Tell us the tale of the worst golf shot you've ever seen in person

[RayGorman]

Playing so long there would so many that come to mind.

 

BUT- there area couple, one "bad" and one "odd".

 

Playing with my Dad many years ago, I was standing behind him as he got ready to tee off. Now- his swing was no model of smoothness- Kind of like a grave digger chopping wood with a rake. Anyhow- he winds up and takes a mighty swing... and promptly rockets the ball off the heel, back between his legs and catches me in the shin. 

 

More recently, playing with a young guy who was going for the green in 2 on a Par 5. About 225 out from the middle of the fairway. It's a bit soft after a day or two of rain. Takes a mighty swipe and it 'sounded' clean. We all try to follow the ball and see... nothing. No sign of the ball- fairly wide open and no real trouble other than greenside bunkers and march well past the green. "Where'd it go?" "It must be up there somewhere..." 

I noticed the fairly large divot he took that looked like to me a fairly steep angle of attack at the ball. I wandered over and saw something that looked odd. a bit of an opening in the soil. As it turned out- he drove the ball about 8 inches into the ground under the grass. We had a good laugh about that. then he asked "What's the ruling on THAT?"

 

"Well, count the stroke, then it's an embedded ball, free drop, hitting 3, I think." Embedded would be an understatement in this case.

[Haroputt]

Not worse shot but funny.  In the driving range and sudden see lower part of a driver fly about 25 yards   It looked that a guy snapped the head of driver and it flew down the driving range.  
He waved at people to stop hitting ball and ran down the field get his club 
must have been embarrassing as everyone stopped and watched him run to get his club. 

[DON SVO]

3 hours ago, Haroputt said:

Not worse shot but funny.  In the driving range and sudden see lower part of a driver fly about 25 yards   It looked that a guy snapped the head of driver and it flew down the driving range.  
He waved at people to stop hitting ball and ran down the field get his club 
must have been embarrassing as everyone stopped and watched him run to get his club. 

 

Been there done that twice. Once was with a new PX 6.5 Blue driver shaft that was on maybe it's tenth swing, my club builder replaced the shaft for me.

[Warrior42111]

I can think of two right away.

 

1. Forgive the preamble but I think it adds to it. Company scramble and I'm first to the course. While pulling in a couple cops come flying by me. Walk into the clubhouse to check in and being my sarcastic self ask who died? Well a guess an older person on their morning walk passed away. Well, I made my mistake for the day.  So, after removing my foot from my mouth we go out and we start as group 1 on hole 16. A short par 3 with a 4 line road to the right. Now for some reason I always and I mean always pull the ball left on this hole. So I'm up my group and the group  behind us as well as the groups on 17 can all see. I toe one hard towards the street and the ball is moving. Drills a van in the side.  

 

2. Playing with some good friends and he goes for the turn dog after nine. Well after a couple holes you can see he's walking a little slower ect. After another couple holes he's letting loose these loud, wet, clappy farts that I swear would change the humidity if you walked near him. So we get to 16 a long par 5 and he tee is high to let it fly. At the start of transition I think he let's another one go, but this time it sounded muted like almost underwater. He holds up his follow through and actually hit a low 200 yard punch driver while the rest of us are on the ground in hysterics. We look up and we see a little gravy stain on his grey shorts.  So now every once and a while someone will tee him when he tees up to knock the sh%^ out of it.

 

The turn dog giveth and the turn dog taketh

[BraxtonFullerton]

Way too many too drunk to play swings have been made by friends on the course to recant those here...

Worst I've seen is a random pair a buddy and I got setup with this past summer. You can tell they're brand new to the game and took it up due to COVID...
You'd think they'd have signed up for a lesson or two before hitting the course, but no, they both have brand new, taking the head wrappers off on the first tee, Top Flite clubs.

No hate there, everyone has to start somewhere and they're good clubs on a budget...
Where the hate comes in is the amount of time they took setting up to the ball. Three practice swings, then a full 90 seconds of 'settling' over the ball, only to duff it 10ft. OK, whatever, not everyone knows how to hit driver.
Next shot. 3 practice swings, full 90 seconds over the ball, duff it 10ft. They each took double-digits strokes on the first hole. Every single shot exactly like early 2000s Sergio.

So now that the stage is set...

It's the 4th hole, I'm trying to be patient, give a pointer or two, try to at least encourage them to move it along a little faster. First one actually catches his drive, 150 and relatively straight, let a "nice shot" loose for some encouragement. Second guy gets up, sh*nks it into a tree and the ball comes to rest behind the tee box. Oh well, he goes to get the ball, I'm thinking he'll re-tee it after my friend and I go.

