The Golf Shot Heard Around the Moon

[Kilroy]

The Golf Shot Heard Around the Moon By Dan Kilbank - OttawaGolf

Alan Shepard has taken thousands of strokes during his Earth-bound career, but he'll long be remembered for two swings taken far from home. Somewhere on Earth, maybe in a remote desert or atop a bleak, desolate, forsaken mountaintop, there may be a place that vaguely resembles it. No vegetation. No wind. No rain. A place without sound. Only whitish-gray, almost colorless soil and rocks, piled and strewn as haphazardly as confetti at a parade, for as far as the eye can see. One BIG daddy bunker. Every so often a meteor will dent its surface, horizontally displacing the fine layer of dust that has settled over the land, but it is essentially as untouched today as it was 27 years ago, when man first visited, and the same way it was a million years ago. On February 6, 1971, Alan B. Shepard Jr. grabbed a 6-iron and launched one of the most famous golf shots in history. Actually it was two shots--the first misfired and traveled only 100 feet. The second connected solidly and stayed up in the air for 30 seconds. 30 seconds? Even on a good day Tiger Woods would be lucky to get seven. But Shepard had a little help from an unlikely source--the near zero gravity of the moon. Back on Earth his shot would have traveled around 35 yards. On the moon where gravity is approximately 1/6th the force it is on Earth, Shepard’s ball flew "miles and miles and miles." Actually it went about 200 yards. But who’s counting? Shepard’s extraterrestrial golf shot is one of the most enduring images of the Apollo space program. In fact, next to Neil Armstrong’s famous "one giant step" from Apollo 11 and the heroic efforts to rescue Apollo 13, it may be the most memorable feat in space. You can download the AVI MOVIE of the event (10 meg file) Shepard, who recently passed away at age 74, once tried--rather unconvincingly--to explain why he brought a custom-made 6-iron to the lunar surface. "I was really searching for a way to indicate to schoolchildren the reduced gravity field and the total lack of atmosphere," he told USA Today during a 1994 book tour. "The classic example of dropping a feather and a lead ball had already been done." Uh-huh. With all due respect to Mr. Shepard, that’s one giant myth for mankind. The real reason, as any space enthusiast or dedicated duffer would tell you, was because it was a cool thing to do. Or to put a spin on Sir Edmund Hillary’s quote about climbing Mt. Everest, he did it because he could. "Then I thought, with the same clubhead speed, the ball's going to go at least six times as far. There's absolutely no drag, so if you do happen to spin it, it won't slice or hook 'cause there's no atmosphere to make it turn." With space a premium on the lunar module hauling a real golf club to the moon wasn’t even considered. Instead Shepard devised a novel solution. When his plan had been thought through, he visited Jack Harden, at that time the head pro at River Oaks Country Club in Houston, a course he knew from his days working at the Johnson Space Center. "I swore him to secrecy," Shepard recalls, "and then I asked him, 'Is there any way we can make a 6-iron fit on the end of this strange-looking handle?' Sure enough, he cut off a 6-iron, put a little fitting on it, and we had it." "I enlisted the secrecy of the fellow who handled the pressure suits," Shepard explained. So, like any obsessed golf nut, he practiced. "At night, after hours, I would go down to the suit room and put on the full suit with the oxygen tanks and the radios and all that stuff, and practice swinging, which I couldn’t do very well," he later told Golf Journal. "But at least I got to the point where I was making some contact. I wanted to be sure I didn't fall down, 'cause I planned to do it in front of the television camera." Convinced he could pull it off in a professional, scientific manner, Shepard sought permission from the one person, Bob Gilruth, director of the manned space center, who could scuttle the idea. "I told him what I wanted to do, and Bob said, 'No, I don't believe we're going to do that. It's far too frivolous.'" In NASA’s inner circles the "right stuff" meant a crew cut and a stoic expression. Space was not the place for games, especially games on the moon. With public enthusiasm waning and the considerable cost of the space program being hotly debated, NASA’s reticence to grant Shepard’s wish was understandable. The previous mission, Apollo 13, had nearly ended in disaster. Armed with photos he had taken from his sessions in the suit room, Shepard stated his case again, this time adding a caveat. "Finally I said, 'How would it be if only a handful of people know? That's all that would have to know. How would it be if we go up on the lunar surface, and if we have any kind of problems -- equipment failures, or we're making mistakes, or the mission's not going well and NASA's embarrassed -- then I won't do it. But if everything's going smoothly and we're at the very last minute, before we take off I want to whack these two golf balls. I won't even get them; I'll leave them up there. And I'm going to pay for the golf balls, I'm going to pay for the clubhead, and there will be no expense to the taxpayer.' And he said, ‘that’s a deal." After a 40-minute delay because of a rainstorm, Apollo 14 left Launch Pad 39A at Cape Kennedy late in the afternoon of Jan. 31, 1971. The mission was not a smooth one. Docking problems and computer glitches almost forced commander Shepard to abort the flight with fellow astronauts Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa. There was also a harrowing descent to the lunar surface after radar controls suddenly went haywire. Throughout it all Shepard, a supremely-confident test pilot, remained calm. Once on the moon, however, the mission went rather well. Shortly after landing, Shepard and Mitchell went on their first excursion of the crater Fra Mauro, spending nearly