Greatest golf swing ever!

About six blocks from my flat in Middleburg, Transvaal province, South Africa was the town’s golf course and center of social activities in town with four pubs, five restaurants, half dozen tennis courts, several bocce courts/lawns, a couple indoor squash courts, a dozen condo/guest accommodations that you could walk out of your sliding glass doors right onto the first tee, and of course the 18 hole golf course where this event took place.

Middleburg is a sleepy mining and farming community in the area with surface mining of coal for power generation, a population of about 80,000 wonderful, caring and friendly people…. as well as the occasional unwanted guest from the jungle, or bushveld so they call it.

Located on the high plateau about an hour’s drive east of Johannesburg, Middleburg is the lucky host to the occasional animal one would expect to be found in the jungle. For example while I was living there a rather large rhinoceros took up residence in the pond on the left side of fairway number six one night, staying there for three months before disappearing one night. They supposedly change location about every three months running at night for about fifteen kilometers till finding their new pond or residence overnight. I’m a lefty and had long suffered from a slice to the left, however Koos Vandemerve as someone named our rhino resident did me a huge favor, curing my slice to the left. Never once in those three months did I hit my ball anywhere near that little pond.

But I digress, suffice to say that scary animals were a part of the golfing experience in Middleburg. Herein is the true story about the greatest golf shot ever, in the entire history of the planet, and annals of golfing history.

And HE NEVER HIT THE BALL! Still the greatest golf shot ever in the world and history of the sport!

My friend Carl was lining up his approach shot with a six iron with his ball about a meter away from the edge of the rough. We’re three casually watching and waiting for him to hit the ball, but what none of us knew was that a black mamba was sitting in the rough watching Carl the whole time. BTW black mamba’s aren’t black, they are green or tan like the one in the photo and our friend watching in the rough. They are called black mambas so I’m told because the roof of their mouth is black and that’s the last thing you’re ever going to see before you die.

Black mamba’s are extremely aggressive, had our friend the tan mamba struck Carl, it would have assuredly bitten all four of us and we wouldn’t be around to share this event. When a mamba bites, you’ve got about 30 minutes to live, back in 1983/84 when I lived there I’m pretty sure only about eight people had ever survived a bite from a black mamba. And forget running away, I once ran over the tail I of a black mamba driving on the M1 into Johannesburg and the thing was so fast it left venom on my drivers window!

When Carl finally drew back his club and started his swing the mamba took it as an aggressive action by Carl and struck out for Carl. It happened so fast all I remember seeing was him changing his swing. Apparently Carl saw the black mamba strike and altered his swing enough to cut the head of that mamba almost completely off, killing the black mamba and saving his own but likely the lives of all four of us!

We were on the front nine and planned to play eighteen, however we all immediately put our clubs back in our bags and headed back to the clubhouse and several of the pubs, Carl proudly yet shakingly carrying our dead mamba with him because how else would we convince everyone that we were telling the truth?

It was considered quite the event at the clubhouse in the Middleburg country club, I don’t remember a whole lot more about that afternoon and suspect that alcohol probably played a pretty good part in that. I do remember nobody in the club allowing us to pay for our own alcohol. I still smoked cigarettes back then, normally about a pack and a half a day but I believe that I nervously smoked about four packs after the event in the pubs and home later that night.

An American friend who lived in the flat next to mine once came running out of the rough on a golf course in another part of town, he said he was looking for his ball in the rough and heard a hissing sound about eight feet away that turned out to be a Cobra waving in the air saying “hello sailor”. He said he thought about trying to kill the cobra with his club but fortunately realized that was a bad idea and slowly backed out of the rough. I can honestly say that I never went looking for one of my golf balls in the rough the entire time I lived there after that.

We decided we had to give Carl a memento to celebrate the accomplishment and of course still being alive, so later that week we all chipped in a few Rand apiece and ordered Carl the biggest golf trophy we could find in the catalogue and had it engraved with the following:

World’s greatest golf shot ever, and he never hit the ball!

I challenge anyone to convince me that they know about a greater golf shot, anywhere, anytime, ever, than Carl’s swing that missed the ball and saved four lives, mine included.