Craziest bad shot you've ever seen

[BostonSully]

I once topped a ball so bad that it shot straight up in the air hit me in the face and fell into the same spot it was in before.

-Do I win?

[joepro23]

Playing with my dad and a fellow member at our semi-private club when I was a kid. We are on the par 3 9th hole, which is at the edge of the course property. The entrance and main road are way to the left through trees and a church parking lot is about 50 yards behind and left of the tee in the woods. So, this guy we are playing with tees it up about a yard behind the left blue (back) tee marker and proceeds to skull it straight into the left tee marker, which was shaped like a golf ball. The ball then skies straight up and backwards going out of bounds in the woods near the church parking lot. We were all pretty much in shock. I had to hold back my laughter because I didn't really know this guy and he wasn't taking it well. Probably the craziest thing I have seen in my 17 years of golf.

[Uncle Peter]

I was trying out my friend's driver (he neglected to tell me it was a few inches shorter than mine). I took a full swing and sliced the ball so bad, that the ball went DIRECTLY left if me and about a foot forward. It then nailed a metal sign and made a loud, abrupt noise that echoed through the entire golf course. I quickly gave him back his driver and proceeded to hit mine.

[jimmizu]

Originally Posted by BostonSully

I once topped a ball so bad that it shot straight up in the air hit me in the face and fell into the same spot it was in before.

-Do I win?

Nope, because my friend Steve did the same thing except the ball went down the neck of his shirt which was, unfortunately, tucked in.

[darkhunter139]

I was playing with my cousin and he topped it so bad it went backwards and hit his bag.  He finished with an 18 on that par 5 with 6 putts.

[daxc]

Last year I pulled up behind a guy on the second hole and watched him swing and miss on the tee box twice, then make contact with the very end of the toe, shooting the ball straight to his right where it hit the tee marker, popped back up and hit him in the forehead. He shrugged and told me that he gave up and drove away.

[lumpuckeroo]

Years ago, my buddy and I are playing at a course where #9 runs along the road that leads to the clubhouse.  Lining the street is a two rail wooden fence that is only knee high.  My friend hits his drive next to the fence but it's not really effecting his swing.  As he gets ready to hit the ball a car comes down the entrance, he takes a swing and blades the ball and slices it toward the car, not like we can yell fore or anything.  He was screaming NO, fortunately the ball skipped off the street but bounces up under the car, as the car is moving down the street the ball is bouncing up and down like a basketball.  I think I peed my pants laughing!

[Fraser]

I've got one I've hit and two other legendary stories amongst my friends...

-Playing with my little brother hitting a 7 iron I hit a tree root just ahead of me, the ball ballooned up and hit my brother right in the back. He was about 50yrds ahead of me approaching the green in a place where he thought he'd never get hit...the tree root took a lot of the speed of the ball.

Now the legendaries...

-My old course had a 360yrd par 4  as the #1 hole and next to the tee was a thick conifer hedge but after that was a large car park and the clubhouse so you were always really wary of slicing your tee horribly (as a right hander). A guy come from another club and sliced the tee shot really badly into the car park. Broke the window on his OWN CAR!

-A good friend of mine was playing with his father at a pay and play course. His father doesn't pick up the clubs much anymore but at the 4th on this particular course he managed to slice the ball so badly it went over a carpark and the clubhouse, land on the 9th green and go in the damn hole! Best illustrated by Google Maps.... The black line shows the path of the 4th hole (and the blue the 9th), with the red line where the ball trajectory went! The clubhouse keeps all the balls that people made aces with and kept his as an honourary!

[WUTiger]

Years ago at a high school reunion scramble:

My team and another team are tied at 8-under after regulation. First place was determined using a chip-off on No. 18. All four members on each team got one shot from the back of a terranced green, with cup cut about 6 feet below the terrace.

I hit second, used a sand wedge, and hit a cut shot that lands a foot from the shelf, bites a little, and rolls down hill about a foot past the cup. We got it nailed, I thought. But the final player on the other team is a guy who's been playing golf all of about 6 weeks. He skulls an 8 iron, skims the top shelf, hits the flagstick dead on, and the ball slides down the stick and into the hole.

His lucky shot cost my teammates and me a 1.75 liter bottle of J&B; Scotch, per person. I really can't remember what second place got us.

[imtomtomim]

Originally Posted by lumpuckeroo

Years ago, my buddy and I are playing at a course where #9 runs along the road that leads to the clubhouse.  Lining the street is a two rail wooden fence that is only knee high.  My friend hits his drive next to the fence but it's not really effecting his swing.  As he gets ready to hit the ball a car comes down the entrance, he takes a swing and blades the ball and slices it toward the car, not like we can yell fore or anything.  He was screaming NO, fortunately the ball skipped off the street but bounces up under the car, as the car is moving down the street the ball is bouncing up and down like a basketball.  I think I peed my pants laughing!

