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Golfer with umbrella walking in rain
Many people are willing to brave the rain to get in a round of golf, but you don’t want to get stuck on a course when a thunderstorm rolls through the area. One golfer ended up in that situation while playing in Cincinnati last week, and he was lucky to walk away alive after filming the moment he was struck by lightning.
There is no evidence that suggests golfers make up a disproportionate number of lightning strike victims (fishing is statistically the top offender when it comes to fatalities). With that said, there are some elevated risks that come with playing an outdoor game that revolves around wielding long metal clubs on courses that tend to boast plenty of trees and pins that are prime targets for those bolts.
In 1975, Lee Trevino was struck by lightning while competing at the Western Open and issued some cheeky advice after surviving the ordeal, quipping, “If you are caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron. Not even God can hit a 1-iron.”
I hope I don’t have to stress that you should not, in fact, do that if you ever end up in that situation, and you’ll also want to avoid making the mistake one man in Ohio recently fell victim to.
A golfer was lucky to survive a lightning strike he captured on camera on a course in Cincinnati
Most golf courses keep tabs on the weather and won’t let people tee off if there are severe storms in the forecast.
With that said, they also like making money, so patrons will typically be permitted to try their luck while keeping an ear out for the siren (or an eye out for messages on fancy carts) that is commonly used to summon them back to the clubhouse when a thunderstorm rolls in.
If you do get stuck in a storm, you don’t want to go the route that a man named Chris Schiavone opted for when he and his buddies found themselves swamped by a downpour at a course in the Cincinnati area last Friday.
While he should have made a beeline for the clubhouse while avoiding any trees on the way back, he instead opted to park directly underneath one, and he was filming his friends attempting to take shelter in the fairway when he captured the lightning bolt that appeared to strike his cart.
According to meteorologist Matt Devitt, Schiavone suffered burns on his arm but was treated for non-life-threatening injuries at the hospital before being discharged. He acknowledged he was “unbelievably lucky,” and that might be an understatement based on the video.