Hole 3 at
my home course is a dogleg right, downhill par 4. It plays 363 from the white tees, but due to the fact that the entire hole is downhill and the fairways are very tight and hard from the drought the past few years I can normally fade my 3W through the dogleg and end up well inside 100 yards for my second shot. That's the way I always play the hole, because every other time I swing I'm fighting the right side anyway, so letting one just go where it wants to is a welcome change, and on that one hole I really look like I know what I'm doing.
Of course on this day I was playing with my buddy who hits everything a mile, and when with him I always have a tendency to overswing trying to keep up. So I do, and my intentional fade turns into more of a wicked slice, and I end up in the woods right, just where the dogleg starts to bend. And there's a creek down there. Had I not been playing TP Blacks that day I would've just left it and dropped, but I'm not throwing away a $4 ball just to keep from climbing a hill. When I found the ball it really wasn't that bad. It was in the muddy creek bed, but it was sitting up at least 3/4 out of the mud, and there was no running water there. No OB markers so you can play from there if you're nuts. I could see that I had a relatively clear line out to the fairway, but it was parallel to the first portion of the fairway and there was a big tree limb about 10 feet off the ground. A sane person would have just popped it out to the fairway and finished with a normal approach, but I decided to go for it.
I said "all I have to do is hit one that barely comes off the ground and goes as far right as it does forward and I'll be on the green," to which he replied "should be easy enough - you do that all the time."
"Hey, thanks man. I'm slapping you when I get out of this creek."
I lined up and went for it. SPLASH! I had no idea where the ball went because I had to close my eyes due to the mud explosion that covered my face and clothes, but I could tell by my buddy's cheer that it was either very good, or very funny.
Once I climbed out of the creek I saw it - about 1 foot on the peanut-shaped green, right in the skinny part of the peanut. It was the most beautiful shot I've ever intentionally made. I went on to 3-putt for bogey, because I'm awesome at missing opportunities.