But if you’ve done some damage, that’s
tough. It’s not nice. It can be hard to get
over, yeah.”
McIlroy himself hasn’t been im-
mune from needing to apologise for
an errant swing. On the last day of the
WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, one of
his last shots tagged a woman in the gal-
lery. By the time McIlroy got there, she
was gone. He found out later when try-
ing to contact her through tour offi cials
(they usually assist when a player follows
up) that she suff ered a fractured wrist.
That wasn’t the most unnerving
moment from McIlroy’s past. Five years
ago, during the fi rst round of the Open
at Royal Lytham & St Annes, McIlroy
hit a drive on the 15th hole that struck
16-year-old Jason Blue in the head.
When the teen fell to the ground and
his eyes were closed, his buddy, 17-year-
old Ross Furnival, momentarily thought
Blue was dead. Mercifully, he turned out
to be okay, and McIlroy ended up putting
the two up in a hotel for the night, giving
them £100 for dinner and a taxi and
taking a picture with them.
Perez, too, followed up with the fan
he’d sent to the hospital, off ering to pay
his medical bills and take care of anything
else the man needed. Months later, the
incident was still fresh in his mind. “Of
course, it’s unsettling,” Perez said. “I called
him that night to see how he was doing.
He was shocked. I said, ‘Bro, I almost
killed you. It’s not that much for me to
call you.’ He said, ‘I’m good.’ I said, ‘Sorry.’
I gave him a glove, but what is that gonna
do? He was bleeding. It sucks. It’s hard to
hit a shot after that, but it’s one of those
things you just have to move on from.”
Often, though, that’s easier said than
done. In 2009, David Duval was fi ve
under through his fi rst nine holes and
leading the Memorial when his wayward
tee shot on the 10th struck a spectator
in the head, causing him to bleed. Still
shaken, Duval bogeyed the hole and shot
40 on the back.
“You end up giving them a signed
golf ball or glove,” Duval said at the time.
“But like that really matters at that point,
you know? It’s like, ‘Great, I got hit in the
head and I got a golf ball for it.’ ”
'JUST WIN THE HOLE'M
ercifully, there are times when
the injured spectator helps de-
fuse the situation. Four years
ago during the Presidents Cup
at Muirfi eld Village, Keegan
Bradley tugged his drive on
the 14th square into the head of a fan
along the rope line. The man dropped,
his head split open and wife crying, with
blood on Bradley’s ball.
“I felt awful,” Bradley remembers.
“I went to see if he was alright, and he
looked up at me and said, ‘Just win the
hole.’ That was kind of cool.”
Unlike baseball and ice hockey, no
one to date has been killed by an errant
golf ball in a professional tournament,
a surprise considering that ball speeds
from PGA Tour players reach as high as
300km per hour. Even by the time a ball
comes down a few hundred metres away,
its speed is still about 100kph.
Yelling “Fore!” can help, though most
players, caddies and offi cials agree that by
the time fans hear it, it’s usually too late.
Nonetheless, players and marshals do
their best to alert fans of the incoming
object. Then they just hope.
For spectators, the best advice is
to always be alert, especially if you’re
anywhere along the rope line on a hole.
There are specifi c places, too, that you
might try to avoid. In most cases, the
victims were standing in what Jason
Dufner calls “the hot zone.” That’s the
area between approximately 240 and 270
metres from the tee. Often it’s on the
opposite side of where the trouble is on
a hole.
“I always tell people not to stand
there,” Duf deadpans. “I’ve hit plenty of
people. It sucks. But we’re in an open
environment that’s not as controlled as
most other sports.”
Indeed, no matter how hard pro
golfers try, or how good the pro might
be, it’s inevitable that they’ll hit the
occasional bad shot that fi nds an unsus-
pecting fan. When it happens, the player
is left to make the long, anxious walk
to his ball and hope for the best-case
scenario: The fan is unharmed, and their
ball is luckily back in the fairway.