Monday Milestone: Weird
“Here we go, straight as a die; one more…. Miles and miles and miles”
– Alan Shepard hitting his unusual golf shot
This Week in History:
1971, February 5
Astronaut Alan Shepard hits the most peculiar golf shot in the history of the game.
Make no mistake, sometimes sport just gets plain weird.
With curiosity as one of the tremendous hallmarks of mankind, forming the crux of competitive spirit, it is always going to happen.
Through the annals of history, the world has witnessed anyone; anytime; anywhere can make a sporting contest irrespective of the surroundings.
And they have.
The modern marathon was formed when the Greek soldier Pheidippides ran 42km as a messenger from the battle of Marathon to Athens. Seemed like a challenging distance. James Naismith created an indoor game for students to provide athletic distraction with what he had. He called it ‘basketball’. Rugby (and therefore rugby league) was created when William Webb-Ellis ignored the rules of soccer, and picked up the ball and ran with it.
Each sport has its own peculiar idiosyncrasies, but it is when they are replicated the world over decades later in the most unusual of places that it becomes fascinating. Perhaps it’s simply a case of making the best of your surroundings, like where kids play soccer in the street. Presumably it was this spirit that invented backyard cricket. It happens a lot. But sometimes, it happens in the most unusual of circumstances.
There is one time when sporting prowess was tested in the most unusual of locations. In 1971, when the ideological clash of communism and capitalism dominated the second half of the twentieth century, it manifested itself in a variety of ways, including the Space Race.
So this week the Milestone sits aboard Apollo 14, two years after man had first walked on the moon, and the Americans were back in space. Alan Shepard was manning his final mission into the outer world and he was determined to leave a name for himself.
The mission was a success, as the astronauts spent time on the lunar surface, collecting the appropriate samples and conducting other experiments. So with the science out of the way, Shepard promptly produced something remarkable. Somehow aboard the mission, he had managed to smuggle the head of a six iron, and a couple of golf balls.
Now, unbeknownst to those in Ground Control, Shepard attached that club head to a lunar sample scoop iron, and proceeded to line up the most unusual golf shot in history. Granted, in those space suits, manoeuvrability was limited, and Shepard was unable to produce a decent swing on his first attempt.
The second ball however, he connected on, and thanks to the low gravity surface, his six iron went “miles and miles”. Or much like many weekend golfers, perhaps it just seemed that way and was in essence just a couple of hundred metres.
Still, it added liveliness to the mission, and ensured Shepard’s immortality. Nobody had ever hit a golf shot like that before. Many would argue the fact that Alan Shepard on the Apollo 14 mission having the presence of mind to become the first man to hit a golf shot in space was impressive.
Others would argue, it was just plain weird.
What do you think?
Milestone Five: Unusual sporting circumstances
5. In 2005, Roger Federer and Andre Agassi play a match atop the Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai some 200m above the ground.
4. In 1915, Australian diggers play some light hearted cricket at the foot of the Great Pyramids in Egypt before travelling up the Dardanelles towards Gallipoli.
3. In 1995 a squash tournament began in Vanderbilt Hall in New York City’s Grand Central Station. It is now in its sixteenth year.
2. In Christmas 1914 Allied and Axis soldiers climb out of the trenches with a temporary cease fire and undertake a game of soccer in no man’s land.
1. In 1971 Alan Shepard hits the most peculiar six iron, connecting with a shot during his walk upon the moon.
With thanks to Joe Raedle/Getty Images North America for the picture
