Next time the term "sand trap" comes up in conversation, don't take the term lightly. You could end up in a sink-hole, just like Mark Mihal, a 43-year-old mortgage broker from Creve Couer, Missouri, fell into, while on the 14th hole at Annbriar Golf Course in Waterloo.
"I felt the ground start to collapse and it happened so fast that I couldn't do anything," Mihal said on his website golfmanna.com. "I reached for the ground as I was going down and it gave way, too. It seemed like I was falling for a long time. The real scary part was I didn't know when I would hit bottom and what I would land on."
According to Fox Sports, friends managed to hoist Mihal to safety with a rope after about 20 minutes. But the experience gave him quite a fright, particularly following the much-publicized recent death of a man in Florida who died when his bedroom fell into a sinkhole. That man's body hasn't been found.
''I feel lucky just to come out of it with a shoulder injury, falling that far and not knowing what I was going to hit,'' Mihal told The Associated Press before heading off to learn whether he'll need surgery. ''It was absolutely crazy.''
His golfing buddies didn't see him vanish into the earth but noticed he wasn't visible, figuring he had tripped and fallen out of sight down a hill. But one of them heard Mihal's moans and went to investigate.
Upon realizing that he had sunk into the hole, one of his golf partners, a real-estate agent, made his way into the hole, converted his sweater into a splint for Mihal and tied a rope around his friend, who was pulled to safety.
''I felt fortunate I didn't break both legs, or worse,'' Mihal said.
Sam Panno, a senior geochemist with the Illinois State Geological Survey said "that region 'is riddled with sinkholes,'' with as many as 15,000 recorded," according to Fox Sports.
With the ordeal that Mihal had to go through, one might want to think twice before heading into the sand to retrieve the ball.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