Friend tees off, then I'm up. Just as I start my backswing I hear a ^ting^ and my hat goes flying off my head. He had hit from behind the box, while I'm on the tee, and the ball hit the brim and knocked my hat off. I went off on him. I tell them they need to be on the driving range, not the course. To stay here, we're playing ahead and they can continue play once we're off the green.

We finish the hole and my friend asks if I think I went a little overboard... I am firmly in the camp that I did not saying that another 6 inches and I could've be a vegetable or dead.

[HackinNut]

I really wish I had a video of it but this was back before the time of cell phones.  I remember it as if it were yesterday.  

I played golf every weekend religiously with my father & his friends.  One of his friends was a real hack if there ever was one.  He loved hitting the shanks & once it got into his head he couldn't hit anything but them.  So I would always stand behind him when he was teeing off.  Standing on a par 3, he tees off & boom ... shank dead right, hits the ball washer (they were made of metal & stood alone back then), & bounces into the cart & knocked my father's beer over on the seat.  He had left it there when he got out to get his club, as he was next on the tee.  I tried to warn him but he had more faith in his friend than I did.  

So he owed my dad a beer & the prize of the worst shot of the day.  It turned out to be one of the worst I had ever seen but was hilarious nonetheless.  🤣

[Wooley12]

Playing with my brother and he's been hitting his 2I off the tees and flushing it. On the back 9 we're teeing up on a par 4 with a pond in front. We look at the card and it's 200 to the pond and 250 to carry it. Brother takes his 2I and hits another pure shot that arcs into the sky and lands 20 past the shore into the pond. So I ask him "How far do you hit your 2?" "220-215" he says. Um, ok. I tee up and lay up. 

[mshills]

I'm a former caddy and have seen more shots than I could ever count that led to either belly laughs and tears or suppressed laughter that made me go running into the woods. 😄

 

A couple terrible ones I've un-corked myself.

 

- Local tournament at Summergrove south of Atlanta some years ago they actually had someone doing a quick intro with a little portable PA speaker on #1 tee.  Not exactly The Masters but still enough to cause some first tee jitters.  He calls my name and I hit my drive flush into the trunk of a tree no more than 10 yards in front and left of the tee box.  Winds up 100 yards behind me, on the driving range where I declared it lost and re-teed.

 

- I popped up a drive on #1 at Hombre in Panama City, FL so badly that it landed directly in the center of the packed practice green.

 

- Playing the Bears Best north of Atlanta with my boss in the early 2000s.  I pull a hybrid on #4 tee to lay up safely.  Rocket toe-shank hits an extruded aluminum fence surrounding a pool up to the right of the tee box -- it sounded like someone rang the Liberty Bell when the ball struck that fence.  A few seconds later the lady who'd been either in the pool or sunbathing is standing along the fence in her bathrobe giving us the hairy eyeball.  It was really loud at the tee box and must have been deafening up by the pool. 😄 

[ac6]

I've seen a lot of really awful shots, but one time my buddy shanked a chip and it hit me in the dick, so that one takes the cake. No lasting damage thankfully

[dlow206]

Its not that amusing, but I feel like the worst shot i have hit is:

 

Ball was in fairway, wet day, grass kind of soggy. I pretty much whiffed but hit enough of the ball to wear the ball did not advance forward, just downward into the grass and it became buried in the grass/mud. 

[Ger21]

Basically the same shot, twice, 30 years apart.

In my mid 20's, we were bad golfers, but liked to play for money. Guy I was playing with is hitting driver on the tee. Takes his swing, and we never see the ball. He had topped it, and driven it under the turf 6" in front of the tee. You literally could not see the ball.

Fast forward to last summer, and the guy I'm playing with is hitting 3W into a par5. Tops it, and the ball disappears completely under the turf.

Both of these shots were under normal conditions, not wet or soggy ground. That's what made it so impressive.

[RainShadow]

Witnessed a friend's hole in one when I lived in Washington

145yrd nestled between a buch of tall cedar trees. The guy skinny'd a 6iron about a foot off the gound, lands short left of green and continues to bounce, as skinnied shots do, into a cedar trunk, richochete to the right and hit the flagstick, hop in the air and drop in the hole. 

Nuts.

 

 

Edited December 4, 2021 by RainShadow

[dugue4]

This may not be the worst I have ever seen, because I am sure some of mine would be up there, but this one was quite humorous.  I was fishing Lake Conroe (North of Houston) this last summer.  We go into a cove (pictured below) on one of the golf courses on the lake.  There were a couple groups that played with no issues, then the group in question comes to their ball.  It is hard to tell on the picture, but where they were is about 15-20 above water level.  We could tell by their body language that they did not care for us there.  Both guys were in approximately the same location.  The first guy's shot wasn't terrible, but it was pretty bad.  He bladed it and it went over the bow of the boat and hit the bulkhead on the fly.  The other guy was glaring at us, finally set up and somehow pulls it on the line shown, two hopping it into the lake.  Both guys drive off and don't finish the hole.  As a side note, we had a nice conversation about fishing with the next group. 

