With the British Open just wrapping up, let's venture into the world of pastel-colored plaid, silly looking hats, and carefully manicured grass. The following are twelve perils you probably won't ever encounter on a golf course but should still be aware of.


1. Lightning
Lightning commonly strikes the tallest object, so when a human is standing in an open, flat area holding a metal golf club, he is transformed into a lightning rod. Hence why golfing in a thunderstorm is particularly dangerous: every year around 90 people are killed by lightning strikes.

2. Carpal Tunnel
Yup, carpal tunnel. No longer just a common cubicle ailment, carpal tunnel can affect golfers who spend a considerable amount of their time playing golf. Starting with a feeling of numbness and a weakening of the hands, carpal tunnel can be deterred by a loosening of oneís grip and regular replacement of grips.

3. Wild Animals
Many times a golf course provides the perfect arena for an impromptu battle of man versus wild. For example, Jim Stewart was attacked by a 10-foot cobra while golfing in Singapore. He killed the cobra with his golf club only to see another snake emerge from its mouth. Other reported incidents have included a one-eyed, 11-foot alligator; crocodiles; hungry bears; a monkey who likes to strangle people; and, of course, dancing gophers.


4. Trains
At Ludkin Links in Fife, Scotland, the 5th green is bordered by a set of train tracks. This situation proved disastrous for Harold Wallace, who was struck by a train while crossing the tracks.

5. Mortar Shells
The greens keeper at Elephant Hills Country Club in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, has his hands full. Pristine holes can often be riddled with craters caused by mortars shot over the Zambezi River.

6. Dead Bodies
Pelham Bay and Split Rock Golf Course was never featured in The Sopranos, but it should have been. Rumor has it that the course, located in the Bronx, is a popular site for dumping dead bodies. Between 1986 and 1992, police found 40 dead bodies in Pelham Bay Park, where the course is located.

7. Flawed Design
In January of this year, a woman sued the Owlís Creek Golf Course in Virginia Beach for $1 million after she was hit in the head by an errant ball, resulting in a brief hospitalization. She claims that the layout of the 16th and 17th holes put herself and other golfers at danger due to their close proximity.

8. Surfacing Ball Retrievers
Golf ball diving is quite a lucrative business ($1.50 - $4.00 per ball), causing many to don scuba gear and plunge into golf course lagoons. These divers can be quite startling to golfers, though, when they emerge from dives. Michael Fleming, a golf ball diver in Georgia, once startled a lady who was looking for her ball in a lagoon, causing her to tumble into the water.

9. Modern Warfare
The green zone in Baghdad is now home to a golf course. The Crossed Swords Golf Course is surrounded by 15-foot walls while guns blast and Black Hawk helicopters whirl in the distance. Each golfer is allowed three clubs and must carry around a patch of grass from which to drive his ball into the holes, which are comprised of baked bean cans. Taking cover when mortar shells penetrate the blast wall is highly recommended.

10. Aroused Libidos
Pennsylvania police were recently called in to investigate a private outing at the Cherry Valley Golf Course one afternoon. What they found were lap dance stations between holes and naked women roaming the course. Despite several verbal threats by one of the golf courseís employees, the ribald festivities were shut down.

11. Emergency Landings
Golf courses make for effective landing strips. Just ask Robert Kadera of Lake Villa, Illinois, who recently landed his 1949 Piper Clipper on the Marriott Resort Crane's Landing Golf Course. Kadera did not radio in a mayday and crash land his Piper Clipper, but rather made use of the golf course because his son was late for his tennis lesson across the street.


12. Belligerent Ex-Policemen
Recently in Orange County, ex-policeman Raymond K. Yi flashed his badge, cocked his gun, and shouted, Get the [expletive] out of my way, old man. I could kill you, to Gustavo Resendiz, a fellow golfer at the course. The violent episode occurred after Yi repeatedly broke golf etiquette. Resendiz threw Yi's ball into a nearby creek in retaliation, and Resendiz pulled his gun.

What's mainly wrong with society today is that too many Dirt Roads have been paved.

There's not a problem in America today, crime, drugs, education, divorce, delinquency that wouldn't be remedied, if we just had more Dirt Roads, because Dirt Roads give character.

People that live at the end of Dirt Roads learn early on that life is a bumpy ride.

That it can jar you right down to your teeth sometimes, but it's worth it, if at the end is home...a loving spouse, happy kids and a dog.

