“Bees!
“Bees!
“Bees!
“Bees!
“Bees!
“Bees!
“Bees!”
And that began one of the wildest, oddest and spookiest moments you may ever see on a golf course. Though, if you were tuning in to the Mexico Open at just the right moment during Thursday’s first round, it all also kind of looked … funny.
“Turned on the Mexico Open and this is the first thing I saw…..” tweeted former player-turned-analyst Trevor Immelman. He included a picture of two players, two caddies and a cameraman on the turf. And a laughing emoji.
Indeed. To begin, Erik van Rooyen, Francesco Molinari and Chez Reavie were all playing the par-4 10th at Vidanta Vallarta golf course. Molinari and Reavie had hit their approaches. Van Rooyen was about to. He was standing behind his ball.
And then he crouched down.
He waddled to his right, toward his caddie, Alex Gaugert.
Van Rooyen got down on all fours.
He cried, “Bees!” Seven or so times.
A cameraman — and his camera — collapsed. So did an official.
Reavie squatted, and his caddie, Brady Stockton, went to the ground. Molinari and caddie Pello Iguaran did the same.
A pack of bees were playing through.
“Oh my goodness,” on-course analyst Billy Ray Brown said on the broadcast. “Guys, I’m lucky — I’m about 150 yards away but …”
“That’s the most unusual thing I’ve ever seen on the golf course — everybody just hit the deck,” analyst John Cook said. “It’s like a fog of bees that just blew through. Now where are they going?”
Had van Rooyen ever seen anything like that?
“One time,” he said after the round. “I can’t recall where exactly, but it was on a golf course in South Africa and something like I’m over the ball and then you hear like a ‘zzzzz,’ which is the sound that bees make. I look up and they’re there and the same thing happened.
“I was over the ball with a 4-iron, look back and I just saw them here and I just told my caddie, I’m like, ‘Bees, bees, bees,’ and he looks at me like I’m crazy. So I dropped down, then he sees them, he dropped down. Frankie and Chez, they look at me like I’m nuts and then they realized, like 30 seconds later, the bees just went right at them. It’s funny, but certainly don’t want to get stung by those bad boys.”
This is true. For about a half-minute, players, caddies and cameraman stayed on the ground. They started to laugh. Eventually, they got up, and van Rooyen went back into his pre-shot routine. Afterward, he called the reset simple. He eventually hit just to the right of the green, pitched on, one-putted for a par and finished with a seven-under 64 that put him a stroke behind leader Austin Smotherman.
“I’ve been out doing this, on this Tour, for 30-plus years, and I’ve never seen anything like that, anywhere,” Brown said on the broadcast.
We’ll end things here with the rules.
If you’re wondering, van Rooyen could have gotten relief, under Rule 16.2. It partially reads:
“A ‘dangerous animal condition’ exists when a dangerous animal (such as poisonous snakes, stinging bees, alligators, fire ants or bears) near a ball could cause serious physical injury to the player if he or she had to play the ball as it lies. A player may take relief under Rule 16.2b from interference by a dangerous animal condition no matter where his or her ball is on the course, except that relief is not allowed:
“When playing the ball as it lies is clearly unreasonable because of something other than the dangerous animal condition (for example, when a player is unable to make a stroke because of where the ball lies in a bush), or When interference exists only because the player chooses a club, type of stance or swing or direction of play that is clearly unreasonable under the circumstances.”