 

[Superbrit]

Oh this is easy, i was in St Andrews 2 months ago, waiting to tee off on the Old course and there was a couple of guys on the tee just before us, guy steps up going to hit an Iron, you could tell this was probably there 1st time, he hits his iron and shanks it so bad finished on the path between the pavilion and the practice putting green via a guard railings!

[finleysg]

A newbie golfer I took out to my home course was slicing the ball like it was his job. As he gets further into the round, he's hooding the clubface more and more to "correct" the slice.

 

On the 12th tee, he somehow managed to top the ball and hit it between his own legs. It ends up in the brush behind him.

 

He looked at me and asked, "What did I do wrong?"

 

I didn't know him well enough to make a joke at his expense, but I was mostly just mystified anyway. I don't think I could learn to do that on purpose. 

[Warrior42111]

Anyone have the ratio of shots by others vs shots by the poster? I assume 90 -10 being golfwrx and all 😎

[DON SVO]

1 hour ago, Warrior42111 said:

Anyone have the ratio of shots by others vs shots by the poster? I assume 90 -10 being golfwrx and all 😎

 

Eh, I can agree with that hahaha! I think all of us have our own cross to bear when it comes to bad shots. However the title is "worst you've seen in person" which connotes someone else's shot 🙂 that's my story and I am sticking to it. 

 

I've posted my own before, but the short version is: I played a lot as a single when I started playing... one round I ended up in a thick tree line off the tee of a par 4, and hit the same tree trunk trying to get out of jail 3 times with 3 different clubs. I took my snowman and went to the next tee box. The ball is probably still buried in the dirt where I stomped the dog p!$$ out of it to this day.

[GullLakeMi]

This thread is hilarious!  

 

A few come to mind:

1)  Guy in group hits driver off tee, it is a laser headed offline right.  Goes about 30 yards directly into a tree trunk.  Ball ricochets in slow motion directly back towards us on a high arch over our heads and lands in a small pond behind the tee.

2) My buddy is hitting about a 9 iron 2nd shot into a green.  He takes his swing.  Somehow the ball goes directly up 20ish feet in the air and on the way down hits him in the head.  

3) We were at a popular driving range on a Friday night.  Social place with go-karts, bar, etc.  Lights on range.  Cool place.... they had an old VW Beetle car for a 200 yarder marker.  We were waiting our turn for a range stall and taking practice swings.  I take a practice swing and accidentally send a 4" divot towards somebody in the stall.  Divot hits the person in the head as they are bending down to load another ball on a tee.  We tried to play like it wasn't us, but my gang was laughing too hard and would be hard to explain otherwise!    

 

 

[7ironDave]

Playing with my Dad a few years back. To the left of the first tee is a small practice green with 10 or so people on it. 
My Dad pulls a screamer off the heal about waist high right at the green. People actually jumped out of the way. 
 

That green really was too close for comfort. 

[khalespace]

My friend whiffed the golf ball 3 times on the first tee with full of people watching. The four shot he hit it on the extreme toe, the ball hit the round plastic tee box marker and broke it into 2 pieces. I was very embarrassed and the crowd was murmuring expecting a long round.

Edited January 19, 2022 by khalespace

[jamgam]

Playing golf in Florida while in college.  greenside bunker with a large house about 25 yards behind green.  MASSIVE bay windows across the entire back of house and about 15 people on the deck grilling out and drinking etc.  They were watching and gabbing at golfers

 

I dug in to hit my bunker shot and you know what happened.  I hit the 200 yd bladed 60 degree.  Flies about 5' over people on the decks head and nails one of the bay windows.  Lucky me the builder was smart and ball comes ricocheting off the window back onto the green with the loudest thong you've ever heard.  Scared the crap out of everyone

 

I ended up sinking the putt and making par is the funniest part

[jamgam]

On 12/4/2021 at 6:02 PM, RainShadow said:

Witnessed a friend's hole in one when I lived in Washington

145yrd nestled between a buch of tall cedar trees. The guy skinny'd a 6iron about a foot off the gound, lands short left of green and continues to bounce, as skinnied shots do, into a cedar trunk, richochete to the right and hit the flagstick, hop in the air and drop in the hole. 

Nuts.