I did something very similar last year.  Was on a par 4 with undulating hills next to a public road.  I'm in the middle of the fairway with a blind shot at the green on an uphill lie.  He tells me they had it in the middle earlier that morning and I knew where the green was so I just looked at the yardage marker, figured about 175 or so.  Pull a 6 iron and get a good piece of it.  It was an exciting shot so we ran up the hill to go check out the landing.  Well, it goes ultra long and takes one hop on the road and finds it's way under a passing school bus the exact same way!  How the heck did that happen?  Turned around and then realized, the marker was for 100, not 150

[Clambake]

Craziest bad shot I've seen was one I hit.    It was a short par 4 at Redhawk in Temecula (north of San Diego) with water in front of the green, and first I knocked my 3 iron off the tee too far, rolling through the fairway into the hazard.   Taking a drop back at 80 yards out, I bladed a lob wedge that didn't get more than 6 feet off the ground, screaming right over the green.    But it then hit a curb on the cart path on the far side of the hole and came bounding straight back, hitting the flagstick and dropping about 2 feet from the hole.   Made the putt (while still uncontrollably laughing) for par.       My brother-in-law still brings it up every time we get together as his example of the luckiest shot he's ever seen.

[bradsul]

Two come to mind for me.  My golfing career is quite short thus far so I don't have many to choose from.  The first I was playing with my father, we were on a par 3 and a raised tee deck that was bordered on all sides by railroad ties that were slightly elevated above the level of the grass.  My father hits a screaming blade about 3 inches off the ground directly into the edge of the ties and it flies sky high and behind him about 50 yards.  He ended up having to hit a 230yrd second shot over the raised tee deck.  He made bogey.

The second is another par 3.  There was a bench about 20 yards ahead of the tee deck (near the ladies tee) and about 5 yards off to the right side.  My brother blasted a hozel rocket directly into the bench and was nearly hit by the rebound as it came almost directly back at him.  We all laughed but he wasn't happy with the 9 he ended up getting on that hole (the ball ended up behind the tee deck in some woods)!

[Cut68]

My buddy and I were playing a bestball match against some friends a couple years ago, and we get to the 17th up 1. Standing in the fairway, my oponent sit's 110 out, with his buddy in pocket. He absolutely shanks a sand wedge that looks destined for the forest on the next hole. Instead, it hits a railroad tie that lines the cart path, and kicks at such an angle that it came to rest 2 feet from the pin. Instead of the match being over, He's now got a 2 footer for birdie.

While he made the birdie, I drained a 20 footer to push and we closed them out on the last

[Ernest Jones]

By far my favorite thread on the site!

I can't compete with some of the stories on here, however:

My uncle has played golf 5 times in his life and got hit by a ball each time, he has since given up on the game.

My brother in law has hit a bird almost everytime I have golfed with him, probably hit 10 birds in about 13-14 rounds. Mostly geese with are pretty predominate on a lot of the courses we play. He tells me that this happens quite frequently when I'm not with him as well. It's pretty weird. They were all birds just walking the fairway but he did hit one gull that was in the air.

Don't get me wrong, none of this is intentional, just luck; unless your a goose I guess.

[mdl]

Very similar to OP, though not one I actually saw.  Was playing as a single one day and our group was waiting on the tee box.  I was taking a few practice swings with my driver, and one of my random playing partners got sort of pissed cause even though I was at least 10 yards away from him.  He explains he's paranoid about getting hit with debris cause he was once was standing directly behind a buddy of his as the buddy was teeing off (buddy asked him to check something on his swing), when this friend comes in way high, hits the ball with the bottom of the driver, short hops it off the tee and hits his friend standing behind him right in the balls!

[RichWW2]

I have two.

First one was my dad hitting a drive on a hole. He hit it about a 45 degree angle to his left, it ricocheted square off a tree back to another tree and hit off the 2nd tree right into my Mom's leg, who was standing right next to the tees. Think of how the number 4 <==== looks and that is pretty much how the ball went.

Second one I actually did myself. I was teeing off on the 9th hole (our 18th hole of the day). It had been sprinkling all day and was a little wet. I slipped on my downswing and hit the ball off the side of my driver and it hit the marker and went backwards about 10 yards.  The thing that makes it more memorable to me is that I still had a 12 foot par putt even after starting off with a -10 yard drive. Missed it and got a bogey, but that still wasn't too bad considering where I started.

[El Mucho]

Craziest bad shot I have ever witnessed happened about 4 years ago at a local muni course.

Myself and a buddy get paired up with this older guy. He was playing a really fancy set of clubs, all dressed up like a golfer from the 30's and at every tee box only used his driver (even on par 3's). Anyway, we get to the ninth hole, which is a par 3 maybe 160 yards with the clubhouse directly behind the green. We hit our shots, not particularly great shots by any means but safe and not in the clubhouse. So this guy proceeds to tee his ball up (I should mention he also tees the ball up about 4 inches off the ground), my buddy suggests he not hit his driver on this par 3, but he does anyway. He takes a huge swing that would have surely gone right into the clubhouse and cleanly takes the tee straight out from the under the ball, the tee sails through the air and the ball drops straight down onto the ground where the tee had been. It was all I could do to not laugh, it was the greatest miss I have ever seen.

[BostonSully]

Originally Posted by jimmizu

Nope, because my friend Steve did the same thing except the ball went down the neck of his shirt which was, unfortunately, tucked in.

That is awesome!

Rules question: If he had walked over towards the green and dropped the ball out of his pantleg into the cup would've a been a hole out?