Alan Shepard tees off on the Moon
On this day · 6 February 1971
With a smuggled club head and a one-handed swing, an Apollo 14 astronaut became the first—and only—person to play golf on another world.
On February 6, 1971, near the end of the Apollo 14 mission, astronaut Alan Shepard pulled off the most famous trick shot in golf history. He attached a Wilson six-iron head he’d carried in his spacesuit pocket to the handle of a contingency sample-collection tool, then dropped two balls onto the gray lunar dust.
His stiff pressurized suit allowed only a clumsy one-handed swing, robbing him of the speed a real shot needs. Shepard shanked the first attempt, then connected and crowed that the ball flew “miles and miles.”
Reality was more modest. Decades later, the United States Golf Association analyzed mission imagery and orbital photos and clocked the two balls at about 24 and 40 yards—short by any earthly standard, even with the Moon’s one-sixth gravity.
Shepard remains the only human to have golfed beyond Earth.
Sources & references
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