I don’t play golf. I tried to learn how when I was younger but I wasn’t any good at it and I didn’t like it. Hate golf. But I love the Grand Canyon. Just don’t golf at the Grand Canyon.
It seems a social media influencer recently hit a golf ball into the Grand Canyon and posted the video on TikTok. The folks who run the Grand Canyon were not amused. In fact, you could say they were teed off.
Diane and I went to the Grand Canyon a decade ago. It was on my bucket list for a long time, and I was glad to stand there and marvel at nature’s grandeur. As I noted at the time, they don’t call it the GRAND Canyon for nothing.
At one point, we were on a bus outside the visitors center preparing for a tour when the park ranger came aboard and confronted a man in the aisle across from us.
“Was that you who flung that cigarette butt on the pavement out there?” he asked the man.
The man nodded that he was.
The park ranger asked him in a not-so-nice way to go back out and put it in the butt can. He did.
“This is a damn national park, man,” the ranger said aloud. We wanted to give him a standing ovation.
And so, 10 years later, I can understand the Park Service’s reaction when it learned that someone had hit a golf ball into the biggest hazard in the world.
The influencer hit the ball and, to make matters worse, the club flew out of her hands. (She’s gotta work on that grip.)
The Grand Canyon National Park posted her video on its social media the next day and lamented, “Do we really need to say, ‘don’t hit golf balls into the Grand Canyon?’”
“This is obviously an issue that we take really seriously,” Joel Baird, Grand Canyon public affairs specialist told USA TODAY.
Even the influencer’s followers — and there are 10 million of them — took her to task for littering and endangering people who might have been hiking or riding horses down below.
The Park Service initially charged her with three violations: Littering, creating hazardous conditions and disorderly conduct. The influencer faced up to six months in prison and a $5,000 fine.
She ended up paying a much smaller fine and processing fee and was sent on her way.
Quite honestly, I think she got off rather easily. If it were up to me, I would have made her walk or ride a donkey down to the bottom to look for her ball and play it where it laid. Or take a penalty stroke.
If you want to draw public scorn while playing golf, go to Mar-a-Lago.
Source : The Exponent Telegram
