THIS is the incredible moment a teen golfer's ball is struck by a lightning bolt just after he struck it during a storm.
Amazing footage shows Tomas Gomez, 18, smashing the ball at 88mph at a driving range - before it's zapped in mid-air.
"When I saw the lightning bolt my first instinct was to run," Gomez recalled in an interview with the Daily Mail.
"I slipped on the wet floor and was just happy I caught myself... I was just glad that [lightning] hit the ball instead of me."
The terrifying few seconds managed to be caught on video by one of his pals who were watching with his siblings and were stunned by Mother Nature's accuracy.
Direct link to the video on Instagram.
Any Soylentils have a near experience with a lightning strike?
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Moment Teen Golfer's Ball is Struck by Lightning Just After He Hits It
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Monday July 12 2021, @09:51PM (7 children)
If I were a golfer, I would not want my balls getting struck by lightning right after they got hit.
That could lead to tempers flaring over how to keep score.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 12 2021, @10:01PM (2 children)
It's fake noose. No one is seen shaking the feces down their pants leg after the lightning strike.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Tuesday July 13 2021, @03:11PM (1 child)
Yeah, that would definitely be a brown trouser moment!
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @06:30PM
GOD does not want him playing golf.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 12 2021, @11:37PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @07:11PM
Even Tiger Woods couldn't hit a lightning bolt with a golf ball though I've heard he's pretty good at hitting trees.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday July 13 2021, @12:35AM (1 child)
I'm unclear on the rules there. Perhaps you place a new ball wherever the largest charred chunk lands. Not sure where the drop happens if there's no visible chunks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @05:38PM
Mulligan (take shot again without penalty)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 12 2021, @10:17PM (1 child)
Clever headline. Took me a while to realize it meant a golf ball, not the other kind.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday July 13 2021, @06:07AM
I landed the other side of the fence, and didn't think of anything anatomical until I read the comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 12 2021, @10:17PM (2 children)
Pretty lame shit, dude.. And the Mail?? Good Lord!
(Score: 5, Informative) by Mykl on Monday July 12 2021, @10:22PM
The article and video itself are fine for viewing at work, but the site then immediately autoplayed a video afterward that was definitely NSFW, so be aware.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @01:23AM
The whole site is idle section.
Source: Nobody makes money puttering around here, not even the admins.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 12 2021, @11:09PM
I had one go right up my ass and burn through my colon while scorching my prostate. He laughed when he pulled out of my wrecked anus and I jumped into my bed in the small prison cell and sucked my thumb while he stood by and flexed his penis up and down.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @12:03AM
never felt this way before. I sang that to my boyfriend every time we had anal. Then we'd dance naked with honey and animal crackers stuck to our genitals.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Tuesday July 13 2021, @02:12AM (6 children)
"Don't anthropomorphize lightning. It hates it when you do that."
But it's hard to resist phrasing things as "seeking a path to ground".
Going through a golf ball doesn't help "accomplish" that. If it had been a conductive ball, it would have gotten polarized by the ambient electric field and would have attracted the lightning. But golf balls are insulators.
It happened, we have video, but it's a mystery why lightning would have hit a golf ball.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @02:15AM
I think the topgolf balls are tagged, but I had the same thought initially. I don't know how they're tagged but it can be ID'd by the targets, but it can also track distance driven so I don't know if it's RFID or something a little more advanced.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @07:19AM (3 children)
for me it's a mystery that it doesn't continue down to the ground.
I'm seriously considering this is faked because of this.
can the ball hold that much charge itself?
I know that plane strikes do continue down to the ground (a simple google search for images will show that).
(Score: 1) by surjeon on Tuesday July 13 2021, @07:57AM
Absolutely.
Wikipedia says average charge transferred in a lighting strike is 15C.
Energy in a 30mm diameter sphere (1/2 C^2/(4 pi eps0 r) ) charged to 15C is approximately 7x10^13 J which google suggests is 16kt of TNT, or one Hiroshima bomb.
Either we're misinterpreting what we're seeing (I thought the same as you - it didn't continue to ground) or there's something up with those assumptions.
(Score: 2) by corey on Tuesday July 13 2021, @11:12AM (1 child)
Yeah, videos on Instagram are high salt grain factor for me. I haven’t seen it, don’t want to drive up the clicks.
