In 1971, on February 6th, the greatest golf shot in history may have taken place.

Alan Shepard is in history books as the first American in space. Golfers may recall that in 1971, he struck two golf balls on the moon during the Apollo 14 mission. It’s a bit of a leap of faith to be on a moon mission after the aborted Apollo XIII adventure.

Shepard was born in 1923 and graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1944. He served in the Pacific Theater against the Japanese during the last year of World War Two and began flight school in January of 1946. Test pilot school followed in 1950, the year the Korean War began. He logged the equivalent of 150 days in the air during the 1950s.

After the USSR launched Sputnik in 1957, the United States realized our space program was far behind the Russians, and began a rapid program to catch up. Seven men, including Shepard, were announced as NASA’s ‘Mercury Seven,’ American’s first astronauts. Scott Glenn played Shepard in the movie The Right Stuff.

Shepard first went into space on May 5, 1961. He later described the feeling of sitting atop the spacecraft Freedom 7 to newsman Walter Cronkite “I thought to myself: My God, just think, this thing was built by the lowest bidder” His space career nearly ended in late 1963 when he was diagnosed with an inner ear condition called Meniere’s disease. NASA grounded him. A surgical procedure in 1968 corrected the condition, and Naval Captain Shepard was able to be reactivated as an astronaut in May of 1969.

Apollo 14’s launch was postponed four months to study and correct the problems the proceeding mission had endured and survived. Shepard’s wife Louise was understandably nervous about the flight. Even the spouse of test pilot astronaut felt anxiety about the journey. On January 31st, a Saturn V rocket propelled the three-man crew into space.

Comedian Bob Hope, an avid golfer like the astronaut, originally gave Shepard the idea of hitting a ball on the moon. Astronauts are allowed to bring a few personal possessions on the flight, but not a golf club. When he initially inquired about the idea, the Manned Spacecraft Center director Bob Gilruth answered “Absolutely no way.”

Why? First of all, the cloud of Apollo 13 hovered over this mission. Secondly, the manned flights to the moon were ridiculously expensive to the American taxpayer. Back then, during the Cold War and ‘space race’ there was little talk of government debt and deficits. Golf was more of an elitist game then and the perception could be negative for NASA. Congress had slashed the agency’s budget and Gilruth “had suggested that it would be to everyone’s interest to kill the lunar mission after Apollo 14.”

Once he received permission to take the equipment, there was a bigger problem- making a golf swing in a spacesuit. “It was a brash idea and a terrible swing- the inflated pressure of the space suit made it so he could only swing with one hand.” Shepard and partner Edgar Mitchell were allotted four hours and ten minutes on the moon. With their tasks completed on time, they were given an extra half hour. Opportunity arises.

Scientifically, “he thought the golf shot would be a great opportunity to demonstrate gravitational and atmospheric differences between the Earth and the Moon, using a well-understood activity that hadn’t been done before.” That sounds really good, but with all due respect to (the-soon-to-be) Admiral Shepard, no one has ever fudged the truth for a chance to play golf. After all, this was a chance to hit a ball out of this world.

The head of a Wilson Staff six iron had been affixed to a collapsible contingency sample device. While live on television and the world (off into the distance) literally watching, Shepard announced “Houston you might recognize what I have in my hand…the handle for the contingency sample. It so happens to have a genuine six-iron on the bottom. In my left hand, I have a little white pellet that’s familiar to millions of Americans.”

“It’s a golf ball!” came a yell from a controller.

Parden this interruption, I am a retired high school social studies teacher. Nearly every day I did a current events activity along with ‘On this day’ historical events on that date. As a once avid golfer, I enjoyed discussing this and I prided myself on being a fairly knowledgeable teacher. I can’t pound a nail straight, but I can remember useless stuff- I have a very good memory.

Yet, in retrospect, I never gave the kids the right story. I guess I didn’t truly know what happened. At times, exaggerating the line from Shepard who said he ‘hit the ball for miles and miles.’ I said for quite some time, it’s still going because of gravity. Wrong. At other times I shared it never went off the ground because of his bulky suit. What really happened?

Shepard missed on his first swing. He had practiced as much as a moon-bound astronaut in training could, but no one could have prepared themselves for actually swinging at a golf ball on the lunar surface. Jack Nicklaus may not have had much more success under the circumstances.

After his whiff on his initial attempt, he commented “I got more dirt than ball.” Forgive me, perhaps Neil DeGrasse Tyson, not David Feherty can make the distinction between what was really ‘dirt’ or ‘moon dust.’ The second attempt was similar and Shepard assessed the third as a “shank.” We’ve all had them on earth. Finally, he had good contact and he hit the ball flush or ‘miles and miles.’

I found it fascinating the technology that has been utilized to measure the exact distance of the shot. Inconsistencies abound. Distances from forty yards to two hundred yards to two and a half miles have been estimated. Forty yards seems more accurate, and the golfer did not rake the moon’s surface before returning to the lunar module.

Once back on terra firma, the crew of Apollo 14 made the obligatory visit to the White House where President Richard Nixon “commended Shepard- and the ‘first celestial hole-in-one’ – by inducting him into the ‘distinguished order of lunar duffers.”

Shepard donated the club to the USGA at the 1974 U.S. Open at Winged Foot. It is on display in the USGA Golf Museum in Liberty Corner, N.J. That same year he retired from NASA and was involved in various business ventures including a Coors distributorship. He was also involved in charitable work.

He would be invited to play annually at the Bing Crosby Pro-Am, where he could commiserate with Frank Sinatra, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Palmer, and Jack Nicklaus on the 19th hole. It appears he was a better pilot than a golfer. In the early nineties, he and Louise purchased a cliffside home in Pebble Beach on the Cypress Point course. It’s fitting that the man who hit a golf ball on the moon spent his last years in one of the most prestigious golf communities in the country.

Shepard succumbed to Leukemia in 1998, with Louise dying of a heart attack just five weeks later. Their ashes were spread by a navy helicopter near their home and a golf course. In 2021, sixty years after her father went to space, daughter Laura Shepard Churchly flew aboard Jeff Bezo’s Blue Origin rocket ship into space.