Erik Van Rooyen was seconds away from hitting his approach on the par-4 10th hole Thursday at the Mexico Open.
Then, suddenly he and almost everyone standing on the 10th fairway — including the Golf Channel camera person and his playing partners, Chez Reavie and Francesco Molinari — hit the deck.
What the heck is going on?
Turned out, there was a swarm of bees.
“I’ve never seen this before,” on-course reporter Billy Ray Brown said on the broadcast.
Turns out, though, Van Rooyen has.
“Can’t recall where exactly, but it was on a golf course in South Africa and something like I’m over the ball and then you hear like a “zzzzz,” which is the sound that bees make,” Van Rooyen, who isn’t allergic to bee stings, said after his opening round in Mexico. “I look up and they’re there and the same thing happened. I was over the ball with a 4-iron, look back and I just saw them here and I just told my caddie, I’m like, ‘Bees, bees, bees,’ and he looks at me like I’m crazy. So I dropped down, then he sees them, he dropped down. … It’s funny, but certainly don’t want to get stung by those bad boys.”
Once the coast was clear, Van Rooyen hit his approach — and the disturbance didn’t faze him, as he ended up making par.
Full-field scores from the Mexico Open at Vidanta
“I had a 4-iron in my hand to a pin that’s tucked on the right,” he said. “You’ve just got to reset and refocus so it’s simple. You just do the same thing. I asked my caddie like, ‘Where are we going, where’s the miss, what kind of shot are we hitting and you just get back into it.'”
Van Rooyen’s round only got better after that. The 33-year-old played the back nine at 4 under and sprung up the leaderboard. After Round 1, he sits in second at 7 under, one stroke off Austin Smotherman’s lead.
Van Rooyen hopes to keep rolling in Round 2 — just without the bees.
English
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Spanish