Snake in golf course hole will make you question golfing ever again - Chron.com

Anyone who visits golf courses regularly knows that sometimes Mother Nature wants to join them on the links, whether it is local wildlife or a torrential rainstorm forcing you into the clubhouse for the rest of your afternoon to nurse a beer.

Superintendent Ed Martinez at The Clubs of Kingwood at Deerwood golf course just north of Houston says that an employee of his found more than a golf ball at the bottom of a cup while tending to the course last week.

Martinez says it was actually one of his workers that took the photo, but it was he that later tweeted the photo out from his personal account. Some people in the golf business saw the photo and then various golf news outlets found it and soon even the Golf Channel was asking Martinez about the find.

Martinez says his employee found the snake, coiled up under the bottom of the cup. Had the snake not been found it could have made for interesting and painful morning for a member.

“We see snakes all the time on the course but never one caught under the cup. Sometimes we found dead ones in the cups though,” says Martinez, who is deathly afraid of snakes. 

The three-foot snake was placed, live and well, near a local water hazard, away from the usual paths members take.

Frogs have been found in the cups after heavy rains, Martinez says, so it’s possible that he was going after lunch and got stuck inside.

Last April a much larger snake than the one in the hole was found in a pump house on the course.

Seeing deer, coyotes, possums, wild hogs, and various reptiles and amphibians are rather normal for groundskeepers at golf courses, especially very large courses. The attraction of large, well-groomed areas with water sources makes finding food all the more easier.

Hogs do a lot of damage to the greens, Martinez says, so pest management tactics need to be deployed to remedy the situation.

Earlier this month photos of a large alligator at the Myakka Pines Golf Club in Englewood, Florida captivated social media, with the giant golf course resident hogging weird news headlines for days.

Martinez says that he’s seen gators at other courses he has worked at over his career, but never at Deerwood.

As for a snake problem, Martinez says that there isn’t one at his course as he sees it, though one time a water moccasin literally got stuck inside a golf cart at Deerwood. The game was cut short that day and a mechanic had to take apart a portion of the cart to get the snake loose.

Most snakes though, he says, wouldn’t stand a chance against a member’s 3-iron.