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Pro golf crack Tony Finau’s chip shot dinks drone with a divot

That US pro golfer Tony Finau has really astonishing control while taking a shot will not come as much of a surprise. What may be bit less expected, by contrast, is discovering his incredible golfing touch extends beyond just sinking balls to chipping divots capable of taking out any drones hovering nearby.

Golf pro’s chipped divot crashes filming drone

Proof of Finau’s sod-as-ballistic artistry in downing the drone with a divot was presented on the golf champion’s Instagram page over the weekend. The PGA Tour winner of the 2016 Puerto Rico Open was attending an event organized by pest control company Aptive Environmental, where he eventually found himself in a tee box preparing to chip a shot with a short iron. His smooth stroke lifted the ball high and away towards the green, looping it smartly over a drone hovering about 10 yards in front filming him. That footage was abruptly interrupted, however, when the craft was sent plummeting to the ground by the divot Finau had also put into flight.

“Great ball strikers know where the ball is going,” Finau’s boasting text accompanying the video read. “Elite ball strikers know where the divot is going.”

The swaggering tone of the five-time top 10 Masters finisher was in disingenuous jest, however. Because as the end of the video makes clear, Finau hadn’t intended to nail the drone, and assumed it was the golf ball that had clipped the craft that the divot had brought it down.

“Did the ball get it?” he asks, his smile growing larger after being told it was his divot. “It was the grass?”

After a second of general hilarity, Finau snaps back into pro golfer mode, points to the green, and declares, “Dude, I’m like 10 feet from the hole.” 

Presumably, putting a ball down that far from the pin is totally lame to a golfer of Finau’s caliber – even if mere mortals would consider that proximity an exploit.

The drone pilot didn’t seem to care either way about the shot: He had already jogged off to resuscitate his hobbled craft.

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Avatar for Bruce Crumley Bruce Crumley

Bruce Crumley is journalist and writer who has worked for Fortune, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, The Guardian, AFP, and was Paris correspondent and bureau chief for Time magazine specializing in political and terrorism reporting. He splits his time between Paris and Biarritz, and is the author of novel Maika‘i Stink Eye.