Who throws a shoe? Honestly?
Well, on Friday, it was PGA Tour Champions VP of Rules, Competition and Administration Brian Claar, who threw a shoe into a tree at Phoenix Country Club to get a ball down.
On the 7th hole, a par 5, Billy Andrade’s second shot went into a large tree and never came down.
After a few minutes were spent trying to confirm it was his, Claar ended up with a random black shoe from the gallery and so he threw it, dislodging the ball on his first try.
Has Claar ever thrown a shoe like that before?
“No,” he said with a laugh. “In college we threw a lot of stuff to retrieve clubs that were thrown into trees. I’ve thrown a rake once, but that was the first shoe.”
SHOE to the rescue! 👟 pic.twitter.com/E9YBNyKsTQ
— PGA TOUR Champions (@ChampionsTour) November 6, 2020
Andrade and his caddie were initially not able to say for certain it was his ball, which was marked with a red line.
“It looked like by the naked eye you could see something but it was just a pine needle, perpendicular to the ball that looked like a line, till you put the binocs on it,” Claar said.
It was important to identify the ball because otherwise it would have been a lost ball and Andrade would have to go back to where he hit his second shot. As it turned out, because he could identify the ball, he was able to declare it unplayable and take a one-stroke penalty and play his fourth from there.
He ended up getting a bogey on the hole.
