7 November 2013
Now that is what I call a divot! An unusual hazard on a golf course in Switzerland
Posted by Dave Petley
I missed this story at the time, but it is worth highlighting here. Back in early August, golfers at the Matterhorn Golf Club in Taesch, Switzerland faced a slightly unusual hazard when a boulder fell from an adjacent mountain to land on one of the greens. The oobgolf.com website has the best set of images, from which these are taken:
http://www.oobgolf.com/content/fore+play/1-7099-TwoMeterTall_Rock_Falls_Creates_New_Bunker_on_Swiss_Golf_Course.html
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http://www.oobgolf.com/content/fore+play/1-7099-TwoMeterTall_Rock_Falls_Creates_New_Bunker_on_Swiss_Golf_Course.html
…
In the comments below the article, several people are confused about how it ended up in the middle of the green. I would suspect that the boulder was both bouncing and rotating – in this case the tabular shape of the rock would create a very stable motion (a bit like a wheel bouncing down a slope). This would also be why the crater has that elongated shape, and why the boulder has bounced out of it.
Dave Petley is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hull in the United Kingdom. His blog provides commentary and analysis of landslide events occurring worldwide, including the landslides themselves, latest research, and conferences and meetings.
And apart from the boulder, there looks as though something significant has taken place in the background of the top image. A hyper-truncated spur!
I guess that the photos dont show a real prespective of the source, from the adjacent mountain we can´t see the path or other evidences. In these case the Boulder had to describe a balistc trajectory, but is an interesting case.