Wednesday Fun League · Manor Valley Golf Course · Hole 13 · Back Nine
In the long and storied history of the Wednesday Fun League, players have found water, found bunkers, found the woods, and found ways to make a simple par-5 look extraordinarily complicated. But on a warm Wednesday evening at Manor Valley, Clay Karadus achieved something that belongs in an entirely different category of misfortune. He found a tree. Not the rough near a tree. Not the roots at the base of a tree. The inside of a tree.
The 13th hole — a generous par-5 from the back tees — handed Clay an opportunity off the tee. What happened next defied reasonable probability. His ball sailed off the club face, tracked toward the tree line, and disappeared into a narrow gap in the trunk of a massive old tree at the edge of the fairway. Not lodged against the bark. Not resting in a root. Fully inside the tree. Swallowed. Gone.
🌳 The Shot Heard Round the Fairway
Anyone who has played golf long enough has hit a tree. Most of us have watched the ball ricochet off the trunk and kick back into the rough, or bounce through the canopy and drop somewhere findable. That is normal golf. What Clay accomplished on 13 was something else entirely — a precision shot that threaded a golf ball through a gap in a split trunk that most people would struggle to post a letter through.
The gap in question runs vertically along the face of the tree, narrow enough that you would not give it a second glance walking past. The darkness inside the cavity makes it nearly invisible from the fairway. The ball found it anyway. Physics, geometry, and a healthy dose of bad luck aligned in perfect harmony to produce one of the great unintentional trick shots in WFL history.
The image does not lie. There it is — nestled deep in the shadowy crevice of an ancient trunk, unreachable, unplayable, and utterly unforgettable. If Clay had been trying to pull off that shot, he could not have done it in a hundred attempts.
⛳ And Then There Were Two
Here is where the story takes a turn that nobody saw coming.
As the group gathered around the tree to assess the situation — part investigation, part eulogy — someone looked closer into the cavity. And there, already residing in the hollow of that old tree, was a second golf ball.
Clay Karadus was not the first.
Somewhere out there is another WFL member — or perhaps a golfer from a completely different era — who walked up to that same tree, peered into that same gap, and had the exact same sinking feeling. Their ball is still in there. It has been in there long enough to become a permanent resident, a ghost of a round played and forgotten, preserved in the dark like a time capsule nobody asked for.
Two balls. One tree. An untold story and a very fresh one sitting side by side in the hollow of the 13th fairway.
📋 The Rules Situation
For those wondering about the ruling — a ball lodged inside a tree is an unplayable lie under Rule 19 of the Rules of Golf. The player has three options: stroke and distance back to the original spot, drop within two club lengths of where the ball entered the unplayable area (no closer to the hole), or drop on a line extending back from the hole through the point where the ball came to rest. All options come with a one-stroke penalty.
There is no relief without penalty for a ball inside a tree. The tree does not care about your handicap, your scorecard, or your feelings. It has been standing there for decades, it will be standing there long after we are all done playing, and it now holds two golf balls as proof of its patience.
🏌️ A Moment of Perspective
The great thing about golf — and the Wednesday Fun League in particular — is that the moments that last are rarely the birdies. Nobody is going to be talking about a straightforward par on 13 at the end of the season. But Clay Karadus threading a golf ball into the hollow of a centuries-old tree, only to discover a predecessor already waiting inside? That story gets told for years.
Golf does this. It humbles the skilled, punishes the unlucky, and occasionally produces something so absurd that the only appropriate response is to laugh, take your penalty stroke, and play on.
Somewhere inside that tree on the 13th fairway, two golf balls are waiting. If you find a third one in there this season, we will dedicate the entire post to whoever managed it.
Play well — and aim for the fairway. ⛳
Photo credit: Wednesday Fun League · Manor Valley Golf Course, Export PA · Hole 13