five hours on the surface, during which time they collected 43 pounds of rock and dust samples and set up a research station. Finally the day arrived. With no public knowledge of his plans, Shepard disembarked the lunar module on the second day of the mission with the head of the 6-iron smuggled into his space suit. After nearly five hours of strenuous hiking, it was time for his long-awaited stunt. "Houston, you might recognize what I have in may hand," Shepard announced to the surprise of NASA officials and a watching world. "In my left hand I have a little white pellet that’s familiar to millions of Americans. I’ll drop it down." Despite his efforts to practice Shepard’s first shot was not a success. "I shanked the first one; it rolled into a crater about 40 yards away." said Shepard. "Got more dirt than ball," he admitted. Edgar Mitchell responded "looked more like a slice to me.""The suit was so clumsy, being pressurized, it was impossible to get two hands comfortably on the handle," he recalled, "and it's impossible to make any kind of a turn. It was kind of a one-handed chili-dip." The second one, however, was one for the ages. I kept my head down. "Beautiful...there it goes!" I hit it flush and it went at least 200 yards. The reason I know that is that I planned to hit it down-sun, against a black sky so I could follow the trajectory of the ball. That happened to be the direction we paced out 200 meters, for our experimental field, and it landed just past that area. Of course I said "Miles and miles and miles!" which was a slight exaggeration. I folded up the club, with the clubhead, put it in my pocket, climbed up the ladder, closed the door and we took off." Until man visits other parts of the solar system, they will remain the only truly out-of-this-world golf shots ever struck. With that, Shepard and Mitchell climbed back onto the LEM to reunite with astronaut Stuart Roosa in the command capsule for the trip back home. On the whole the reaction back on Earth was enthusiasm. The following day the New York Times called it a "stroke of genius" which "provided a moment of emotional contact between astronauts and million here on earth to whom the space program’s scientific and technical contents are largely alien." Several months later Golf Magazine put Shepard on their cover as "Golf’s Man on the Moon" and awarded him their "All-America" trophy. Not bad for a golfer with a 14 handicap. Perhaps the greatest achievement for the part-time duffer was having his makeshift golf club inducted into the Clubs of Champions room at the U.S. Golf Association Museum and Library in Far Hills, N.J, where, according to officials, it is still one of the museum’s top attractions. The balls themselves, were left on the moon. Twenty-five years later, Shepard doesn't think those balls are likely to be in any recognizable condition, not with temperatures fluctuating between 250 degrees above zero and 150 degrees below. "I think they've exploded or melted," he reasoned, "or a combination of the two." But there was controversy in the wake of Shepard’s exploits. To critics of the space program and its $25 billion budget, golfing on the moon was proof that NASA’s missions had dissolved into pure frivolity. And there was a case of fraud in Maryland when a con man tried to sell authentic "moon balls" for $800 a piece despite the fact that Shepard did not retrieve them from the lunar surface. The balls were the subject of another controversy. After the Apollo 14 flight Spalding began selling commemorative "moon balls" bearing the inscription "First Golf Ball on the Moon." Shepard had nothing to do with this publicity stunt. "I wanted it to be without any commercial aspects," he says. "In fact, only one person in the world knows the trade name of the golf balls. That's me. I expect I’ll take that secret with me to the grave," he told anyone who asked. "My wife thinks it's in the will. But it ain't." Years later Shepard’s feats are still remembered with fondness. They almost tend to overshadow the most significant milestone in his career--piloting the Freedom 7 for a 15-minute flight on May 5, 1961 and becoming the first American in space. Although he was one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts Shepard will always be known as the first human being to play golf on the moon. Perhaps we remember Shepard’s golf exploits fondly because he did something truly human in the pursuit of progress. And he did it, as the New York Times put it, "in the true style of a weekend duffer." Few astronauts have connected with audiences in such a genuine way. And who knows? With all those craters and sand traps on the lunar surface it’s easy to imagine some future astronaut will be hoping to drive the next ball that goes "miles and miles and miles." Shepard only took up the game a few years before his Apollo 14 mission, primarily because he had no time to start new hobbies and maintain a career as test pilot, naval officer and honest-to-goodness American hero. "I really didn't develop an interest in golf at a young age," he says. "My dad played a little bit, but he wasn't a regular golfer. I played a little bit, knew the basics of the game, but I guess I never really got serious about it until I got into my 40s." Long after he became the first American in space, a historic flight of 15 minutes and 22 seconds that signaled the entrance of the United States in the space race against the Soviet Union, Shepard found lots of time on his hands. He had been training with Frank Borman for the first mission in the Gemini program (the first two-man spacecraft) when he contracted Meniere's disease, an inner-ear ailment that causes dizziness, nausea and imbalance. For the next six years he worked at an administrative position, but what he yearned to do was fly. That's all he ever wanted to do, ever since he was a little boy and Lindbergh made his solo flight to become his hero overnight. Shepard was taking medication for the ear problem, but