressive strategic as most cart paths are located on the side and unfortunate ricochets off them may often only result in getting further into trouble.

Roy “Tin Cup” McAvoy (Kevin Costner) sure learned about hard-pan-insanely-long shots by hurtfully losing a thousand bucks to bad boy David Simms (Don Johnson). Simms even used the car path (the road) instead of the cart path to teach him his lesson with their now Famous 7 Iron Bet.

Dreaming About Out-of-this-World Drives

Some time ago (ages ago if you must know), for young golf studs full of testosterone like my friends and me, reaching a par-5 in 2 strokes was the ultimate objective. Nothing could stop us; we would have bounced our heads off walls if we had to. So we only viewed cart paths as great opportunities to achieve our goal and had no complex using them to propel of drives farther.

Wacky Golf Fact – Hammering Down Tee and Walking On Water

This unusual story was related to me by my good friends, Bob and Gaby.

A couple years ago, they went out to the golf course on a cold brisk day for their first game of the season. Everyone knows it would take more than bad winter-like conditions to stop good old golf enthusiasts like them.

Yet, that morning, Bob and Gaby found out that some maniacs are wackier than others as they were paired up with 2 complete strangers…

It all started right after they introduced themselves to each other. One of these odd guys, dressed more for duck hunting than golf – but we could pardon it because it was pretty damn cold, pulled a hammer out of his golf bag!

Using Hammer to Tee Off

And not a little tiny hammer but rather one of these big construction-type metal ones with a black rubber handle!

What could he be doing with a hammer of a golf course?

Wacky Golf Fact – Birdie Hunting

This one occurred to my bubbies and me many summers ago. Back then, we were young golf studs or at least thought so.

That morning, Frank had a particularly bad outing with his famous driver. When we got to the 17^th hole, a long but sometime reachable par 5, he was determined to have his vengeance and tried to hit a bomb off the tee. And he did!

He probably made his best pass of the day and hit a wonderful powerful drive in the center of the club right down the middle of the fairway. His fancy driver even mad a big POW!

Literally Getting a Birdie

Everything would have been fine but out of the trees, a bird flew across the fairway at the same exact moment. Frank’s ball violently hit the bird! They immediately both fell straight down…about 25 yards in front of us, just between the gentlemen’s and ladies’ tee boxes.

We even noticed a few feathers blown away…

Steve immediately yelled out: BIRDIE!