Golfing on the moon

Apollo 14

In 1961, Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. became the second man—and first American—to travel in space. This event was known as Project Mercury and was America’s first attempt, and success, at a human spaceflight. Ten years later in 1971, he took a second trek into the final frontier on the Apollo 14 mission to the moon.

Apollo 14 was an enterprise that was taken extremely cautiously. After the near-disastrous events of Apollo 13 when an oxygen tank exploded two days into the mission—which, through the unrelenting ingenuity and hard work of both the crew and the NASA team ended up with the astronauts safe on earth without any fatalities—this mission was to be a true test of faith for the space program.

So how does this pertain to golf?

A unique experiment

During the nine hours in which Commander Shepard and his spacewalk partner Edgar Mitchell spent on the moon, they conducted a variety of experiments—one in particular being slightly more lighthearted than the others.

In his preparations for the mission, Shepard had smuggled the head of a six-iron golf club and two golf balls into his space suit. Once in space, he fashioned a makeshift club out of the handle of a lunar sample scoop and ventured to boldly golf where no man had golfed before.

Restricted by the bulk of his suit, Shepard could only swing the club with one hand—adding an additional aspect of challenge to his experiment. The first contact with the ball was made after several failed attempts, but the ball was shanked and did not travel very far. However, Shepard managed to hit second ball with a solid stroke and, in his own words, it appeared to go for "miles and miles and miles.”

Check out the iconic (albeit grainy) video of Shepard’s extra-terrestrial golfing below.