it wasn't making enough of an impact. "It never got to the point where NASA was going to let me fly," he said. "So I decided to take a shot at it. It couldn't get any worse." He heard of a surgeon in Houston doing experimental work on Meniere's and other ear problems, so that's where he went. After the trauma of the surgery had worn off, he noticed many of the symptoms were gone; a few months later he improved even more, and a few months after that NASA welcomed Shepard back into its fold of astronauts. Although his interest in the game was self-generated, he's picked up some tips from some of the sport's great names. One of the advantages to spending too much time in Houston, home of the Johnson Space Center, was joining Champions Golf Club. "Jackie was fairly helpful in the early days," Shepard recalls of his association with Jackie Burke, who co-founded Champions with Jimmy Demeret. "It wasn't a regimented type of thing. I'd be out there practicing and Jackie would come along and give me a hint from time to time. I guess that's where the seriousness of it all started. "I think what he tried to tell me was that, as an engineer, I was too regimented, that I should relax and enjoy the game. I remember that, and even sometimes today I get a little uptight about it and try to remember Jackie's words of just relaxing and trying to have fun." Shepard plays a conservative game of golf, perhaps a fitting trade-off for risking his life in space. "It seemed rather bizarre to most people to go into a small nosecone on top of a rocket," he says. "I think all the analyses showed that there was a chance that probably one out of 20 flights would result in fatalities. And we were willing to take that risk, figuring that if it happened to somebody it was going to happen to somebody else and not to you." Only a handful of people can claim to have earned rewards similar to Shepard's. "To stand on the surface, which is lighted from the sun, and look up in the sky, which is totally black, and look up and see a planet, which is four times as large as the moon as we see it from here. . . . "And the colors -- you can see blue tones from the oceans, white reflected from the icecaps. Depending on the weather, you can see the outline of the continents. It's just an incredibly beautiful sight. . . . You want to say to the folks down there politically opposed to each other and militarily opposed to each other, 'Hey, folks, you want to think about taking care of this planet because it is finite.'" Shepard and his wife of 51 years, Louise, have been attracted to the central California coast ever since he was stationed at Mountain View Field, near Palo Alto, early in his naval career. They used to drive down to the Monterey area on weekends, a familiarity that became second nature in later years when he became a semi-regular in the AT&T National Pro-Am. They began to look for a place to live about 10 years ago and finally found a gem: three acres on a wooded tract with a splendid view of the sixth and seventh holes at Pebble Beach and the Pacific beyond. For the most part, Shepard has enjoyed his experiences in the AT&T. But like any mid-teens handicapper, it's easy to get out of your element when you're struggling with your game and thousands of fans are eyeing your every move. "Frankly," Shepard admits, "I would be more comfortable over a 20-foot putt with 20,000 people watching than I would driving off the first tee. It varies with me; sometimes I'm able to shut out the distractions and other times I'm not." Shepard has felt comfortable with his putter for as long as he can remember. And well he should. It's the same sleek and simple putter his father used. Original grip and everything. Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. 1923-1998 Alan Shepard was born on November 18th, 1923, in East Derry, NH Often we are quick with the hero label, giving it to good people who appear in the right place at the right time. But for Astronaut Alan Shepard the title "Hero" is deserved. As the first American in space, Shepard was a herald to America's concerted efforts to put a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s. True, this flight lasted only fifteen minutes, only five of which were spent in space. But Shepard's claim of being the best pilot of the Mercury Seven was validated during Apollo 14 as he commanded the third lunar landing and reinstated America's dominance in space following the unfortunate Apollo 13 ordeal. Still, after a long battle with leukemia Alan Shepard died in his sleep Tuesday, July 21 1998 And if we are too quick to label a hero, then we are quick to define a person by his accomplishments and not by his personality. But in the case of Alan Shepard--a true American hero--the accomplishments are enough: On May 5th, 1961, he became the first American in Space. He flew a 115-mile-long sub-orbital flight over the Atlantic Ocean, which took 15 minutes. This flight was known as Mercury-Redstone 3 Commander of Apollo 14 and the 5th man to walk on the moon Chief of NASA astronaut office 1971-1974 U.S. delegate to 26th United Nations General Assembly Recepient of The Medal of Honor, for space, in 1979 Retired from Navy as a Rear Admiral Founder and President of The Mercury Seven Foundation, a charitable organization granting science scholarships Hit a golf ball over 200 yards with one arm while wearing a pressurized space suit. Considering his place in American history, Shepard has said, "During the actual process of flying spacecraft, or flying the Spirit of St. Louis, one doesn't think of one's self as being a hero or historical figure. One does it because the challenge is there, and one feels reasonably qualified to accomplish it. And it's later on, I suppose, perhaps at the suggestion of other people, that you say, 'Well, yes, maybe.'" Then, he confessed, "I must admit, maybe I am piece of history after all." All photos courtesy NASA.For the official history of Apollo 14 check out NASA's web site