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Apr 19th, 2017
Yesterday's Golf News Today #12
Where golf enters the Twilight Zone....
Words: Tim Southwell Photography: Getty Images
When golf enters the twilight zone. You don't get this at the Golf Channel....
20 years ago: March 1997
Following a large scale phone network crash in the USA, thousands of phone calls across the eastern seaboard were diverted to wrong numbers. One of these had telling consequences for NASA when they received a call claiming that there were problems with the solid rocket motors attached to the Space Shuttle Endeavour, which was minutes from blast off.
"Houston, we have a Mark O'Meara on the phone?...."
The launch was duly cancelled and it was several hours before officials discovered the phone call had actually come from Mark O'Meara, a TaylorMade ambassador at the time, who was attempting to tell club developers in China that his design for the Rocktballz irons and woods range would, unfortunately, not be ready as planned.
10 years ago: March 2007
Journeyman pro Nick Job (best major finish T14th at the Open 1981), is distraught as he reads the Daily Telegraph headline: ‘Rapture in Silicon Valley as Steve Jobs unveils the iPhone’. Job had been developing his own ideas for a mobile telephone revolution called the 'Job Lot', a phone that could, he claims 'do anything' including the making and receiving of telephone calls.
"I was careless really," says Job. "You can't afford to go drinking with Sam Torrance and Mark James and expect them to keep schtum about anything. I blame myself in the long run but it was definitely one of those two who sold my idea to the bloke from Apple.
"People will say I'm making this up just because my surname is similar to his but that's just bollocks."
"Oh, bugger, I think I've left my blueprints for peace in the Middle East in the clubhouse..."
5 years ago: March 2012
Rory McIlroy accidentally pens Rhianna's global hit We Found Love In A Hopeless Place after an unlikely encounter when his tee shot at the French Open Pro Am ended up in a water hazard. Rory, having pulled his drive into the drink at the par 5 13th hole, waded in after what he thought was his ball. In a curious twist of fate, tennis star Carol Wozniacki had sliced her own drive on the adjacent 5th hole, across the 13th fairway into the same lake.
After a lengthy debate about who's Nike 20X1 ball was whose, the two locked eyes and started laughing about what a hopeless place their golf balls had ended up in.
Rory did the honourable thing by letting Carol play through, on the provision that she let him buy her a drink in the club house after the round. Wozniaki, who reportedly told her playing partners that she thought Rory was "well fit", duly obliged and the pair struck a rapport over Guinness and Jagermeister shots.
"Get the bevvies in, sweet heart..."
One thing lead to another and Rory ended up on the piano, serenading his new bird with a song he'd hastily penned on the back of a fag packet in the gents.
When the two left to "take this to the next level", Rhianna's manager happened upon the fag packet song lyrics and the rest is genuine history...
