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Golfers vs. Wild

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following excerpts are from a sports almanac published in 2057 that chronicles topics from the past 60 years. Look for it in five decades from the shelves of Wal-TargetMart for $199.99.

The sport of golf invites participants to enjoy the majesty of nature. Unfortunately, there have been incidents where mother nature's critters have learned the hard way that golf courses are not to be confused with nature sanctuaries

2008: Tripp Isenhour kills a federally protected red-shouldered hawk (buteo lineatus) while filming an instructional golf video at Grand Cypress Resort in Orlando. When the hawk's shrieking interrupted his takes, Isenhour said he hit some golf balls at the creature to try to scare it off. Witnesses say Isenhour lost his temper and on his 10th swing hit the bird out of a tree from 75 yards away. This brought misdemeanor animal cruelty charges against him. Isenhour was banned from professional golf until he could prove he could intentionally hit a 2-foot high target that was 30 feet in the air from 75 yards away. It took him 45,825,139,005 swings to duplicate the shot.

2010: Tiger Woods saves the lives of Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn (aka Siegfried & Roy) from a raving mad white tiger (panthera tigris) during a benefit concert at TPC Summerlin associated with the Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas. Woods happened to have a Nike putter with him, but unfortunately no golf balls to aim at the rampaging beast.

So Woods did the next best thing and picked up a .45 caliber handgun that was left on the ground next the mauled remains of a bodyguard for Sean Combs. Woods emptied the clip into the tiger, and later apologized to Beyonce for accidentally hitting her in the toe. Especially relieved that further tragedy was avoided was Timberlake, who had been scheduled to go on stage during the white tiger number to perform his D*ck in a Box song.

2013: Although it had gone unreported at the time, John Daly claims to have killed an unknown number venomous snakes at the Dubai Desert Classic. In his 2021 memoir, Daly Happy Hour, Daly claims that while walking through a sand trap on the 14th hole, he accidentally fell through a trap door and landed in the Well of Souls, the legendary resting place of the Ark of the Covenant.

With no rope to enable him to climb out of the pit, Daly wrote that he climbed a 50-foot high statue, rocked it off its moorings and surfed the collapsing statue so that it knocked away a fake chamber wall that would lead him to safety, but not before he had to squirm his way past more snakes and human skeletons. Daly to this day can offer no proof that this fantastic story actually happened, other than the fact that the markings of the headpiece to the Staff of Ra are burned into his hand.

2015: At the British Open, Padraig Harrington used his driver to whack away at a small animal that had gotten trapped in his golf bag. Originally thought to be a raccoon or a large rat, the nuisance turned out to be a leprechaun. It is unknown if the leprechaun was trying to hide a pot of gold on the course, but the leprechaun's hat fetched more than U.S $20,000 on eBay.

2024: During a pro-am for the World Golf Championship at Doral, University of Florida alumni Chris DiMarco and Tim Tebow are charging through the rough when they stumble across the remains of the latest instance of a 13-foot Burmese python that had exploded when it tried to eat a full-grown alligator. It reminded Tebow of the time he got a stomach ache when he tried to eat a live 13-foot Burmese python for a Gator Growl Homecoming sketch.

2053: The first PGA Tour victory by Michelle Wie comes at age 63 at the Judge Smails Memorial Open at Bushwood Country Club. The celebration is short-lived because two dozen federally protected gophers are killed when a demented groundskeeper starts detonating underground explosions. The good news for Wie was that the force of the explosions forced home a ball she had putted that had come to rest of the lip of the cup of the 18th green.