You always have to keep your head on a swivel on the golf course. You never know when an errant shot is going to enter your orbit, whether from one of your own playing partners or the hacks a fairway over. The last ball you ever expect to get hit by, however, is your own. This unlucky lad learned that lesson the hard way when his tee shot immediately came back in the most painful way. Watch it and weep.

 

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Goodness gracious. Just think about the odds of this. Not just your tee shot ricocheting back and hitting you. And not just hitting you, but hitting you there with cameras rolling. And then that video, of the billions of golf videos floating around the internet, going viral. 

Here’s hoping this warrior was able limp through his round, rest up with a bag of frozen peas and is back out there already.

The post Watch as golfer takes unluckiest ricochet ever appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Hey Cypress – we took your best shot! Caddie said he has never seen it like this! Wasn’t bad golf swing (kinda) wind was 70+. pic.twitter.com/B9lIdHWtBY

— Greg Brunner (@brunner44) December 13, 2021

Holy smokes. This is the “heavy stuff” Spackler was talking about. 70-mph winds, raining sideways, surf threatening to pull you down to Davey Jones’ clubhouse. The fact this brave soul was able to get his ball to stay on the tee, let alone make contact, defies everything we know about physics. Some might even call it divine intervention.

As for the decision to play in this weather, it’s crazy alright … but we get it. You finally get a tee time at Golf Digest’s third-ranked course in America and one of golf’s most exclusive clubs. You schlepp it all the way to the Pacific Ocean from Iowa. You pat yourself on the back. Congrats, kid. You deserve this. Then Mother Nature drops a typhoon in your lap. Do you pack it in and admit defeat or do text your loved ones goodbye and step into the breach? I think we all know the answer to that question.

For those of us now dreaming of playing Cypress Point, enjoy our Every Hole At: Cypress Point video with exclusive drone footage of the Alister MacKenzie gem:

The post This video of a golfer playing Cypress Point in 70-mph winds is not for the faint of heart appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Derek Duncan
Golf is an enduring, addictive game precisely because success requires both ability and some rub-of-the-green good fortune. This is never truer than on links courses, where the bounce and scurry of the ball is the heart and soul of the game. With their firm, crinkled fairways and punishing hazards that seem random only until experienced in every conceivable wind, the links are the ultimate scales balancing luck against ability.

OUR DRONE VIDEO TOUR OF THE 2021 OPEN VENUE

Of all the great tournament links of Great Britain, Royal St. George’s—Sandwich to friends, named for the nearest town in southeast England—is the most opaque, rumpled and confounding. The routing spins players like a blindfolded child en route to a piñata, ensuring the blustery winds gusting off the English Channel pummel all sides equally. There are high holes and low, shots fired across the bows of high dunes and caterpillar fairways likely to buck otherwise straight drives into fits of misfortune.

Royal St. George’s—ranked 28th in Golf Digest’s World 100 rankings—offers no blueprint for scoring well other than to strike the ball solidly, hole some putts and pray that on your day the gaze of providence is a caring one. It’s no wonder that during Open Championships the pros do little more than grit their teeth and bare it, sensing that much of what they do is beyond their control. Anything can happen at Royal St. George’s, and does. It’s how champions like Harry Vardon, Walter Hagen, Bobby Locke and Greg Norman are crowned. It also explains Jack White, Reg Whitcombe, Ben Curtis and a 42-year-old Darren Clarke in 2011.

This is the promise of Royal St. George’s: that across some of the most attractive and alluring linksland in golf, something fantastic and mystifying is likely to occur. No matter how skilled we are, what we really want from golf is a chance. And at Royal St. George’s, there’s always a chance.

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The post Royal St. George’s: A hole-by-hole video tour of England’s oldest Open venue appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.