 

 

I've witnessed two hole in ones by the same guy that were practically the same thing. One was a worm burner that roller through a bunker and the other was some hosel slice that drilled a tree and then went in the hole. Baffling

[DaveLeeNC]

On 12/7/2021 at 8:26 AM, Warrior42111 said:

Anyone have the ratio of shots by others vs shots by the poster? I assume 90 -10 being golfwrx and all 😎

 

It would be interesting if at least some folks would describe their personal worst shot. Mine would be a full LW that I had on a hole maybe 15 years ago. For me at that time a full LW was 75 yards. I skulled it as cleanly and as squarely as is possible. I surely caught the sweetspot of the leading edge of that club. I estimated (this was before rangefinders) that I hit that ball close to 150 yards when it quit rolling (ending under the deck of a house behind the green). 

 

While I did not exactly chunk the next one (from the same spot), I hit it fat enough to come up about 15 yards short of the pin. 

 

dve

[b.mattay]

Watched a guy heel it so bad he hit it between his own legs...into a water hazard. 
 

Personal worst: hit an intruding tree branch 60-65 yards off the tee box. Ball came screaming back past my feet...OB

[Paddy_2_Iron]

The best was on hole 1 at a smaller course in the city, lots of traffic.  This guy we got paired up with whiffed and then whiffed again in a blind rage threw the club across the road about 50 yards and it went right in front of a trucks front window.  Two huge guys came out and threatened our group my friend and I just drove off leaving the other two singles to fend for themselves.  

Edited January 20, 2022 by Paddy_2_Iron

[mitchnpat1]

i was standing 10 yards ahead and 7 yards right of my buddy as he was hitting out of a bunker, and my buddy swung and hit me with the ball

[david.c.w]

I was not able to witness the shot, but have heard the story 100 times, and have listened to the aftermath.

 

Playing a 24 man Ryder Cup event at the Waterfall Club at Lake Burton.  The fifth is wide open and downhill.  This picture is from google maps.  https://goo.gl/maps/WVt896D3qenutvfNA.  The line is basically just left of the tree on the right side, as it opens up down there.  A horrible hook will end up on the hill next to the house.  Friend somehow hits it so far left it goes right though a window.  Witnesses say it sounded like glass was falling for 30 seconds.  This is a terrible shot, but not the crux of the story.

 

Buddy finds the owner somehow and provides name and phone so he can repair the damage.  The guy calls him back and leaves him a voicemail we listen to a few times a year.  It was an older gentleman who had lived there for 30 years and "in all the years he has lived there this has never happened and what kind of shot was that?".  Most of the voicemail was a slow drawl going on not about the broken window, but how bad the shot was and how flabbergasted he was that it happened.   Window was fixed for $75 and all is good.

[TwistedSister]

The worst shot I have ever seen I also felt.  BIGGLY!  I was maybe 15 years old (50 years ago) and was playing with a group of Seniors.  I was standing on the back of the 11th green and one of the gents in the group on 12 was teeing off.  The shot was about a 45% angle left shot to where I was standing.  Maybe 40 feet away.  He yelled over before he hit to "watch it these don't always go where I aim.  I move back so that I was now almost at a 65% angle from him.  You guessed it. He hit it right where I was standing.  It came so fast I could not move.  Froze like a deer with its eyes in headlight.  The ball hit me under the right jaw bone and lifted me at least 4 inches off the ground.  I got up and spit out a couple of chunks of one of my back molars.  Don't remember what it felt like but I continued playing and it wasn't until hole number 15 that my head really starting throbbing.

Moral of this story is:  NEVER move when someone tells you that they may hit you.  If you do THEY WILL! 

As an aside the tooth was  sheared off so cleanly that it has never been pulled or filled and has never given me any pain. 

 

[DaveLeeNC]

7 minutes ago, dhacker56 said:

Moral of this story is:  NEVER move when someone tells you that they may hit you.  If you do THEY WILL! 

As an aside the tooth was  sheared off so cleanly that it has never been pulled or filled and has never given me any pain. 

 

Or as I sometimes tell guys who are trying to retrieve balls from a chipping green while I am hitting shots to that same area.. 

 

"You are fine. I can't even hit  still target". 

 

dave

[Obee]

Playing in a charity scramble. I'm in my 30's and I'm brought in as the "ringer" by the two owners of my mom's CPA firm, Rick and David. One of them is a 20-capper, the other plays golf exactly once a year -- in the tournament we are playing in. We had a fourth who was maybe an 8.

 

On the 15th hole at Canyon Crest CC in Riverside, CA, we end up playing a drive that is in the right rough. Rick places his ball on the top of the fluffy rough and takes out his 5-wood. He readies himself and then takes a mighty wallop at the ball. He club goes completely under the ball, with the ball hitting only the rounded crown of the top of his 5-wood. It pops straight up into the air and ... comes down on his head.

 

That is the worst and funniest shot I have seen in my life.

Edited January 21, 2022 by Obee
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