Interesting obstacles you've come across on golf courses

[Craig Mac]

Craig, how do you get "My Scorecards" to appear on your posts? I have Scorecard downloaded on my MacBook.

PM sent....

[BigDaddy_Sean]

played once on a spring day .. walking up the fairway on a hole that had a pond 100 yards or so wide ..

a canadian goose barrelled down at me .. flying 10 feet over the watter full throttle landing about 5 feet from me .. hissing at me and batting it's wings.

slowly walked around it and didn't get attacked .. but had a club out and ready to whale if he did.

figured he was protecting his babies.



another time i was hitting a par 5 in two that was across about 200 yards of water .. the green was only 5 paces past the water so it was a tight shot .. i hit where i thought it was gonna go into the bank right before the green, hit the hill and popped up on the green and i saw something fall back into the water.

got to the hole .. and a muskrat I believe was staring up at me .. 2 putt birdie thanks to him. lol.

[dave s]

A couple come to mind:

Approach shot of about 130 yards uphill. Hit it short and the ball hit something hard and careened about 30 yards straight right. Go up near green to find a bunch of bedrock protruding from the fairway and green approach! New one on me!

Local course has the 100' tall powerline towers on 2 holes. Man, do they make serious noise if your drive hits one. Local rules state replay shot, no penalty.

My league course has a pair of nesting redtail hawks that are simply amazing. They've been there as long as we've had our league there. The male will sit on limbs only 6' from the ground and let you get within about 10' of him before he happens to move. We've seen the female teaching young how to kill and eat a chipmunk. Didn't even move while we watched from the back of a tee box about 15' from her and her chick.

Canada Geese? All the damn time! Not me, but I've seen them hit on a par-5 drive before. They may be among the stupidest creatures on the planet.

dave

[Chilli Dipper]

The ninth hole at the course I played at growing up had a totem pole in at the edge of a grove of trees near the tee. Since the hole was a dogleg left, it seemed as though you had to hit the ball over the totem pole for the ideal line to the fairway.

[Awsi Dooger]

About 10 years ago I played a course in West Virginia frequently for several summers, Canaan Valley. Near dusk there are deer all over the course. People feed them so they come out in massive numbers and head toward the road.

I literally would use them as line of sight on drives. Near the greens when they would approach you had to be careful. The young ones may look cute and they'll approach, but that draws the ire of the parents. More than once they briefly charged at me to protect their young.

Otherwise:

* In Jacksonville as a teenager I took a practice swing in the rough and ended up with a small snake wrapped around my iron. I probably broke the land speed record rushing back to the fairway

* Also in northern Florida about 15 years ago I was circling a small island green looking for my dad's ball which had bounced off the bank toward the water. My head was down looking at the edge of the water then I saw an alligator on the bank mere feet away. Luckily he was more startled than I was, and headed into the pond at incredible speed

[HazardMagnet]

Obstacles I've come across on the golf Course? Just that little buisiness in between taking the key out of the ignition, and a few hours later putting it back in...

[Fon Duc Tow]

PM sent....

I would like to know as well.

[Craig Mac]

I would like to know as well.

PM forwarded to you

[DaveLeeNC]

I guess a bunch of sand all piled up would not normally qualify as "unusual or interesting" except this is a REALLY BIG bunch of sand. One of the two 9 holes muni's that I played as a kid back in Missouri was Bonne Terre Golf Course in Bonne Terre, Mo. The course at that time (1960's) was on land owned by the St. Joseph lead company.

Scattered about the county were a half dozen or so "chat dumps" these are BIG piles of what was left after processing of lead ore. It looks basically like relatively course sand. And the 5th hole at Bonne Terre Golf Course was only yards from the bottom of one of these chat dumps and it was in play.

I have included a picture of Federal chat dump (in Flat River, Mo.) just to give you an idea of the scale of these things. Both Bonne Terre chat dump and Federal chat dump have since been taken down and no longer exist (at least in the form of a giant pile of sand).

dave

ps. Lead in "The Lead Belt" is bound in stuff called galena and is not toxic or dangerous. I spent hundreds of hours as a kid playing on a number of the chat dumps in the area.

[Big_M]

One course I play has a ROCK the size of a school bus in the middle of a par 5 fairway about 235 out depending on where you tee off.

My home course in high school had a power line that went perpendicular across the fairway about 65 yds out and was at a height that lent intself to being hit by a tee shot. I hit it about once every 30-60 rounds, and have seen others do such.

