Mark O'Meara - "Did You Pick Up My Ball?" SHORT TRACK

Intro Music 0:07

Straight down the middle. It went straight down the middle. Then it started to hook.

Mike Gonzalez 0:15

Did you have a close call in the third round on a nearly a lost ball that was found in the last uh minute?

Mark O'Meara 0:22

Oh yeah, the sixth hole. The sixth hole, which is a long, long par four, very tough hole. It was in the wind. It was tough conditions all week long. They stopped play a couple different times because the wind was so bad and rain and sideways. Anyways, I'd hit a good drive and I'm in the fairway and it was like 235 to the front. And I thought for some reason, you know, I if I hit a three, what it's gonna get up in the air, and I got a pretty good lie, you know, it's tight, but I don't mind hitting driver off the deck, you know. And and I thought, oh, I'm gonna go ahead and hit a driver. And you want to make sure you kind of hold the face open a little bit with a driver when you're hitting off the deck. And of course I cut it way to the right on the hillside into the the gallery up there, and the grass was super high, and we got up there and we're hunting for the ball. And I'm thinking, I don't know if I want to find this. This is pretty bad. This was on Saturday, as you pointed out, Mike. Um, and so I kind of waited for like three minutes. We were looking at it, you know, the back then it was five minutes, and so I thought, you know, it's it was slow that day, and the people were stacking up. I thought, you know, I don't maybe I should, you know, Jerry, you keep looking, I'll kind of start heading back or whatever. Um and then one of the people in the gallery said to my caddy, hey, that guy over there picked your player's ball up and he's got it in his pocket. And so Jerry, my caddy, my caddy Jerry's like, Hey, do you have my player's ball in your pocket? And the guy's like, No, no, no, and the other guy's like, No, no, he he's got it in his pocket. So Jerry's like, hey, let's see it. Come on, man, empty your pocket, grab your let's see what you got in your coat there. And sure enough, he picked my ball up and it was in his pocket. Oh my. So now I'm kind of almost all the way back, and then there's this ruling and the RNA, and they've got a rules committee together, and it's like, you know, what do we do? And I told the RNA, I'm like, listen, I'm happy to do whatever you all want to do. I mean, I you know, I don't want to cause any problems. If you tell me I gotta, you know, play from back here and take the penalty, I'm fine with that. Or if you let me go up there, that's fine too, whatever. And so they were under the you know the pretense back then, look, you know, it hasn't been five minutes, and you know, the guy had picked Mark's ball up, and that's not right. So they let me come back, which was beneficial to be honest. They should have. Yeah, well, it was it was it was nice, Bruce, to be honest, because now everybody's trampled down all the grass looking for the ball. Yeah, so I got to drop it a couple times and went closer to the hole, and then I got to place it. Yeah, and I ended up walking away with a bogey instead of a triple bogey. Yeah, which was, yeah, you're right. Those are the lucky things that happened when you look back that could determine the outcome in a tournament.

Mike Gonzalez 2:54

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Intro Music 3:15

Whack down the fairway. It went smack down the fairway. When it started it's like just smacked off line. It had it for two, but it found off nine. Back at it, as long as you're still in the state, you're okay. It went down the middle, quite away.