When it comes to golf travel stories, it’s hard to top Alan Shepard’s experience, even after 41 years. You could say the astronaut’s adventure was out of this world. Literally.
In 1971, Shepard became the first being in the universe — as far as we know — to hit golf balls on the moon.
Shepard took his space swings after completing a moonwalk during Apollo 14′s lunar mission.
NASA even took a video of Shepard’s short golf game, which he played some 238,857 miles away from the nearest course.
“Houston … you might recognize what I have in my hand as the handle for the contingency sample return; it just so happens to have a genuine six iron on the bottom of it,” Shepard said in a moon-to-Earth transmission.
“In my left hand, I have a little white pellet that’s familiar to millions of Americans. I’ll drop it down. Unfortunately, the suit is so stiff, I can’t do this with two hands, but I’m going to try a little sand-trap shot here.”
Shepard hit a bunch of soil with the ball on his first moon shot. The ball traveled all of 2-3 feet on his second try. His third stroke sent the orb out of the camera’s view.
The astronaut saved his best for the second ball, which he claimed to have soared “miles and miles and miles” through the moon’s atmosphere.
NASA photo taken from Apollo 14 in 1971, showing a golf ball hit by Alan Shepard and a javelin on the moon's surface.
In 1991, Shepard shed more light on his extraterrestrial golf story.
“The deal I made with the boss was that if things were messed up on the surface, I wouldn’t play with it, because we would be accused of being too frivolous,” he said in an interview.
“But, if things had gone well, which they did, then the last thing I was going to do, before climbing up the ladder to come home, was to whack these two golf balls, which I did, and I folded up the collapsible golf club and brought it back with me. The balls are still up there.”
Here’s betting they still are. That is, unless E.T. retrieved them from the moon trap on his way home.