Score a hole-in-one for the golf course.
An Illinois man escaped serious injury when the ground beneath him at Annbriar Golf Course near Waterloo opened and swallowed him on March 8, plunging him to the bottom of a sinkhole some 15 feet below.
Mark Mihal told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he was sizing up his third shot on the par-5 14th when the ground beneath him gave way."It didn't look unstable," Mihal told the newspaper. "And then I was gone. I was just freefalling. It felt like forever, but it was just a second or two, and I didn't know what I was going to hit. And all I saw was darkness."
The 43-year-old Mihal, who is a mortgage broker, avid golfer and founder of the golf blog site golfmanna.com, suffered minor injuries including a dislocated shoulder from the fall. Friends and course personnel lowered a ladder and some rope into the hole, but Mihal, thanks to his bum shoulder, was unable to climb out of the bell-shaped pit that measured about 15 feet deep and 10 feet across its base. Ed Magaletta, a member of his playing group climbed into the hole and tied a rope around Mihal so other members of the foursome along with club manager Russ Nobbe could pull him out. Initial reports say the pit was 18 feet deep, but Annbriar superintendent John Soetaert said members of his crew have since dug out the hole for safety reasons using a backhoe that can reach down 16 feet.
"That's as far as we can go, so I know it's not any deeper than that," Soetaert said.
Because of the fragile limestone bedrock in the area, sinkholes are common around the St. Louis area of western Missouri and eastern Illinois, and Soetaert says there are several other sinkholes on the property. Mihal's mishap was the first time any of Annbriar's sinkholes have given way, Soetaert said.
"This is uncharted territory for us," Soetaert said. "This is the second-worst location on the golf course for one of these - the middle of a landing area on a par 5. The only thing that would have been worse would have been a putting green.
"We have several sinkholes on the property, and you can see all kinds of them from the roads on farms. What is uncommon is for someone to collapse one just by walking on it."
So uncommon that Mihal is believed to be the first person to fall through a sinkhole in Illinois. The incident has gained nationwide acclaim on the Internet as well as network and cable news programs. Curious onlookers and members of the media have swarmed to Annbriar since the incident occurred, and that has been a cause of concern for Soetaert. Immediately after the incident, Soetaert and his crew erected snow fencing around the hole, but that didn't last long. Curious onlookers trampled the snow fence after a couple of days, prompting Soetaert to order the hole completely dug out with a backhoe so no one else fell through it. Now, he's left with a 15- to 16-foot-deep depression and searching for ways to repair it.
Annbriar is working with retired geologist Philip Moss to develop a plan of action as well as a list of materials needed to fill the hole so that it is as safe as possible.
"Normally, you'd go down to the bedrock," Soetaert said. "We can't go that deep."
The incident could have been much worse. Soetaert said a member of his staff drove a fully laden spray rig over the same area just two weeks ago without incident.
"You could still see the tire tracks over the hole," he said. "We didn't notice anything then. If we had, we would've investigated it.
"We were lucky, somebody could've been killed just as easily."