As you say, lightning travels from the ground up to the cloud , and a golf ball would discourage it, I think the guy’s club and body would be a better conductor. I was wondering if it was really wet, cold improve the conductivity but you’d still see a path between the ground and the ball.
Any other ideas?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @12:10PM
I suggest you watch it, use the instragram link. I never knew instagram had such an idiotic interface: you can press play and pause, but you cannot browse frames or mute it.
guy is in a relatively sheltered area, under a rain cover of sorts; unclear how thick it is, and what combination of glass/steel it is.
he is shooting towards an outside field (I guess it's training for improving strength etc).
outside the cover, it's raining torrentially.
ball is struck, goes up, and then a bolt of lightning comes from above and stops at the ball.
bolt looks real, within the constraints of shaky poorly compressed video.
thunder is pitiful, but I wouldn't be surprised if phone microphones are incapable of capturing thunder.
reactions from people seem consistent with typical teenagers.
since I can't change frames at will, and I am not willing to sit through the idiotic music again, I won't investigate further.
but it may be that a couple of associated flashes during the clip are traces of a bolt outside the frame, and the ball is just hit by a smaller branch of the full thing.
in any case, that's the maximum amount of effort I'm willing to give here.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Saturday July 17 2021, @12:17AM
Well, some people who know more than me are disagreeing with each other about what the video shows. There's even question about whether the golf ball got hit or whether it was something else.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/07/15/lightning-topgolf-strike-ball/ [washingtonpost.com]
Paywalled, but someone did report finding a charred golf ball. I would have expected it to explode into fragments, but I'm not an expert on lightning hitting golf balls.
(Score: 5, Funny) by SomeGuy on Tuesday July 13 2021, @02:32AM (2 children)
"88Mph Ball Is Struck By Lightning"
So, did that shoot the ball 30 years in to the future?
Balls? Where we're going, we don't need BALLS.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday July 13 2021, @04:30AM (1 child)
What you can't see on the video is a little fly called Marty driving the ball.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @10:43PM
30 years in the future, a smoking golf ball suddenly appears and lands on a post-apocalyptic beach. Two hairy beings approach.
Ape#1: Balls? Oh shit. There goes the planet.
Ape#2: Fuck, even in the future, your move references suck.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by vux984 on Tuesday July 13 2021, @02:42AM (6 children)
Who stands around waving a metal rod around in an electrical storm?
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @04:22AM
I do. I tie a string from my kite with aluminum foil around my throbbing cock and let loose.
All of the hair on my cock stands up as if to salute while I climax as the pain hits me from above.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @09:51AM (2 children)
People who go to Topgolf? I heard they opened ASAP during Covid, like when we were still at a high peak with no vaccine there were people literally dying to go to Topgolf. Not saying everybody who goes there is an idiot... but it seems like a lot of them are.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @02:28PM (1 child)
When you think about it, golf is one of the more covid-friendly activities. It's outdoors, it's easy to stay over 6-feet apart from other people, and you don't need to make direct (or indirect) contact with them. The only real trick is the pin on the green, but I think they changed the structures of that to allow people to avoid touching the flag, too
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @06:40PM
How do you get beer off of the beer cart, genius?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @02:19PM
I was wondering the same thing.
On the other hand, it looked like there was another structure above them (I assume he was at a driving range). And given how the article said the course started their lightning plan afterward, I assume it was "merely" a storm, and this was the first bolt of lightning.
Honestly, if the wind wasn't too bad, I could see some people continuing to hit balls at a driving range while a big storm happened. It'd be more likely if the structure was covered, but different people have different levels of interest/obsession.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @08:15PM
A fucking Mexican, that's who. They are real safe to work with too.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @04:17AM (2 children)
I had one go right up my ass and burn through my colon while scorching my prostate. He laughed when he pulled out of my wrecked anus and I jumped into my bed in the small prison cell and sucked my thumb while he stood by and flexed his penis up and down.
Even today I can hear his penis slapping up against his belly button while he stands motionless and proud.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @04:42AM
Dude, please.
SN is a nerd site. No romance, please.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @10:37PM
Oh, hey, you met my mom!
(Score: 2) by iWantToKeepAnon on Wednesday July 14 2021, @02:31AM
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy