Here's Why You Should Never Take a Practice Swing Directly Behind the Golf Ball

Sometimes even the best golfers in the world - pro golfers, tour golfers - do boneheaded things on the golf course. Such as taking a practice swing directly behind the golf ball. When you do that, and you accidentally chunk a divot on that practice swing, bad things can happen. Very bad things. Such as that divot flying forward and hitting the ball.

But it's happened at the highest levels of golf. In fact, in 2013 it happened on the PGA Tour and the Web.com tour on back-to-back days!

On Sept. 14, 2013, Justin Rose's practice swing divot struck his golf ball during the BMW Championship:

And on Sept. 15, 2013, during the Web.com Tour's Nationwide Children's Hospital Championship, Hudson Swafford did the same thing - hit his golf ball with a practice swing divot:

Dumbasses! (C'mon, you know you wanted to say it, because now you don't feel so bad about the dumb things you've done on the course.)

What's the penalty? One stroke (Rule 18-2). And you have to put the ball back where it was to start with.

I love the expressions and the body language after it happened (Swafford's caddie doesn't even want to look at him):

You know what they're thinking: I can't believe I just f'ing did that. We can't either, fellas, we can't either.

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