Lighthorse Harry Cooper was at the top of his golfing fame when he took a job as pro at the Oahu Country Club in Hawaii. On his arrival at The Islands, he was made aware that the committee members weren't completely satisfied with his press clippings. They wanted to see an exhibition.
Harry obliged. Using a driver, he drove ball after ball straight down the fairway. Then he changed to an iron and called each shot for distance and direction for a full half-hour.
The Hawaiians still remained unconvinced, and Harry thought it was time to haul out the clincher. For his trick shot, he borrowed a watch from one of his audience. He rested his ball on the watch, drew back his club, and swung carefully.
The ball sailed off down the fairway - a perfect shot - and Harry bent down to retrieve the watch.
Oh-Oh! The crystal was smashed to pieces. For a brief instant Harry looked down at the fractured timepiece. Then he calmly returned the watch to its owner.
"The trick of this shot," he said genially, "is to crack the crystal without damaging the watch itself!"
Can you beat that?
Then there was the case of C. Arthur Thompson of British Columbia, Canada, who had played golf for many years. It kept him so agile that he even was able to tour the links when he was past 100 years of age.
On October 3, 1966, at the age of 97, he managed to shoot a round lower than his age. Thompson scored a 96 on the 6,215 yard Uplands course.
Can you beat that?
Out at the Inverness Golf Club in Toledo, they still call the seventh hole "Ted Ray's Hole." It is so named in honor of the great Britisher who won the U.S. Open there in 1920.
The hole itself is a 320 yard dogleg which can be straightened out to 290 yards - if you carry the forest between the tee and the cup.
Four times in the U.S. Open, Ted Ray cleared those trees; twice, he got directly on the green; once he landed in a trap beside the green; and once, he came to rest on the fairway at the edge of the green.
The British pro scored four birdie 3's at this tough hole and he won the championship by a single stroke!
Can you beat that?
Or how about this...If you ever asked the golf pro Bobby Jones what was tough about the game of golf, he always gave you the same answer. "Long putts are the greatest problem in golf"...and Jones showed everybody how to handle them.
In 1928, for 10 consecutive rounds, Jones averaged 30 putts a round. Confronted with the longest putt in the game - a 120 foot affair on a green at St. Andrews, Scotland - Bobby unsheathed his putter, "Calamity Jane", and knocked that little white ball into that far away cup for a world's record!
Can you beat that?
Remember these crazy golf facts the next time you are out there on the links, and who knows, maybe someday you will have your very own fact to share with others!
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