College Golfer Suffers Freak Injury, Has Foot Pierced by Golf Tee Mid-Tournament

NY Post - The biggest hazard for one collegiate golfer was in the tee box.

A freak accident forced a college golfer to withdraw from this year’s NCAA Men’s Golf Championship when a tee nearly went through his foot.

University of Oregon junior Gregory Solhaug was walking around the 11th-hole tee box at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona, when he stepped on the wooden tee Saturday, Golfweek reported.

The tee reportedly went through his shoe and pierced his foot.

“Oregon student-athlete, Gregory Solhaug, suffered a foot injury during the second round of the NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championships and was forced to withdraw from competition,” Rick Nixon, the NCAA’s associate director for media coordination, told the publication.

Witnesses confirmed to the Golf Channel that the tee impaled Solhaug’s foot on the 11th hole.

A photo posted on Twitter by Golfweek reporter Cameron Jourdan showed Solhaug on crutches with his left foot bandaged up.

Jourdan said in the tweet Solhaug would be able to walk again in a two weeks.

First things first, when talking about any sports injury, it's important to address how tough hockey players are. I was a hockey player back in my day. One time my right arm was chopped clean off at the shoulder by a skate blade. But instead of going to the locker room like a bitch, I drank some water, hit some smelling salts, and regenerated a new arm in time for my next shift.

Now that we got that out of the way, this is a tough break Greg. The toughest of breaks. I mean, could you even step on a tee and pierce your foot through a golf shoe if you tried. I feel like I could step on 1000 tees in a row and would not once catch it at an angle so perfect that it pierced my foot bad enough to end up in crutches. 

Do you know how hard it is to injure yourself on a golf course? Sure, Tiger Woods makes a round of golf look like going 12 rounds with Mike Tyson, but that's more due to cosplaying as a Marine for 10 years, and driving his car off a series of cliffs (I know that was only once but for some reason it seems like it's happened 5 times).

I did a little Googling to try and find additional on-course golf injuries, and there's not a lot. John Daly once broke his ribs from stopping mid-swing. Robert Garrigus once injured his shoulder from fist pumping too hard. But the weirdest by far (I had to double check because I didn't think it was real). A golfer named Thomas Levet suffered 2 separate on-course freak accident injuries. First, he broke his leg celebrating a victory at the prestigious French Open, by jumping into a body of water that was clearly not as deep as he was expecting.

Whatever, just a freak accident, that could happen to anybody. But then just a year or so later, Levet fell down a staircase leading up to a tee box in the middle of the Volvo Champions golf tournament and broke his ribs. Get a hold of your self Mr. Levet. The man is a liability to himself every time he leaves the house. His bones are clearly made of glass.

The other weird ones all happen off the course. Like Dustin Johnson "falling down a flight of stairs", Graeme McDowell slammed his fingers in a door while sleep walking. Brandt Snedeker and Jesper Parnavik both separately injured themselves falling off Segways. Shit happens. It's a dangerous world. Next time you go golfing, watch out for tees I guess. There's apparently a non-zero percent chance of one piercing through your foot.

One more fun thing about this story. The tee debacle wasn't the only injury Greg Solhaug was involved in that day.   

Stepping on the tee wasn’t the only freak accident to involve Solhaug on Saturday.

One of the golfer’s shots when awry on an earlier hole and hit the mother of University of Texas senior Brian Stark. Erin Stark needed a splint after the shot fractured her finger, according to the Golf Channel.

Be careful out there out there golf people.