John Orchard's Sports Injury Site
For transfer to my new extended site on sports injuries in Australia, click:
http://www.injuryupdate.com.au
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John Orchard's Sports Injury Site For transfer to my new extended site on sports injuries in Australia, click: http://www.injuryupdate.com.au
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My best ever golf shot Golf fans are like fishermen and horse racing fans, in that they love a story of a great win or near miss. In this case, I want to describe a great shot that really happened. This will almost certainly be the best golf shot I ever hit. On Sunday February 10, 2002, at Royal Melbourne West Golf Course, on the par 4, 416m 11th hole, I hit an Eagle 2. This was in a group of 4 (all doctors) comprising my brother David, one of my best friends Andrew Davies, and Paul Denborough. The tees were probably about 6-10m in from the back tees, making the real distance of the hole 405-410m. There was light rain falling and the wind was behind us and to the right for the tee shot. The second shot was into a light breeze heading behind our right shoulders. I hit a great 3 wood off the tee which probably went 220m with the breeze and slightly downhill (halfway between and just to the right of the two left fairway bunkers). I was probably more immediately relieved after hitting my tee shot straight than after the second, as there are dangerous trees to the left and right off the tee. My second shot was a three iron that went 185m metres into the left-to-right breeze and slightly uphill. The lie was slightly downhill, and I will never hit a better ball, as it flew to the front edge of the green, and rolled up into the cup.
This is almost the exact view I had for my second shot to the green (185m out). I was hitting from the fairway in the bottom right hand corner of this picture. The bad part of the shot: It's hard to have a bad part of such a good shot, but I have to admit that I wasn't sure that the ball had dropped into the cup. When I hit it I thought it was dead straight and was going to finish about pin high. As you can see from the photo, the green is uphill and the pin was near the back. When the ball disappeared from view, we were too far away to realise whether it was in the hole, or over the back of the green. When I walked up the fairway, I honestly thought there was a chance I had holed out (because I know I can't hit a 3 iron a centimetre further than 185m), but my playing partners thought (realistically) that it was more likely that I was over the back. It is a pity I could only give the fist pump after picking the ball up out of the hole, rather than during the finish of the shot. The good part of the shot: We played this hole exactly one week after the 2002 Heineken Classic finished. The club released a statistical analysis of the tournament which showed that for the 4 days, the pros (playing this hole as the 13th) scored: 43 birdies, 306 pars, 105 bogeys, 8 doubles and 2 triples, for a hole average of 4.183. None of the pros had scored an eagle in 464 attempts. This is not surprising as they would have generally been hitting 5 irons into the green. In the course guide for the tournament, Bruce Green, the head professional described it as "arguably the most difficult hole on the course". The rest of the round I will never live up to the standard of that shot. The rest of my round was good-average for me. I was playing off a handicap of 22 and shot a 48-45=93, which in stroke play would have been a net 71 (one under). The format of the competition I was playing for the day was PAR, so for the sensational shot I hit I only won a single point for the hole. If I was playing Stableford I would have had the extremely rare distinction of scoring 6 points for the hole, as it was ranked 1, so I would have been given 2 shots on the hole, and scored 2 under off the stick (net 4 under). I managed to par the following hole, but then was back to reality with a double bogey on the hole after that.
NB - Update December 18th 2005 at The Australian - shot 85 off the stick for 45 stableford points! |
