Golfer saved after 18-foot course plunge

Suddenly being swallowed up by the earth on a golf course’s fairway drove a wedge between Mark Mihal and a stellar round.

The 43-year-old mortgage broker was counting his blessings and nursing a dislocated shoulder sustained four days earlier when he tumbled into an 18-foot deep sinkhole on the 14th hole of the Annbriar Golf Club near Waterloo, Illinois, just south-east of St Louis.

Friends managed to hoist Mihal to safety with a rope after about 20 minutes. But the experience gave him quite a fright, particularly following the much-publicised recent death of a man in Florida who died when his bedroom fell into a sinkhole. That man’s body hasn’t been found.