As in, is it possible to bounce a golf ball across a water hazard after hitting it with a golf club?
I was wondering this at work, and we couldn’t really decide if it was possible or not. We figured it may be possible if a driver was used to create a shallow angle onto the surface, and enough backspin was put on the ball to make it skip up, but does anyone have a definitive answer?
Yes indeedy. In fact, I was watching a PBS documentary a while back on a guy who, during WWII, was trying to come up with a bomb that could be dropped from a plane and blow up a damn - from the upstream side. They really went into the physics behind the whole thing, but the upshot was that the design that finally worked looked like a giant golf ball, complete with dimples. It was dropped from the plane, skipped three or four times, then stopped right next to the dam, sank, and blew up. Very very cool stuff.
Oh, and during the documentary, they showed experiments that were done skipping balls of various sizes and weights across water. The trick is to hit just the right angle and to have enough spin on it.
I would’ve posted this 10 minutes after I posted the topic, but I haven’t been able to log on again untill now…
Oops, a bit more Googling found that it is possible.
From here :
Smeghead - the guy who invented the bouncing bomb was Barnes Wallis, see the film ‘The Dambusters’.
Barnes-Wallace tested his bouncing bombs in the Solent (the stretch of water separating Portsmouth/Southampton and the Isle of Wight - nearest bit of coast to my home) - apparently some of his (inert)concrete test bombs are still out there, just lying on the beaches (I saw this in a documentary- I’ve never actually seen one for real).
I lived next to a golf course one year as a kid, and my sister and I used to collect lost golf balls. After we had accumulated a few bags, we realized we little use for them, but that didn’t keep us from the mindless amusement of finding and collecting them, in the summer dawn, when the air was cool, and there was nothing else to do.
We just got pickier about the ones we kept. Damaged ones often got skipped partway across the water hazards, so I know it can be done by hand. I don’t know if a club could put that same kind of spin and trajectory on a ball during play, but I’ve never been a particularly avid golfer.
My technique -which may not have been the best- relied more on trajectory and speed than spin. As far as I could tell, the fairly weak spin I could put on the ball by hand didn’t survive unchanged for more than a bounce or two. The dimples that are meant to “grab the air” grabbed the water even better.
I’ve done it a few times. I’m not as…consistent…as Tiger Woods.
I once bounced one off a water hazard and right onto the green. However, as it was springtime in Alaska, the water was frozen, so I guess I shouldn’t take too much credit for it.
I’ve done this. A messed up “worm burner” drive will skip quite a few times. If the ball makes it all the way across and back up on dry land we’d call it a “Jesus shot” since it walked on water.
And The Dam Busters is one of the most influential films of all time:
George Lucas ripped it off for the attack on the Death Star in Star Wars.
I’ve done, and seen it done, many times – the bouncing golf ball that is.
I’ve never been to a professional event, but my old man has, and he told me that at one of the holes he watched during a practice round, the pros would try to bounce a shot off the water onto the green, just for fun – like Tuco was saying.
I once hit one into a pond about 60 yards in front of the tee and lower than the tee. It hit the water and just bounced down the fairway as though the pond was solid ground.
Whenever I hit a low-trajectory shot and it hits the water, I yell “Skip!”. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. Although it skips often enough that I’m never really surprised (I’m in the water so much they call me Jacques [Cousteau]). Anyways, Golf Magazine did a write up a few months ago about ‘trick shots’ duffers could practice, and the skip was one of them.
I’m such a crappy golfer that I’ve done this a few times. Most of the time it skipped and still ended up in the water, but once it skipped out and landed on dry land.
I’d never heard it called the Jesus Shot, but I like it. 
Before I play I hit some warmup shots. There is a lake on one of the nines and I usually hit a few into it to appease the Lake Gods with old ball sacrifices. Even on shots that have a high arc there is enough backspin on the ball that it skips at least once and ususally two or three times.
To add to the others, a flat surface on the other side of the water helps greatly. I’m not sure if it’s required, though. Does anybody know if the exit angle of a skipping object is restricted to a certain range if only water is involved? I’ve seen balls skip, hit a rock, and bounce up. Without hitting something, I’ve never seen a ball jump up at like a forty-five degree angle, however.
As a matter of fact this very feat can be seen being performed by Tiger Woods as one of the opening sequences of the EA Sports Tiger Woods 2004 video game. I thought that it was the craziest golf manuver I’ve ever seen.
Mostly everyone has covered it, but I need to share the story of the luckiest Eagle of my life.
On a par five, I had about 215 to the green. There is a pond protecting the front of the green, so you had to fly it all 215. It was slightly down hill to the pond and then from the other side of the pond slightly uphill, however the green was still downhill from where I hit my second shot.
Anyway, for me to carry one 215 is a pretty big hit in my book, so I really tried to hit the ball as hard as I could…but I came up on it quickly and skulled it (or hit a worm burner) and it hit the pond, skipped up on the green and rolled about 2 feet from the cup! That was the 9th hole and I won a few bucks there if I remember correctly. My friends were both amazed and annoyed at the same time.