An Illinois Golfer Fell Into A Sinkhole In The Fairway, And Thank God He Has A Blog

In case you were wondering, this is how a person starts a story about how their husband was swallowed into the Earth and almost murdered by God during a round of golf.

Friday, March 8, 2013, was the first nice day we had seen in St. Louis, Mo., in several weeks. It was a great day to get back out on the golf course and get geared up for the spring golf season.

Delightful! The man on the right is Mark Mihal, golfer, golf enthusiast and co-founder of GolfManna.com, the best golf site ever if you’re wandering the desert and want to know fantasy picks for the Honda Classic. Mark was golfing at his usual spot in Waterloo, Ill., on Friday with a group of buddies, and all-in-all things went pretty well, except for the fact that a sinkhole suddenly appeared beneath him and tried to drag him to Hell.

Here are the pertinent details:

[Playing partner Mike Peters] could hear Mark moaning and ran in the direction where he had been standing just a few seconds earlier. It was immediately clear what had happened; the ground had caved in and Mark had fallen into the earth – 18 feet underground.

“I felt the ground start to collapse and it happened so fast that I couldn’t do anything,” Mark said later. “I reached for the ground as I was going down and it gave way, too. It seemed like I was falling for a long time. The real scary part was I didn’t know when I would hit bottom and what I would land on.”

Mark landed in mud at the bottom of the sinkhole, which was approximately 10’ wide.

They tried lowering a ladder into the hole, but Mark had dislocated his shoulder and couldn’t climb. Fellow golfer/SUPER FRIEND Ed Magaletta volunteered to spelunk down into the hole with a length of rope, tie it around the injured Mihal and (spectacularly) use his own sweatshirt as a sling. Mihal spent about twenty minutes in the hole but escaped with only bruises and a bum shoulder, and you can read about the entire ordeal here.

The best part is that I had to use that picture from The Simpsons Movie because Mihal’s wife already made the best reference:

It reminds me of the movie Space Jam when Michael Jordan was playing golf and disappeared into the ground.

Here are a couple of pictures from the scene, once again courtesy of GolfManna.com.

Next time I play golf in Illinois, I’m bringing a hoverboard.

[h/t to Shane Bacon]

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