Golfers look into the sinkhole that swallowed up Mark Mihal on a recent outing in Illinois. (Photo courtesy golfmanna.com)
You don't normally expect to see divots that big on a golf course.
Golfer Mark Mihal, the co-founder of golfmanna.com, a website dedicated to the sport, was swallowed up by a sinkhole on an Illinois course, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch report.
On Friday, a sinkhole opened up beneath Mihal on the 14th hole fairway at Annbriar Golf Course, and he fell 18 feet. The 43-year-old was eventually lifted to safety with a rope.
“I felt the ground start to collapse and it happened so fast that I couldn’t do anything,” Mihal said on the Golfmanna website. “I reached for the ground as I was going down and it gave way, too. It seemed like I was falling for a long time. The real scary part was I didn’t know when I would hit bottom and what I would land on.”
Mihal suffered a dislocated shoulder after falling into the pit, which he said was about 10-feet wide at the bottom.
One of his playing partners, Ed Magaletta, volunteered to go into the sinkhole and helped get Mihal out.
