Amateur Golfer Swallowed by 18-Foot Sinkhole in Waterloo, Illinois (Video)

This story is going to sound like some ridiculous scenario out of Caddy Shack, but I assure you it is 100% real.

I know, because I read it on the internet.

Last Friday at the Annbriar Golf Course in Waterloo, Illinois, just southeast of St. Louis, a 43-year-old amateur golfer from Missouri was swallowed by an 18-foot sinkhole. One second the guy was walking along the fairway of the 14th hole, and the next he was underground inside a muddy, bell-shaped cavern roughly 10 feet wide.

And you think you’ve had some bad days on the course.

The unlucky man was 43-year-old Mark Mihal, a mortgage broker from Creve Coeur, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Mihal is an avid golfer who has played Annbriar about several dozen times over the last decade, and who owns a golf website called golfmanna.com.

Mihal was lucky he didn’t suffer the fate of 36-year-old Florida resident Jeffrey Bush, who died last month when a sinkhole opened up beneath his bedroom.

“That certainly went through my mind when I was down there,” Mihal told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “It looked like it was more room to go down [in the hole]. I wasn’t too happy to be in there.”

Though he dislocated his shoulder, Mihal’s friends and the course staff were able to rescue him in about 20 minutes. So at least there’s a happy ending. But seriously, try not to think about this the next time you head out to play 18 holes.

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Hat Tip – [ STLtoday.com