By Alex Myers

Getting "gobbled up" by a hole is a pretty common phrase used to describe the plight of a struggling golfer. It's just not meant to be literal.

But that's exactly what happened in an odd and frightening story out of Waterloo, Ill., recounted here by Yahoo!.

According to the post, Mark Mihal, a 43-year-old golfer, was playing Annbriar Golf Course when he suddenly fell through the ground and into a sinkhole on the 14th hole. Mihal had been standing in the fairway when he fell some 18 feet.

Photo from Golfmanna.com

Fortunately, despite the big fall, Mihal's worst injury was a separated shoulder. Eventually, his playing partners, with the help of the course's general manager, were able to pull him back to safety.

Related: These golf problems are a little less serious

Mihal happens to be the co-founder of a golf blog, golfmanna.com, where his wife wrote about the incident in greater detail. Something tells us this will be the website's most-read story.

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If Stewart Roche had never gained notoriety as a record-setting golfer in his 90s, he still would have made quite a name for himself:

-Graduated No. 2 in his Notre Dame law school class and served a year as law school president
-Spent four years in the Counter Intelligence Corps during World War II, including Agent in Charge of the Madison, Wis., branch office
-Oceana County Savings Bank president for 33 years in Hart, Mich.
-Practiced law in Hart for 41 years
-Owner & operator of Hart Petroleum Company for 17 years
-Volunteer work with the local Rotary Club, American Legion post and St. Gregory's Church.

But, as any avid golfer can attest, you greatly enhance your life resume when you factor in what you've done on the golf course. Since picking up golf in the early 1950s, Mr. Roche has had nine holes-in-one. Incredibly, three have come since he turned 91:

Photo of Stewart Roche courtesy of WZZM-13.

On July 20, 2007, he made an ace at Golden Sands Golf Course in Silver Lake, Mich., with a driver on the 175-yard third hole. And the last two aces came on the same hole, the 125-yard 12th, at Oceana Golf Club in Shelby, Mich. He used a 4-iron on Sept. 2, 2009, and muscled the ball in the hole with a 5-iron on June 15, 2012.

Mr. Roche considers his ace-making ability "very lucky," but when he demonstrated his swing for anchor and news/sports reporter Brent Ashcroft of WZZM TV-13 in Grand Rapids, Mich., he hit a shot within two feet. The first ace he ever made, in the 1950s, he says was far from skillful; he topped the ball and saw it hit the pin and go in. "One of the guys I was with said, 'I'm not even going to congratulate you on that one,'" Roche said.

A Grand Rapids native, Roche has lived in Hart, Mich., for most of his life. A regular group includes a pair of players in their 80s, Ray Larson and Larry Pluister, and a youngster, Rev. Tom Bolster, in his late 50s. At his best, Roche was a 9-handicapper. Now, with his third ace since age 91, we include him in our recordbooks with the unique title of "most prolific hole-in-one shooter of a golfer in their 90s."

There have been a few others in our record-books who made news by making multiple aces during their ultra-vintage years, including George Selbach and Joe McHugh, who each had two aces at age 97, and Anton Lee, who had six holes-in-one after age 80.

Setting a longevity record is a difficult thing to pin down. It's not an exact science, and saying one golfer's feat overshadows another can be dicey. Does making two aces at age 97 trump three aces from 91 to 96?

We like to celebrate everyone's feat at that age and give them credit for their own niche in history. Most of us would just be happy to say we can put the clubface on the ball in our 90s and advance it down the fairway, let alone make aces.

Roche gets out about twice a week for nine holes in a cart, sometimes three times. In one of his recent rounds, on July 27, he had a 42 at Oceana, where he's a charter member. "I'm so old I can shoot my age," he says. Mr. Roche has longevity in his family, so his good fortune on the golf course could very well continue for quite awhile. If so, he'll separate himself from the other celebrated nonagenarians in our archives -- a very rare breed indeed.

-- Cliff Schrock

Related: The Greatest Shot of All Time?

Just the other day, near his home in Palm Desert, Calif., Al Geiberger was telling someone who didn't know him from any other trim, tan retiree in the Coachella Valley, "You know, I have a record in golf."

Yes, he does. "Mr. 59" shares it now, but Geiberger was the first. Thirty-five years ago, on June 10, 1977, he shot a 13-under 59 in the second round of the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic, becoming the first golfer to break 60 on the PGA Tour.

Geiberger is 74 now, but what he did as a 39-year-old on that broiling Friday afternoon at Colonial CC when he hit every fairway and every green and had only 23 putts resonates still. Before Chip Beck, David Duval, Paul Goydos and Stuart Appleby (players to subsequently shoot 59s on the PGA Tour), there was Geiberger.

"I respect it more and more," Geiberger says of his achievement. "When I initially shot it, I thought if I can do it, then anybody can do it. I didn't understand how hard it is to do. When someone gets close to a 59, they tend to run out of holes."

From the May 21 issue of Golf World:

Rhein Gibson is 1,444th on the World Ranking, having missed three cuts and finished T-58 in two Nationwide Tour events and two Australian Tour events in 2010 and 2011. But when it comes to playing River Oaks GC in Edmond, Oklah., he's all-world.

Gibson set the course record of 60 earlier this month, then shattered that mark with a 16-under 55 on May 12 at the 6,850-yard venue. The 26-year-old Lismore, Australia, native is a 2008 graduate of Oklahoma Christian, where he was a NAIA All-American. He made 12 birdies, two eagles and four pars during his stellar round.

