The Ole Miss golf team got the wrong kind of birdie in the final round of its NCAA Regional contest in Palo Alto, California, when one of the team’s fairway hits struck a bird in midair.
According to SB Nation, the Ole Miss team was doing well on the links until that last day when things fell apart. Most particularly, Sarut Vongchaisit lost two strokes to unfortunate circumstances, including the bird strike.
“He teed off, and the ball hit the fairway but rolled off and into the first cut of fescue grass. When he got to where his ball should have been, he could not find it. No one could find it. So, a one-stroke penalty. Hitting three,” SBNation wrote.
Getting that penalty was bad enough, but then it got surreal: “With his next shot, he hit a bird.”
“Not a birdie, but an actual f**king bird,” SBNation continued. “In the air.”
The ball careened off said bird and into the out of bounds area. Another one-stroke penalty, now hitting five. Thankfully, nothing else befell poor Sarut the rest of the hole. The earth didn’t open and swallow him up after his 5th shot, he didn’t spontaneously combust after stroke six. A swarm of bees didn’t engulf him on shot seven. A lion did not run out of the trees and maim him on stroke eight, and no service processor handed him a summons as he putted out. But none of that would have been surprising after the bird incident.
Because of that calamity, Vongchaisit’s ruffled feathers and his +9 caused him to go from tied for second individually to a 21st-place finish which drove the team’s score to a one-stroke loss to LSU.
The NCAA Championships flew away from the Ole Miss Rebels as a result.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.