Every year I get a group of friends together to go to the best public course in northern Illinois, Thunderhawk Golf Club. Generally my birthday falls on Labor Day or the adjoining weekend however this year it fell on a Tuesday. We were able to get a tee time on Labor Day itself and I had been practicing daily during the week before in order to play a great round of golf. I started off with two bogeys which I wasn't thrilled with but there was promise as I was stroking the ball well. Stepping up to the third hold there was a little bit of a wait as the second set of tees were sitting at 194 yards with a little wind behind us and a prairie that separated the tee box from the green. There is very little room for error...

I chose my five iron hybrid as I was hitting it better than the 5 iron blade I had in my bag. I struck the ball well and saw it bounce on the green but due to the distance and the prairie grass in between our group and green we all figured it stuck the green well. There were two shelves to this green and the hole was at the far right on the bottom shelf. When we walked up to the green I didn't see my ball anywhere and was fairly upset about it. I did see a divot around where I assumed my ball landed and it was pointing in the direction of the hole but I didn't even consider looking in that direction. The entire group is dumbfounded and I was about to drop the ball and reluctantly take a penalty stroke. At that time a friend was walking to the flag to pull it at which time he asked me what ball I was playing. I responded with a Titleist NXT 1. He had a shocked look on his face but immediately bent over and pulled the ball out of the hole. We all went NUTS!