Blooper Reel: Staff shanks, tops and errant shots from 2019

You’ve likely been bombarded with “best of” lists as we count down the end of 2019 and the 2010s. While those are all well and good, I wanted to take a different approach. To the dismay of some of my co-workers, let’s take a look back at the best shanks, tops, errant shots and other bloopers from the GOLF staff in 2019.

Senior scribe Alan Shipnuck was lucky enough to tee it up with legendary broadcaster Jim Nantz this year. Unfortunately, he folded under the pressure when Nantz graced one of his tee shots with a call. If you ever hear Nantz mutter “oh dear” after a shot, you know the result isn’t good …

Dylan Dethier is the low-handicapper around the GOLF office. It’s a rarity to witness anything too embarrassing from the former Canadian mini-tour pro on the course. Unfortunately for Dylan, phones were out as he worked out some swing kinks in True Spec Golf.

Henrik Stenson is an artist with a 3-wood in his hands, Sean Zak is not. Kudos to Zak for having the guts to go for the hero shot. Though the hero shot ended up coming from whoever recorded this. Oh yeah, that was me …

Speaking of myself, it wouldn’t be fair to put my co-workers’ lowlights on blast without putting my worst shot out there for the world to see. I was in the midst of a decent round when I found a tricky uphill lie. I couldn’t get myself to fully commit to a swing and voila, I ended up hitting the ugliest shot of my ’19 season. Little did I know Josh Berhow was close by with his phone out. 

As GOLF’s social lead, I’m used to being the one recording others unbeknownst to them. We’ll call this moment karma.

 As for Berhow, he found trouble of his own off the fairway. There’s something about watching someone other than yourself hit a ball off a tree that’s oddly satisfying. My only wish is that Berhow’s ball hit more than one tree. You know, as payback for recording my worst swing of the year. 

Christian Hafer is one of the best golf photographers around. His photos truly speak a thousand words. I only need two to summarize this shot from Hafer, though: Not good.

Managing Instruction Editor Luke Kerr-Dineen spends every waking moment analyzing the golf swing. He obsesses over tweaks in his swing and you’d be hard-pressed to walk by him in the office when he’s not tinkering with some sort of training aid. All of that wasn’t enough to help Luke get out of this bunker. Forget the training aids, Luke needed a Snickers bar at this moment because he was going to be in that trap for a while. 

Rachel Bleier is the other half of GOLF’s social team. Something tells me Rachel’s 2020 resolution is to share enough blooper shots from other golfers to make everyone forget they ever saw this one. 

(I won’t.)

Hitting a perfect drive and still finding trouble might be a worse feeling than a mishit. You’re feeling good about yourself and then bam, your ball smacks into the one possible obstacle standing in your way of the fairway. Fortunately for Jessica Marksbury, she was able to laugh it off. Let’s just say I would’ve had a few choice words had this happened to me. 

Esley Tate is one of our video producers on staff. The more I watch his near whiff the most I realize we have to get a club in his hands almost as much as a camera in 2020. 

Joe Summa spends his days supporting the sales and marketing department at GOLF. What he needs to do in 2020 is to start supporting his wedge game. That thing might need a Bethpage Black-like warning sign on it if he keeps this up. 

Emily Haas’ personality is more on the mellow side. When she utters “uh-oh” after a shot, that’s the equivalent to something we’d need to slap a parental advisory warning on for most of us. 

Video producer Rory Fugazy spent a lot of his year recording some of the best swings in the world. “We’ll take that out in post” is something he has the luxury of saying at most shoots. 

This is not one of them. 

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