Golf is a game that unites people of all kind and makes them learn valuable lessons about their life and themselves. Unlike soccer, Golf cannot claim that millions of kids are chasing the ball around the world and using everything from a street to the hallway in order to play a game, but Golf can claim something that no other game can claim about being played in the weirdest of places. While most of the people think that Golf is only played on the wide and green Golf fields, little is known about playing Golf in rocky, grayish field, full of sandtraps, on the moon. Yes, you read that right – Golf was played on the moon.

Most of the NASA’s astronauts came from Ohio but even more of them had a great love for golf. While Neil Armstrong is a golf lover who regularly played golf on earth, he was unable to play it on the moon, but in 1971, Alan Shepard became the first American to play golf on the moon. Shepard spent 9 hours moonwalking – more than enough time to hit a few golf balls. Although the news report at that time claimed that Sheppard smuggled the balls and that the whole event was kind of a spontaneous, that is not true. Sheppard carefully planned the shots and whole idea had to pass a committee which rejected it first time calling it far too frivolous. After NASA permitted him, he brought 3 golf balls and a club that was made from the handle that was designed and used to lift rocks from the moon’s surface. After that, Sheppard went to Jack Harden, a golf pro, to replace the scoop on the end of a handle, with a 6-iron club head. In one of the previous articles I mentioned when is 6-iron club used.

Shepard, knowing that practice makes perfect, practiced his swings for a long time before the launch, while wearing a fully pressurized space suit.

During the lunar mission, Sheppard came in front of the live television camera and revealed his golf equipment and announced that he will try a little sand trap shot. He couldn’t swing properly because of his suit, so he swinged one-handed and his first effort was a miss-hit. Even though he tried to hold his head down on the first swing, he didn’t and he hit a shank. In one of the previous articles I mentioned what does a shank mean and why does it happen. A bonus points to everyone who read it and still remembers.

On his second shot he fixed the surface after the first shot, a bit against the golf rules but we will forgive him since it was million miles away, and he made solid contact and send the ball away. He claimed the ball traveled miles and miles and miles but that might be a little overrated.

To this day mathematicians are not sure about how far the ball actually went, but we can assume that a speed off the club of 12000 f.p.s, which is average, and an elevation of 40 degrees, which is usual for a 6 iron, makes up for a distance of 900 yards. Of course, this is for an average golfer. Shepard was one handed and restricted by a spacesuit, so he probably managed about 300 yards.

To this day, Shepard is one of the 2 people who played golf on the moon. The second person is a Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, who in 2006, hit the drive from a spring-like tee outside the International Space Station. (ISS) It was a marketing event, fueled by the Element 21 Golf Company, which paid undisclosed amount of money for the promotion of its new Golf club.

Tyurin, just like Shepard, had problem with the surface, so he adjusted it, and just like Shepard didn’t have a proper shot - ball sliced to the right. I mentioned slicing in one of the previous articles, more bonus points for everyone who remembers something about it.