We wouldn't have near the trouble with our educational system if our kids got their exercise walking a Dirt Road with other kids, from whom they learn how to get along.

There was less crime in our streets before they were paved.

Criminals didn't walk two dusty miles to rob or rape, if they knew they'd be welcomed by 5 barking dogs and a double barrel shotgun.

And there were no drive by shootings.

Our values were better when our roads were worse!

People did not worship their cars more than their kids, and motorists were more courteous, they didn't tailgate by riding the bumper or the guy in front would choke you with dust & bust your windshield with rocks.

Dirt Roads taught patience.

Dirt Roads were environmentally friendly, you didn't hop in your car for a quart of milk you walked to the barn for your milk. For your mail, you walked to the mail box.

What if it rained and the Dirt Road got washed out? That was the best part, then you stayed home and had some family time, roasted marshmallows and popped popcorn and pony rode on Daddy's shoulders and learned how to make prettier quilts than anybody.


At the end of Dirt Roads, you soon learned that bad words tasted like soap.

Most paved roads lead to trouble, Dirt Roads more likely lead to a fishing creek or a swimming hole.

At the end of a Dirt Road, the only time we even locked our car was in August, because if we didn't some neighbor would fill it with too much zucchini.

At the end of a Dirt Road, there was always extra springtime income, from when city dudes would get stuck, you'd have to hitch up a team and pull them out.

Usually you got a dollar...always you got a new friend...at the end of a Dirt Road!

Special Thanks To Mark Menashe

The Championships, Wimbledon at London’s All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club are over but some nagging questions still remain:

How Long Has Wimbledon Been Around?
The All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club hosted the first tournament in 1877. There was only a men’s draw that year, and Spencer Gore bested a field of 22 players to win the first title. Two hundred spectators shelled out a shilling apiece to watch Gore triumph in the finals. In 1884 the tournament expanded to include men’s doubles and ladies’ singles. Maud Watson beat out twelve other women to claim the inaugural ladies’ championship.

British players dominated Wimbledon early in its life; the first foreign champion didn’t come along until American May Sutton won the ladies’ championship in 1905. Since then, though, things haven’t been quite so rosy. There hasn’t been a British champion since Virginia Wade won the ladies’ draw in 1977, and since then no other British player has even made the finals.

The professional tennis version of Wimbledon that we know has really only been around since 1968, though, since the field was closed to professionals for 90 years. After decades of amateur competition, Wimbledon first allowed professional players in 1968, when Rod Laver and Billie Jean King won the singles’ titles.

Why Are The Players Wearing So Much White?
Because they have to. The All England Club’s dress code dictates that players have to wear predominantly white clothing throughout the tournament, a rule unique to the Wimbledon among its Grand Slam brethren. The rule has predictably been the cause for some consternation among players, notably a young Andre Agassi, who didn’t like the suppression of his inimitable bright-colors-and-flowing-mullet style. Agassi went so far as to completely skip the tournament from 1988 to 1990, citing the dress code as part of his reason for staying away, although pundits speculated his real hesitance had more to do with his game being ill-suited for grass courts.

Another dress code controversy sprung up last year when Tatiana Golovin took the court. Although her outfit was the prescribed white, she had on bright red underwear that showed on many shots. After a delay, the knickers were deemed short enough to be considered underwear and not part of her actual ensemble. American Anne White, on the other hand, didn’t get so lucky at the 1985 Championships. She started a match in a stunning all-white lycra body suit. When the match was later stopped due to darkness, she was told to wear more appropriate threads for the next day; she lost the third set in her more traditional duds.

Who’s Been The Most Dominant At The Championships?
Hard to say for the gentlemen, although there are a lot of great choices. Roger Federer has won five times but Pete Sampras has a record of seven career Wimbledon championships.

Things are a lot clearer on the ladies’ side: Martina Navaratilova owned Wimbledon. Her nine singles titles are a record, as is her run of six straight between 1982 and 1987. Even more impressively, Navratilova added another seven ladies doubles titles and four mixed doubles titles. She was also ageless; her final mixed doubles title came in 2003, when she was 46 years old. Only Billie Jean King, who had six singles titles, 10 doubles titles, and four mixed wins can match Navratilova’s 20 combined Wimbledon championships.

What Should A Spectator Munch On?
Wimbledon’s longtime favorite snack is strawberries and cream - figures. In the tournament’s early days, strawberries were a very limited seasonal item with availability that happened to coincide with annual tennis event. As the years passed, strawberries and cream became a treasured part of the fan experience.

