Perhaps it’s a platitude to say that it happens to the best of us. Maybe, it’s nothing more than the cruelty of Murphy’s Law in action, but it seems that The Shot From Hell is always poised to show its ugly face whenever a golfer gains any serious momentum. Really, it has many faces, some more gruesome than others, but all disheartening in their own particular ways.
There are degrees of course. The “massacred bunker shot,” when pathetically executed by the touring professional will only marginally resemble the same effort by the 20 handicapper. However the effect is the same. As, amidst a tremendous explosion of sand, the golf ball fails to exit the bunker and rolls comically back to the golfer’s feet, the slumped shoulders and misery (and the desire to bury one’s head in the sand below) are quite universal.
There are bad shots, to be sure, which show up in the middle of an otherwise decent round: the push, the pull, even the slightly fat or thin shot, but none of these have the completely demoralizing character of The Shot From Hell.