Gibson's round is believed to be one of the lowest recorded on a full-length (more than 6,000 yards) course. The only 55 recorded in tournament play was by Homero Blancas in the 1962 Premier Invitational in Longview, Texas.

-- John Antonini
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In the latest example of life imitating art, a a gray whale was found dead with a golf ball in its stomach. Doesn't ring a bell? Then you must not be a big "Seinfeld" person.

We don't want to make light of a whale dying, but the situation makes it impossible for fans of the TV show to not picture George Costanza, caught in a lie that he's a marine biologist, trudging out towards the water to try to help a beached whale. Completely clueless, he miraculously winds up saving the mammal by pulling a golf ball from its blowhole.

Related: The best golf movie scenes in history

In his subsequent retelling/embellishment of the story ("The sea was angry that day, my friends...") to his friends at the coffee shop, Kramer, who had been working on his golf game at the beach the day before, asks, "Is that a Titleist?" And upon seeing that it is, utters the classic line: "Hole in one."

In a 20-minute span, a 12-year old duplicated a feat most golfers only dream of accomplishing.

Naomi Lee, a 7th grader from Menlo Park, Calif., etched her name into golf's record books when she aced two holes in the same round on Pebble Beach's nine-hole Peter Hay executive course on March 3.

Her aces came on the 82-yard third hole (using a 9-iron) and the 64-yard sixth hole (using a 52-degree wedge).

According to Golf Digest's knowledge, of the 150 reported double-ace rounds, Lee is the youngest female to pull off the trick. What are the odds of hitting two holes-in-one in one round? That'd be 67 million-to-1, according to a Sept. 2005 column in Golf Digest by David Owen.

While the odds decrease somewhat in Lee's case because she had nine par-3 holes instead of the standard four par-3 holes on a regulation course, it doesn't change the fact that a 12-year-old accomplished the feat.

Lee's officially spoiled for the rest of her golf career.

"It's something you don't really understand the gravity of until you really start to dig into it," says father Doug Lee, who's a member at The Olympic Club. "Maybe it's something Tiger or Jack have never done."

Actually, he's right. According to PGA Tour records, it's only been done twice in the modern era on tour. At the 2006 Reno-Tahoe Open, Yusaku Miyazato aced two holes within a six-hole span in the second round on Nos. 7 and 12 at Montreux G. & C.C. (He shot a 66 and finished T-21). The first was Bill Whedon, who made two holes-in-one in the first round of the 1955 Insurance City Open.

It's too early in most areas of the country for golfers to be worried about their club's big show now, but that crown jewel -- the club championship -- will be front and center before you know it. And anyone who thinks they're a contender will be in full preparation mode. In most cases, the field will be wide open with plenty of favorites. But in the case of the profiled subject to follow, a dominant pattern of winning can bring with it the heavy toll of jealousy and contempt.

McKitrick wins another, wants more, more, more

The numbers roll off of Arlene McKitrick's tongue in a simple tone, as if she were recalling the items on a grocery list. But she's actually listing the number of golf tournaments she's won.

Club championships won: 95. Senior tournaments won: 60. Other countries she's won titles in: nine.

McKitrick, a resident of Longboat Key, Fla., upped her total number of tournament victories to 171 this past weekend, winning Longboat Key Club's women's club championship for the 35th consecutive year. According to our records, her 95 club titles are a record for male or female winning championships at multiple clubs, and her 35 titles at Longboat Key are fourth-best for a single club for women and are the most consecutively won for either sex.

McKitrick's club-championship victory breakdown by club includes: Longboat Key Club, 35; TPC Prestancia, 9; New Albany Country Club, 9; Tartan Fields, 8; Congressional, 7; Ritz-Carlton Members Club, 6; Concession, 5; The Oaks, 5; Sara Bay, 4; The Lakes, 3; Washingtonian, 2, and Wintergreen, 2. A member now of at least three clubs, McKitrick can't add to her Washingtonian total: According to Golf Digest Architecture Editor Ron Whitten, the 36-hole facility closed its courses by 1986.

And to think she could have won more. Of the eight tournaments she's lost, she was runner-up in all of them.

McKitrick, who didn't start playing golf until she was 30, is 65 and clearly living by the Golf Digest motto to "Think young, play hard."

The 2011 golf season will be hard to beat for two sets of golfers who experienced golf nirvana at Crooked River Ranch Golf Course near Bend, Ore. The course itself will have a hard time topping what took place in 2011 as well.

On two occasions, July 28 and Oct. 28, two golfers each aced a hole while playing in the same group. While the feat of two golfers acing in the same group has been done dozens of times in our record keeping, having it happen twice in a year at the same course is indeed a rarity and it could be a first. It's a feat not easily checked in all our record books. Trumping this feat, of course, would be having more than two golfers making a hole-in-one on the same day on the same course, and probably the most famous of that is when four players aced the sixth hole at Oak Hill in the second round of the 1989 U.S. Open.

But let's not spoil the fun for our Crooked River achievers. On July 28, Jan Markham used an 8-iron to ace the 11th hole, 106 yards from the red tees, her fourth hole-in-one. Her friend and playing partner, Ellie Rice, was happy for her pal but since it was the third time she'd witnessed an ace in a year's time without ever getting one of her own, she wasn't totally overjoyed. And she wasn't likely to see one then, either, since we list odds of 17 million to 1 for two average players acing the same hole in the same group. After another group member, Anita Britton, played her tee shot to the back of the green, however, Rice struck her pitching wedge, watched the ball land short, right of the hole, and then roll in for an ace on top of Markham's ball.