According to one estimate, each year tournament spectators chomp through 27,000 kilos of strawberries and 7,000 liters of cream. Like everything else at Wimbledon, the snack is steeped in tradition: according to the New York Times, the berries are of the Elsanta variety and are picked the day before they’re served, and the accompanying cream must contain at least 48% butterfat. Nachos sound much more fun.

What’s The Story On The Trophies?
The men’s trophy has been around since 1887; it’s a silver gilt cup with pineapple on top. Its inscription isn’t going to win any points for humility: “The All England Lawn Tennis Club Champion of the World.” Each gentlemen’s champion gets a 8-inch replica of the 18-inch trophy as a memento of his win.

The winner of the ladies’ singles draw gets a sterling silver salver, or flat tray, that’s known as the Venus Rosewater Dish. According to Wimbledon’s website, the trophy, which has been awarded since 1886, depicts various scenes from mythology, including a large central figure of Temperance and an outer ring of Minerva overlooking the seven Liberal Arts. Ladies’ champions receive a take-home replica of the Venus Rosewater Dish.

Of course, the champions don’t just win this hardware; they also get cash. This year, both the singles champions will pick up over $1,000,000 for their efforts.

What Are The Words Above The Players’ Entrance To Centre Court?
Players take the court at the All England Club’s most famous court beneath an excerpt from Rudyard Kipling’s “If” that reads “If you can meet triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same…"

Do The Players Have To Bow & Curtsy To The Royal Box?
Not always and definitely not Americas. Until 2003, a rule required players to bow or curtsy to the royal family’s box upon entering or leaving Centre Court. In 2003 the rule was modified so that players only had to bow or curtsy if the Queen or Prince Charles happened to be making an appearance in the box that day. That ruling effectively meant no bowing or curtsying; when the rule went into effect, the Queen and Prince Charles hadn’t attended Wimbledon since 1977 and 1970, respectively.

1. George Armstrong Custer had almost as many nicknames as George W. Bush. When he was young, his family called him Armstrong and Autie, which came about when a young Custer tried to pronounce his middle name. Later in life, his troops called him Curley and Jack. Jack was actually because of his initials, G.A.C., which were emblazoned on his satchel. Finally, the Plains Indians called him Yellow Hair and Son of the Morning Star. They probably had some other choice nicknames for him as well.

2. Somewhat bizarrely, Crazy Horse's nickname was Curly, too. He was born with the name "In the Wilderness" or "Among the Trees" but eventually took on his father's name, Crazy Horse. People called him Curly because he had his mother's (Rattling Blanket Woman) light, curly hair.

3. Custer liked to wear cinnamon-scented oil in his hair.

4. Custer may have had a son with Mo-nah-se-tah, the daughter of Cheyenne chief Little Rock. She had her first child in January 1869, a couple of months after Custer's 7th Cavalry killed her father in battle and took 53 Cheyenne women and children captive. She had her second child late in 1869 - this is the child speculated to be Custer's.

5. By all accounts, the battle with Custer's Battalion lasted less than an hour. In fact, some evidence shows that it was less than HALF an hour. Which makes sense, considering that the 7th Cavalry was really outnumbered. No exact numbers have ever been determined, but it could have been as high as 9:1.

6. Not only did Custer die, two of his brothers, his brother-in-law and his nephew were also killed.

7. Lakota Chief Sitting Bull had a premonition that they would prevail over the 7th Cavalry.

8. The 7th Cavalry broke up into pieces during the attack, which included battalions led by Custer, Frederick Benteen and Marcus Reno. Reno went to West Point, where his best friend was none other than James Whistler. On a test, Whistler wrote that silicon was a gas. Many years later, Whistler told Reno that if he had gotten that question right on the test, then he would have stayed in the Army and been a general. Reno's response? "Then no one would have ever heard of Whistler's mother." Some of Reno's friends say this is the only joke he ever made.

9. Sitting Bull traveled with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show for a few months in 1885. During that time, he nicknamed Annie Oakley "Watanya Cicillia" - "Little Sure Shot". He asked to adopt Annie after seeing her shoot the ace of hearts out of a card at 30 paces.

10. Black Elk, a famous Sioux Medicine Man, said he acquired his first gun at the Battle of the Little Bighorn when he took it from a dead trooper. Black Elk was one of Crazy Horse's cousins and took the name Nicholas Black Elk later in life when he and his family converted to Catholicism.

Special thanks to Mentafloss