Watch: LPGA golfer suffers ultimate hacker embarrassment on live TV
For years, the PGA Tour had as its motto “These Guys Are Good.”
The LPGA, meanwhile, should consider adopting the motto “Stars: They’re Just Like Us” after a delightfully comic mishap at the 18th tee on Friday.
Beatriz Recari, who has won three times on the LPGA Tour, represented Europe in the Solheim Cup and just generally made a good haul on the money list, is very good at golf.
She wasn’t having the best of times at the Thornberry Creek LPGA Classic, however, playing out the string and unlikely to make the cut, just one hole away from going home.
And when her foot slipped during her swing, well …
Never seen that in a professional event. Foot slip and complete miss. @LPGA pic.twitter.com/awzG9GYGRO
— Chris (@GolfGuy77) July 7, 2018
Swing and a miss, strike one.
Recari stepped up again, took another mighty hack at the ball, carded a double-bogey 6 that included that swing-and-a-miss as one of the strokes, and missed the cut by four shots.
If there’s a silver lining, at least she didn’t realistically cost herself a crack at playing on the weekend; even if she’d made birdie, Recari still would have had one stroke too many relative to the cut line.
It’s pretty rare for a pro golfer, or even an amateur, to whiff a shot off the tee.
But when the lies get more challenging, it tends to happen a lot more often.
Consider Phil Mickelson, who honked his tee shot into the straw and whiffed on his first of two attempts to get the ball back onto a plausibly golf-like playing surface at the Masters this year.
Masters 2018: Phil Mickelson | 1st Hole, Round 3 pic.twitter.com/RVYmBFFMjW
— Masters Highlights (@MastersMoments) April 7, 2018
Or the time in 2011 when Kevin Na stepped up to the 9th hole at TPC San Antonio and shot a 16.
Sometimes, all you can do in life is to just take your licks, realize that your actions made some amateur playing for fun on a Sunday feel better about his or her own game, and pass into the annals of funny golf blooper history.
Beatriz Recari is in good company alongside the likes of men’s tour champs like Mickelson and Na, and even though she missed the cut, she’s still got those three championships.
And above all, one simple lesson remains.
Golf is hard.
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