The Sea Was Angry That Day....

Oh, what a happy story this is!

Golfer in my area spots a stranded whale - yes, whale! - beached near the 6th tee box at Lighthouse Sounds GC, in Ocean City, MD. (Fantastic course. Fantastic!)

Golfer jumps into water to save it!

Golfer returns to tee box, and rips drive down the middle!

Here's the details...

The church group was playing at Lighthouse Sound Golf Course in Maryland, when one of the golfers took a brief break - to save a whale.

Cooper related tale via email: “I was looking back over the water enjoying the view from the sixth tee box when I saw what I thought was the fin of a surf board turned upside down below the rocks. I walked back and saw that it was, in fact, what we now know is a Gervais Beaked Whale that was stuck on a sand bar.

“I reached for my phone to call 9-1-1 and, before I knew it, my friend Jeff Gibson was in the water (fully clothed, with golf shoes on) trying to push the whale off of the beach. Jeff literally had his arms wrapped around the whale’s waist pushing it off of the sand bar for 10 minutes.

“After 10 minutes of pushing him/ her, Jeff freed it and it swam away. There were three other fins in the water circling, seemingly waiting for their friend (you can’t make this stuff up).

“Jeff climbed out of the water to wild applause, stepped to the tee and ripped a 280-yard drive in soaking wet clothes and shoes. Without question the best golf story of my life (and I have had plenty).”

Wow! Imagine the Seinfeldian parallels to the George Saves The Whale Episode! Thanks to Kramer whacking Titleists into the ocean from the beach, one gets stuck in the whale's blowhole. George steps in to impress his girlfriend, to whom he lied about being a marine biologist.



Only here's one small problem. The whale in this fantastic golf story, died.

“When we got up close and saw the whale, we were absolutely mystified because none of us knew what it was. I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and I’d never seen an animal like that,” said Dave Quilter, a local charter boat captain and lead diver for the National Aquarium Marine Animal wet/dry rescue team. “We had our book of all different types of whales and aquatic creatures with us, and it wasn’t in our books, so we knew we had something special on our hands.”

When rescuers finally freed the whale from the sandbar around 5:30 p.m., the whale then swam up a canal heading towards a residential neighborhood before getting stuck underneath a dock, and was visibly injured and was displaying what scientists confirmed to be “unusual and erratic behavior.

City Manager Dennis Dare, who had been called to the scene, said that seeing the whale on the sandbar was one of the most unusual things he’s ever seen.

“It had beached itself and since it was in the sun for so long, its black skin was peeling off of its body like paint off a fire truck,” said Dare. “We were all out there trying to save this thing; we all had whale blood all over us.”

The funny thing is, whomever saw this act of incredible selflessness, had a really good camera on him. Which makes me wonder just a bit. I am also skeptical about a 280 drive down the middle. Could it have been 230 and in the right side of the fairway?

Now the question is this: does a beached shark deserve the same heroism? Or would you make wallets and boots out of it?