Dodging wayward golf balls on the streets outside Baltusrol

SPRINGFIELD, N.J. — Shunpike Road is a pleasant, tree-shaded North Jersey road lined with neatly manicured lawns fronting well-kept postwar ranch homes. But don’t let the idyllic suburban calm fool you: Shunpike Road is also the site of a relentless assault — an assault of Titleists and Callaways and Bridgestones, pinging off cars and driveways and trees up and down the street.

Shunpike Road, you see, runs parallel to the first tee of the Lower Course of Baltusrol Golf Club, and to put it mildly, not everyone who plays at the club is arrow-straight with their first swing.

“All the time,” one resident said when asked how often balls fly onto the street, and “all the time” also includes this week, when the greatest golfers in the world are in town for the PGA Championship.

Phil Mickelson stepped to the first tee on Friday afternoon and, as Phil is wont to do, launched his shot a cinematically far distance out of bounds. A blimp camera — the only one in position to track the horrifically bad shot — caught the ball bouncing on the street and skipping across a driveway into a thick stand of ivy.

Within minutes, a crew of a half dozen or so — including golf fans who left the course, residents who lived nearby, a photographer, and two reporters — was combing the bushes looking for that elusive ball. They played cell-phone video of the shot over and over, combing it with Zapruder-esque mania and comparing it to the yards before them — “there’s the mark on the street, there’s the two driveways, there’s the bush — it’s gotta be in there!”

Zach Freeman, a recent grad of Dayton High School, was the first to strike paydirt, finding a ball amid the ivy. Alas, it was a Titleist 6 with the stamp “PILGRIM” on it; Phil plays Callaways. Strike one.

Jim Birch, a mailman and a volunteer at the tournament who lives a couple blocks away, wandered over on his lunch break after seeing Shunpike on his TV. He too pulled a ball from the bushes, but he too drew a Titleist. Strike two.

A few houses down, a kid named John Maniace yelped; he found a ball sitting right out on the front lawn. A groan went through the bush searchers, but no … it was yet another Titleist, one that looked far more beaten down than a pro’s ball. Strike three.

And then, right as the searchers were ready to disband, a shout and a ping – another ball came bouncing right down the street courtesy of one of the players teeing off at 3:00 p.m. It bounced right into the hands of Mara Friedman, a nearby resident who was on the phone asking her husband to use the TV replay to help guide the crew toward paydirt.

The searchers didn’t even have time to regroup when another ball came flying over the green wall separating the course from the road. A quick check confirmed that the balls were the exact same – twin Titleist 7s – meaning that someone was having a very, very bad start to their day. (Consultation with fans inside the fence confirmed that it was Nicolas Colsaerts who had sent both balls wide.)

The final score: five balls found, two caught while still rolling. Phil’s ball remains lost to history, whether grabbed by an opportunistic passerby or buried deep in Jersey ivy, no one knows.

So the lesson, then, is this: Shunpike Road is apparently Baltusrol’s equivalent of Waveland Avenue, the street that runs behind Wrigley Field where fans gather to catch homers. We’re not saying you should wander over there waiting to pounce on wayward golf balls, but we’re not saying you’ll go away disappointed if you do, either.

“You’re better off doing this,” Friedman said, “than playing Pokemon Go.”

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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports and the author of EARNHARDT NATION, on sale now at Amazon or wherever books are sold. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.