Michael Feagles had a truly bizarre experience at the LECOM Suncoast Classic when trying to escape a bunker during his first round at the Lakewood National Golf Club.
While most golf fans, and indeed players, are keeping their minds focused on The Masters right now, the Korn Ferry Tour produced an incredible moment on Thursday.
You may like
Feagles, stuck in a bunker on the 12th hole and sitting very close to a lip, attempted to go for the green from out of the sand.
However, after his ball trickled onto the fairway, a second ball dropped into the bunker, seemingly appearing out of nowhere after falling out of the grass on the lip.
Feagles was perplexed by the whole situation, naturally. At the time, he can be heard saying: “What the…? Did that come out of the lip? Another ball just dropped, after I hit mine.”
He inspects the ball in the sand and adds, “That’s not my ball… that’s my ball [pointing to the one on the fairway.] I don’t know where this came from. It came out of the lip… It spooked me. I didn’t know what happened. My ball hit the lip and another ball landed.”
It seems another ball, buried in the lip, was dislodged after Feagles hit his shot and followed through into the rough.
The 12th hole was a strange and costly one for Feagles, who shot a bogey there in the opening round. Upon finishing the hole, he was heard saying to his caddie, “That’s a lot of bad luck on one hole.”
Feagles added a further four birdies, seven pars, two bogeys and a quadruple bogey for his first day. He ultimately went on to miss the cut on the Friday.
What to read next
Funnily enough, this kind of incident has now occurred three times in relatively quick succession…
We saw it at The Open in 2025, with Rory McIlroy smashing his ball out of the rough at Royal Portrush and unearthing a second golf ball. At the time, McIlroy joked, “I have another golf ball.”
After the round, he said: “It was so strange like I thought I was going to get a flier and I looked up and could see my ball spinning in the wind. So, just a really weird [moment]. I had no idea there was another ball close to mine.”
Then, just last month at LIV Golf Singapore, Anthony Kim did the same thing. On his second shot on the ninth hole, Kim hit his ball out of the first cut and a second ball sprang out of the ground.
The commentator at the time even says, “I’ve only ever seen that once before at The Open Championship… that is something you don’t see every day.”