What do you think of this fact?
Most people play golf on green grass. Alan Shepard picked gray moon dust. In February 1971, during the Apollo 14 mission, the astronaut hit two golf balls on the Moon. That makes golf one of the very few sports ever played on another world.
A club in a spacesuit
Shepard wasn’t just anyone. He was the first American in space and the commander of Apollo 14. He was also a golf fan.
Obviously, he couldn’t just pack a regular golf club. So he built one: he took the head of a Wilson six-iron and attached it to the handle of a tool that was actually meant for collecting lunar samples. According to the National Air and Space Museum, that let him carry the club head in a pocket of his spacesuit.
“Miles and miles”
On the Moon, Shepard was pretty pleased with himself. About his second shot, he said the ball went “miles and miles and miles”. His own estimate was about 200 yards.
The truth only came out decades later. Image specialist Andy Saunders analyzed old photos and video from the mission and compared them with satellite images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The result, according to Astronomy magazine: the second ball flew about 40 yards, roughly 37 meters.
To be fair: in a stiff spacesuit, with a tool handle for a shaft, every swing is a small miracle.
After he got back, Shepard gave the real club head to the museum of the US golf association, the USGA, in New Jersey. He gave a replica to the Smithsonian in 1975.
Golf without air resistance
In theory, the Moon is paradise for long shots: there’s no air to slow the ball down, and gravity is only one sixth of Earth’s. But that doesn’t help much if you can barely turn in a spacesuit.
Both balls are still up there. It might be the most remote golf course in existence, and nobody has ever sunk a putt on it.