Golf pro Rhein Gibson shot a sixteen-under 55 Saturday, May 12, 2012 at River Oaks Golf Club in Edmond, Oklahoma. Twelve birdies and two eagles.

Holy smokes.

Annika Sorenstam has for years promoted a “Vision 54” in which she contends that a “perfect round” of 54 is possible (You can read a review of one of her Vision 54 books here). This is as close to that perfection as I’ve ever heard of—unless you want to count the scramble score of the winning team at our annual teachers’ golf outing a couple of years ago. They were 18 under.

The closest anyone has gotten to this score was the 55 shot by Homero Blancas. Blancas, a member of the University of Houston golf team, shot a 55 in a tournament on August 19, 1962. That round has an asterisk beside it, however, because it was a par 70 course measuring just over 5,000 yards.

Gibson’s round was at a 6698-yard par-71 course.

Gibson, 26, is an Australian professional who calls the River Oaks Club home after spending his college years at Oklahoma Christian. He plays on the Golfweek National Pro Tour while waiting for his shot at the PGA Tour.

Scores of 56, 57 and 58 have been posted by various players over the years, mostly in non competitive situations.

The lowest shot in competition were 58s shot by Shigeki Maruyama, Jason Bohn and Ryo Ishikawa.

Maruyama shot a 58 in a 2000 US Open Section Qualifier. Bohn’s 58 came in the final round of the 2001 Canadian Tour Bayer Championship. Ishikawa met that mark in the 2010 Crowns Tournament on the Japan Tour.

The 55 shot by Gibson was—as far as I can tell—not in a competition. But it is incredibly impressive nonetheless. Still, the skeptic in me says that this has to be a hoax ...

The scorecard shown above was posted on the Reddit Golf Forum.

Here’s the sad story of a high school golfer whose carelessness with the scorecard cost her a chance at being the state title winner four years in a row

Eugene (Ore.) Churchill High girls golfer Caroline Inglis was on the cusp of history. After winning the Oregon Scholastic Activities Association Class 5A state tournament during each of her first three years, Inglis finished the final round of the 2012 state tournament with a 3-under 69, a score that completed a dominant performance that was nine shots better than anyone else in the tournament.

All Inglis had to do to ensure history would be made was sign her scorecard. As it turns out, that’s precisely what got her in trouble.

Read the whole story.

I really feel sorry for the girl in the story. I’m sure that—caught up in the excitement—Inglis was not thinking in a calm and collected manner. Today’s high schoolers—even Seniors—don’t think as logically or clearly as adults would like under the best of circumstances. In fact, if there’s a way for a high school student to do something stupid, my experience is that you can’t rule out them doing it.

Given that it was a high school tournament and that the people running it should know a thing or two about the adolescent mind, there should have been strict procedures in place to prevent this sort of catastrophe. An adult or three need to be available to sit the girls down and slowly go over the cards before allowing them to sign it. 

Lack of adult supervision not only diminished Inglis’ accomplishment, but also the victory of the default winner. It further diminished the entire tournament. I blame the adults for this one.

The President says he doesn’t cheat when playing golf. I believe him for the most part. While I doubt he plays by ALL the rules, I do believe that he doesn’t do anything blantant, primary for the reason that becomes clear in the transcript below. The clip is part of an interview with Grantland Editor Bill Simmons and the two apparently covered a wide range of sports topics.

Bill Simmons: Have you noticed that there is a notable difference in the way people defend you, since you became the president, when you’re playing?
Obama: No, because I’m always getting knocked around. I don’t know what people are talking about. Reggie Love, my former aide who played at Duke and he’s now getting his MBA, he answered anybody who said that people took it easy on me when they played with me. He said, nobody takes it easy on Obama because if he beats them, they won’t hear the end of it. [Laughter.] And it’s true. I will talk about folks just to make sure that they don’t take it easy on me.
BBS : What about when you’re playing golf? Do you get more four-foot putts given to you than maybe you did before?
Obama: I don’t take them.
BS: You don’t take them?
Obama: I am very proud of the fact I do not cheat when I’m playing golf. Anybody who plays with me, they’ll say I count my strokes. I count my strokes. I don’t — I’m not getting five-foot gimme putts.
BS: I guess you have to play it that way because then people could be, “I played with Obama” —
Obama: And he cheated.
Simmons: Yes, I saw him kick the ball out of the rough or something. [Laughter.]
Obama: Yes, yes.

Obama’s right. If someone caught him using foot wedges or taking mulligans, it likely would be all over the news.

Interestingly, however, Bill Clinton absolutely was known for taking liberties with the game, and people treated it for the most part as endearing. And when the Bushes played, it was an example of how these Republicans were out-of-touch country clubbers. Presidential golf seems to reflect the media zeitgeist on that particular White House occupant.

