‘Just remarkable!’ Amateur hits one of the luckiest shots you’ll ever see at Chevron Championship

There’s a wonderful story about the late, great Canadian golfer Mo Norman’s famous accuracy.

On one hole during an exhibition match in the ’90s, he was advised to lay up short of a creek which crossed the fairway some 240 yards from the tee.

But Norman was never one to take advice. This is the man who, when told by his caddie he could reach the green with a driver and a nine-iron, proceeded to hit nine-iron off the tee then find the putting surface with his driver.

So, spotting a narrow bridge designed for getting golfers over the hazard, Norman pulled his big stick, took aim, and bounced it off the crossing and into the fairway beyond the water.

They didn’t call him “Pipeline Mo” for nothing.

Being able to take unconventional routes to get your ball in the hole is part of the beauty of this game. It’s why players like Norman, Seve Ballesteros and Jordan Spieth are held in such high regard by fans across the globe.

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Sometimes, though, you just need a good old fashioned helping hand from Lady Luck.

And that’s exactly what happened with Jasmine Koo at the Chevron Championship as the LPGA’s major season got underway in Texas.

The American, looking to edge recent ANWA champion Lottie Woad to the Low Amateur crown, was sizing up her second shot to the par-five finishing hole at Carlton Woods when disaster struck.

“I was between clubs and decided to go with the five-wood,” Koo explained in her post-round interview. “But I chunked it because the ball was above my feet.”

What happened next needs to be seen to be believed. Koo’s ball, destined for a watery grave, caught a Chevron advertising board sitting in the middle of the lake and inexplicably bounced back to the safety of dry land.

She got up-and-down for birdie and a final-round 71 to finish at three-under-par in a tie for 13th – ten back of dominant champion Nelly Korda.

Holding her ball up to the camera, Koo giggled: “That’s the mark it made from hitting the logo in the middle of the water!

“It was really exciting. A nice little memento!”

Let’s take a look at the incredible moment Koo became a social media sensation…

Wait for it..

Jasmine Koo BOUNCES it out of the water 🤯 pic.twitter.com/JCkiAW9fOf

— LPGA (@LPGA) April 21, 2024

Ah, just like how Old Tom Morris used to do it.

As the commentary team say, you’ve got to take the bounces when they come. To make her Low Amateur heroics even more incredible, this was not only Koo’s major championship debut but her LPGA Tour debut too.

“At the start of the week I was walking round like, ‘Oh my God, there’s Charley Hull! Oh my God, there’s Jennifer Kupcho!’,” she beamed. “Now I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I actually competed against all of them!’ It’s so cool.”

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Alex Perry is the Associate Editor of bunkered. A journalist for more than 20 years, he has been a golf industry stalwart for the majority of his career and, in a five-year spell at ESPN, covered every sporting event you can think of. He completed his own Grand Slam at the 2023 Masters, having fallen in love with the sport at his hometown club of Okehampton and on the links of nearby Bude & North Cornwall.

Associate Editor