We’ve all wanted to chuck a club after hitting a lousy shot, and many people have given in to temptation and heaved one down the fairway. It feels good, even if you know you shouldn’t have done it as you walk to wherever the club landed and retrieve it.
Rory McIlroy has tossed a couple in his career, including his 3-wood after hitting his tee shot on the ninth hole at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City, New Jersey, during a Monday finish at the Northern Trust. After hitting his tee shot with the TaylorMade SIM2 Max 213 yards, a shot that failed to reach the fairway and left McIlroy still 269 yards to the hole, Rory flung the club into the trees on the right side of the teeing ground.
Typically, there would be fans, volunteers and scores of other people nearby to grab the club, but after the remains of Hurricane Henri soaked Liberty National on Sunday and forced a Monday finish, only a handful of people would have been around McIlroy as the club got chucked.
McIlroy’s tee shot on the ninth hole only went 213 yards. (PGA Tour)
So, for five days, the club’s whereabouts remained a mystery until, as Alan Bastable reports for Golf.com, it was discovered early last Sunday morning by Michael Bongiovanni, a grounds-crew member at Liberty National.
Several people searched the area around the ninth tee in the days after the tournament, looking for the club. According to the club’s general manager, Lee Smith, it was discovered in an area where people had been searching, but the club was likely blown down to a more visible spot from a higher branch in the trees by a storm on Saturday evening.
TaylorMade SIM2 Max 3-wood (David Dusek/Golfweek)
Smith and his fellow Liberty National staffers are working on finding a spot where the 15-degree SIM2 Max fitted with a Mitsubishi Tensei CK 80 TX shaft and a Golf Pride New Decade Multicompound grip can be displayed.
“We’re going to do everything we can to keep it out of a case while also securing it,” Smith said. “We’d like people to be able to touch and feel it, because it really has taken on a life of its own.”