[rant on]

Two septuagenarians have been arrested after they used their ball retrievers to whack a teenager who was interrupting their game with an air horn.

Granted, the seniors should know better. But in my mind, the kid is a horses’ ass and deserved it (especially since he apparently was actually unharmed).

The incident was caught on film (apparently by the teen idiot’s other idiot friends), and his father took it to the sheriff to get charges filed. That’s modern fatherhood for you: Your kid is out of line, embarrassing the family name and instead of lowering the boom on him when you find out, you defend his actions by heading to the police.

If I had behaved in such a fashion, there’s no way I would have told my Dad what happened. I wouldn’t have lived long enough past the “I was blowing an airhorn and scaring some seniors” part to be able to get to the bit where they retaliated. My best bet would have been to keep my mouth shut and hope that the seniors didn’t show up at my door to tell my dad WHY they had whacked me. He would have thanked them and then had me on my hands and knees apologizing for my unacceptable behavior. Any thumping I received from the old farts would have been viewed as my just deserts and only a prelude to the administration of Dad’s own justice.

Here’s what the punk learns from this: I can be a jerk and my Dad will make it ok. Even more: I can be a jerk and my Dad will make my victims look like the villains. I’m willing to bet a sleeve of golf balls that the kid is no honors student with a clean school record. This likely is not the first time Dad has undeservedly bailed him out.  In a couple of years, the punk’s Dad probably will be one of those parents who show up at the kid’s job interviews.

I wonder that the Dad would say if his son had scared one of the seniors into a heart attack, or if he had cause a wayward ball to strike someone. He’s probably have a lawyer defending his son’s right to blast an air horn as freedom of speech.

If my own teen pulled a stunt like that, his best bet would be to head to the bus station and get a one way ticket to Grandma’s. Maybe she would merciful. Maybe not.

But then again, my kid isn’t going to pull a stunt like that. There’s no way I let him have an airhorn because I know no good can come of a teen with an airhorn. And he doesn’t have the time to go out and stalk senors on a golf course because I have him doing homework, practicing his violin, and going to church and scout meetings. He doesn’t have time for pranks because I have him enlisted in service projects.

I just hope that some day the father in question rues the day he started defending his son’s bad behavior

[rant off]

There. I feel better now.

Darren Clark was named an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, and Rory McIlroy a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the New Year’s Honours List. Neither permits the golfers to use the honorific “Sir,” but they do get to add it as a post-nomial (i.e., Darren Clarke, OBE)

The Order was initiated by George V in 1917 to honor people who had distinguished themselves in non-combatant roles during the Great War. It later was split into military and civil divisions.

US citizens can become honorary members—and several have—but full membership would require renouncing US citizenship.

Lacking any concrete information on what goes in inside secretive North Korea, analysts apparently are reduced to studying the leader’s golf scorecards:

In keeping with his orderly ascension from ranking army general to top political official to supreme leader of the last hard-line Communist country on earth, North Korea’s chubby young Kim Jong-un is expected soon to take up golf, where he will challenge his father’s record of scoring almost a dozen holes-in-one on his first try at the game.

Afforded little else in the way of information on the internal doings of the secretive country, observers will be reduced to parsing news of the young leader’s score, speculating on what it might mean should he fail to match his father’s 38-under-par.

Such is the fantasy scenario of North Korea’s notorious – often ludicrous – propaganda machine, which is operating at full throttle after the death of the country’s last demigod ruler. Observers question whether the regime can maintain the barrage of lies big and little it has used for so long to mislead and repress its citizens.

For those who don’t remember the story, the recently deceased Kim Jong Il was reported to have shot a 38-under-par round of 34, including eleven holes in one. It was his first, and apparently last round. Apparently the game was too easy for the godlike leader for whom the flowers bloomed in the spring, and in whose honor rainbows appeared on his birthday. He also apparently flew fighter jets, wrote operas and directed movies.

Sounds a lot like Buckaroo Banzai.

Here’s a good article from Sports Illustrated.

Anil Mane dreamed of wide fairways. He dreamed of a golf club in his hand and a white ball at his feet. Worry disappeared. Everything fell quiet, his fears silenced, his shaking hand calmed. He swung the club with tempo. He held the follow-through. The ball arced into the air, landed softly and rolled next to the cup. The gallery applauded, and he tapped it in. He dreamed of a shining trophy and a long sigh of relief. Sometimes, he laughed in his sleep …

… Anil woke up. He cleared his head and found that, yes, he was still on the floor of his 10-by-10-foot shack built on a Mumbai sidewalk. He was still 27, and his problems hadn’t vanished overnight. Outside, in the dusty blue of dawn, families slept on the pavement. Chickens crawled over their huddled bodies. The street smelled of burning trash. Human waste rotted in the gutters. The children were skinny, but the rats were fat.

Read it all.