Fifty years later, it remains the most impressive bunker in golf history, mainly because of its location.
The moon.
Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard and his crew carried about 90 pounds of lunar rocks on February 6, 1971. Two golf balls were left that Shepard, who later described the surface of the moon as “a big sand trap,” suddenly hit 6-iron to become a footnote to history.
Francis Ouimet put golf on the front page of American newspapers by winning the 1913 US Open. Gene Sarazen put the Masters on the map by shooting 235 yards for an albatross in the final round of his victory. 1935.
Shepard surpassed them all. He put golf in outer space.
“You may have put golf on the moon map,” Jack Nicklaus said this week. “I thought it was unique to the game of golf that Shepard thought so much about the game that it would take a golf club to the moon and give it a shot.”
Shepard became the first American in space in 1961 as one of NASA’s seven original mercury astronauts. After being sidelined for years by an inner ear problem, he became the fifth astronaut to walk on the moon as commander of Apollo 14.
But he did more than walk on the moon.
Shepard waited until the end of the mission before it surprised American viewers and all but a few NASA people who didn’t know what Shepard had up their sleeve or, in this case, socks. That’s how he got the golf equipment into space.
“Houston, you may recognize what I have on hand as the contingency sample returns; it only has a real 6 iron at the bottom, “Shepard said.” On my left hand, I have a small white granule that’s familiar to millions of Americans. “
He hit more moon than ball in his first two attempts. The third was later referred to as a cane. And he grabbed the last color, or as loose as an astronaut can hit a golf ball while spinning with one hand in a space-tight suit that weighs 180 pounds (on Earth).
“We used to say it was the longest shot in world history because it hasn’t fallen yet,” famous golf instructor Butch Harmon said with a laugh.
Harmon is closely linked to the shooting through his relationship with Jack Harden Sr., a former Houston River Oaks Country Club professional, whom Shepard asked to build a 6-iron iron that could lead to the moon. . Harden managed to fix the head of an iron Dyna-Power 6-Wilson iron to a folding tool that was used to collect lunar samples.
The shots fell on the moon. It is still debated how far they went.
“Thousands and miles and miles,” Shepard said in a moment of light that was streamed in color to a captive television audience watching from nearly 240,000 miles away.
Not exactly. The shot for years has been estimated at 200 yards, notable given the extent to which most of his space suit restricted Shepard’s movement. He had even practiced his space suit in a Houston bunker when no one was there.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary, England-based imaging specialist Andy Saunders provided a more accurate account. Saunders, who works on a book called “Apollo Remastered,” worked through digital video enhancement and stacking techniques that the foreground lasted 24m. The second ball was 40 yards.
Former PGA champion Jimmy Walker hits an iron from 6 meters to about 200 meters on Earth. Walker, a space enthusiast with skill and passion for astrophotography, worked with the USGA and Saunders as the Apollo 14 anniversary approached to see how far he could reach a 6-inch iron. a sixth gravity of the moon.
“He was known for saying miles and miles,” Walker said. “They took my throwing conditions and said my ball would fly 4,600 yards and would be just over a minute long.”
That would mean a little over 2 1/2 miles.
This would also be a conventional 6 iron while wearing golf shoes and a sweater vest.
What stands out all these years later is that Shepard even thought of taking a golf club to the moon and back. The inspiration came from Bob Hope, who carried a golf club almost everywhere he went. This included a trip to the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston a year before the Apollo 14 mission.
According to USGA historian Michael Trostel, this made Shepard realize that a golf shot would be the ideal illustration of the gravitational pull of the Moon. To build a club, he found the right person in Harden in River Oaks.
“He was relentless with the teams,” said Brandel Chamblee, a Golf Channel analyst and longtime friend of Harden’s son. “I would test Jack and his father, any club they had had been ‘hardened.’ No club off the zipper was good enough for them. They always changed the lie, the loft, the bounce. They used tape.” of lead. It was apropos that he made Shepard’s iron of 6 “.
Convincing his superiors did something. In a 1998 interview with NASA, Shepard said he directed his idea by the director of the Manned Space Flight Center who told him, “Absolutely no way.” Shepard told him the club and two golf balls would cost taxpayers nothing. And it would only do so if the whole mission was a complete success.
Shepard said he told director Bob Gilruth, “I won’t be so frivolous. I want to wait until the end of the mission, stand in front of the TV camera, hit these golf balls with this makeshift stick, bend them, put them in my pocket, climb the ladder and close the door and we are gone ”.
The Royal Club is one of the award-winning exhibits at the USGA Museum in New Jersey, which came at an awkward time.
“He makes a donation at a ceremony at the 1974 U.S. Open,” Trostel said. “NASA called him later and said he was looking for the club for the Smithsonian. He said he had already donated it to the USGA museum. They said, ‘Mr. Shepard, this is government property. We had a reply in charge. and we donated it to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. ”
For years, no one knew what golf balls he was using and Shepard was determined to avoid any kind of commercialism. Chamblee and Harmon unlocked the mystery this week, and it came with a twist.
They were River Oaks range balls.
“Within the Hardens, the legacy is that he gave him golf balls from the range that had‘ Jack Harden Property, ’” Chamblee said. “Technically, if the balls don’t melt, Jack is the only person who owns them. to the Moon. “
All because of a one-handed Shepard swing, still the only person to hit a golf ball on the moon.
“It was designed to be a fun thing,” Shepard said in the 1998 interview, five months before his death at age 74. “Fortunately, it’s still a fun thing.”