The 12th

"Six-iron," said the caddie.

"Six-iron? That's too much," said Hyndman.

"Nope. Got to step up and get it all."

And that's exactly what Hyndman did. The ball took one hop past the pin and spun back into the hole. Touch 'em all.

When Curtis Strange came to the tee in 1988, he was a lousy bet to make 1. He had four-putted the unforgivably slick 9th green and was heard to say as he left, "And you people are paying good money to watch this——." The pin on 12 that day was in the one place where you're not supposed to make a hole in one—far right. But Strange was going so bad he needed to make some birdies just to make the cut. He aimed slightly left of the pin—still a dicey idea at best—and let fly. "I pushed it perfectly," Strange remembers. It hit the green and rolled six or seven feet into the hole for an ace.

But that's when Curtis did something strange. He picked up the ball and threw it in the creek. "I don't know why I did it," Strange says. "I just thought, This'll do something for the people. It was spontaneous. I didn't think about it. It had nothing to do with what I'd done the rest of the day."

Some sportswriters thought Strange impudent. "He could've given it to his grandchildren," they said. Says Strange, "I hope I have something better to leave my grandchildren than a golf ball."

Some people think it made perfect sense. "All the gods of golf are down there in that corner anyway," says Zoeller. "If you beat that hole, you better give them something."

It was such an odd thing to do—to throw away a museum piece—that people got suspicious. One rumor went that when Strange got the ball out of the hole, he realized he'd been playing the wrong one. That's why he threw it in the water. So nobody could tell on him. There was also the story that Strange didn't want the standard golfer-kisses-golf-ball picture in the papers the next day, because he wasn't playing the brand of ball he was paid to play. Bull pucky, says Strange. Go find it yourself, and you'll see.

If you ever get a wild hair and an oxygen tank and decide to go looking for Strange's ball—a Maxfli DDH, he thinks—pick up half a dozen or so of Tom Weiskopf's while you're at it, will you?