43-year Golfer Mark Mihal, finds himself in sinkhole!

Suddenly being gobbled up by the earth on a golf course was a near death experience and it put a bit of dampener between Mark Mihal and a stellar round of golf.

The 43-year-old mortgage broker was thanking his stars last Tuesday while nursing a dislocated shoulder sustained four days earlier when he fell into an 18-foot deep sinkhole on the 14th hole of the Annbriar Golf Club near Waterloo, just southeast of St. Louis, United States.

Friends managed to pull Mihal to safety with a rope after 20 minutes. But the experience gave him quite a scare.

Mihal told the Associated Press before heading off to learn if he’ll need surgery: “I feel lucky just to come out of it with a shoulder injury, falling that far and not knowing what I was going to hit, it was absolutely crazy.”

Mihal further added it was a real disappointment on what had been an excellent outing, “It was the first day to get to play in a long time, so I wasn’t expecting too much”, he said.

Golfing with friends, Mihal was waiting to hit his third shot, some 100 yards from the flag on the par 5, when he noticed a bathtub-looking indentation about knee deep just behind him on the fairway.

Mihal suggested about how awkward it would be to hit out of there, and then walked over to give it a closer look and took one step onto it before it was too late.