Akshay Bhatia's round was upended in bizarre fashion on Friday at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. PGA Tour | Twitter Akshay Bhatia’s tee shot on the par-5 17th hole at the Rocket Mortgage Classic was laced. His beautiful high cut did what all beautiful high cuts should do: it bisected the center of the fairway and tumbled forward, charging in the direction of the green.
But then it did something that no beautiful high cut should do: it disappeared. Bhatia must have thought his eyes were playing tricks on him when it happened. His ball had clearly split the center of the fairway on the hole, setting him up for another layup birdie opportunity at Detroit Golf Club .
He was clearly in position for a 260ish-yard approach shot into an unguarded green, giving him at worst two looks at a birdie or better. So how, exactly, had he wound up standing in the fairway with a golf ball nowhere in sight? As it turned out, the reason lay beneath his feet. Bhatia had smoked his drive alright, and he’d hit the center of the fairway just as he’d planned.
But he’d managed to do so while sending his ball tumbling directly towards a green storm drain located in the dead center of the fairway. Irrigation be damned, Bhatia’s ball had rolled over the storm drain and, in a miraculous failure of golf course engineering, through the slits in the drain cover and down into the drain. Bhatia did what any player — and particularly any PGA Tour tournament leader — would do: he called over a rules o.