I have also played a course where you can hit over a house to cut a dogleg... needless to say I would hate to live there.

pig shaped bunker on a real nice course in Northern MI called Elk Ridge you can see the whole thing as it is a par 3 from an extremely elevated tee... why a pig?... because the course is owned by the Honey Baked Ham Co. and they also have a damn good grilled ham and cheese available at the turn.

[Eore]

yesterday i hit my ball into a bunker on a par 3. a very scared deer came running out of said bunker. but he/she stuck around to watch me take my shot.


i wish those damn deer would rake their hoof prints though ;)

[cdj588]

my boss played a course in arizone called wolf creek i belive and you had to sign your life over before you played because of past people driving off the cliffs, and falling into quick sand. he said you would drive up tiny cart path up hills that are like 100ft tall and some holes and quick sand in random area off the cart path so you couldnt go in the out of bounds areas.

[flap]

Gators in Myrtle!!! The Dunes club on #15 the par 5 over the lake has a 15 footer and my ball landed within 10 feet of him sunning himself on the shore and yes I still hit the shot.Then at Tigers Eye on the back 9 there is a par 5 next to a lake with a elevated green and lake side sand trap which I hit into and inside of a 6 footers tail area.I stood on the green and threw every rake around at the damn thing till i finnally hit him in the head with one and he slowly swam away and I sandy birdied the hole.

[JessN16]

I played golf for several years while in college using something called "The American Lung Association Golf Discount Card," or more affectionately known as "The Lung Card." You got to see every bad golf course across the American Southeast so long as you could play during the week. There were a few goodies on there, but most were terrible. Some of the highlights/lowlights included:

* Course in Mississippi had grain silos in the middle of a couple of fairways. These things looked like 40-foot-tall male genatalia. Same shape. Hit one broadside and they make an awful racket, too.

* Self-pay golf course in west Alabama had the aforementioned Coke machine off to the side of a green, but what caught our attention that day was when driving over a pond, my playing partner hit one in the lake and suddenly, something emerged from the water: A diver. Some guy was down there diving for golf balls and we nearly hit him. He had the scuba tank and everything.

* Course near Talladega, Ala., has a par-3 over a decent-sized lake. In the middle of this lake is a wooden pole, and attached to the pole is a wooden box marked "Suggestion Box." Considering I'd hit a rock in the fairway with my graphite 3-wood a few holes before and had dug a trench through the sole, I half thought about boating out there and putting something in that box.

* I don't know if this counts as an "obstacle," but Isle Dauphine Golf Course in Dauphin Island, Ala., has mosquitoes big enough to see with the naked eye at 25 yards away. They're jet black and THICK. And they love me.

* Golf course in Headland, Ala., has two holes that criss-cross each other. They form an "X." So I guess the "obstacle" in that case would be the guys coming off the No. 1 tee box just as you drive into the common fairway from the No. 9 tee box. FORE!!!!

* And one good golf course in here for good measure: Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail's Oxmoor Valley property, Ridge Course, there's a green that is built on the top of a plateau of iron ore. The property used to be an iron ore mine, so it fits. But it's crazy to watch the caroms off the iron ore if you're hitting into the green and come up just a little short. Nice 25-foot vertical bounce I got...

Jess

[misty_mountainhop]

Can't compete with some of these, particularly a gas flare .
We get rutting stags in Autumn (Fall) and you'd better stay clear of them.

[Fraser]

* Golf course in Headland, Ala., has two holes that criss-cross each other. They form an "X." So I guess the "obstacle" in that case would be the guys coming off the No. 1 tee box just as you drive into the common fairway from the No. 9 tee box. FORE!!!!

My old club had that too, the area just in front of the 13th tee crossed just in front of the 11th tee.

[Franco!]

Shit.
Literally, under my ball.
Not fun.

[mellojoe]

Played yesterday.

On the last hole, Par 3, I hit it short and bouced a little to the right. I pitched on, and rolled it right near... a hornet's nest. It was just a collection of mud and dirt about 10 feet from the hole with 2 hornets just buzzing around it.

And of course, to try putting meant putting my butt right next to them, with my back turned. I yelled to the guys I was with, "if one of them comes at me let me know before it gets me!"

I eased in, putted quick, missed the hole, and ran away. Ended up putting it in for Bogey. Still a very good hole for me (double-Bogey average, and really bad 6 and 7 on the two previous Par 3's).

Stupid hornet.