Rogue Tee Shot Takes Out Golfer's Ball Mid-Swing at the US Open

The weird continues to get weirder this week at the U.S. Open, as there appears to be no end to the strangeness at Pennsylvania’s Merion Golf Club. 

The latest incident went down as Swedish pro Carl Pettersson was lining up a shot at the fifth hole Friday morning. A rogue tee shot skipped into his ball, as Cork Gaines of Business Insider notes (video via The Big Lead).

The view on television made it look like some kind of prank, with the ball dribbling into the frame right as Pettersson went into his backswing, knocking into his ball and sending it down the slope of the course.

.Gif via Guyism

Real funny, guys. Carl here had just lined up his perfect shot, and you pull this kind of stuff? As it turned out, the incident wasn’t someone pulling a prank but rather someone pulling a drive—hard. 

The culprit was Brandon Crick—a Nebraska man playing in his first U.S. Open tournament—who had botched a drive from the second hole. 

The rules stated that Crick would have to play his ball from the spot where it landed and that Pettersson could move his ball back to its original lie without penalty. 

So no one—perhaps besides Crick—came out of this one worse for the wear. It’s not something you see very often (if ever) during pro tournaments. Then again, you also don’t see a lot of wicker baskets guarding the hole like they did against Lee Westwood on Thursday. 

That was a downer for Westwood, who pretended to love it on Twitter.

"

So much tradition at merion to talk about......like those delightful wicker baskets !

— Lee Westwood (@WestwoodLee) June 14, 2013"

So between the rain, unreadable greens and strange occurrences of chance, frustration abounds at Merion this week.

In other words, things are going swimmingly and as God intended.