Giant Hippo Visits A Golf Course To See How Are The Golfers Doing

“You don’t intimidate an animal like that. It intimidates you."

Damjan

• Published in Animals
• September 9, 2021

One of the reasons people love golfing is that it's always played in a wonderful environment. And even though it is engineered and adjusted to suit a specific purpose, golf courses have their own ecosystems and some ecosystem inhabitants are much larger than others.

Golfing makes us feel closer to nature, but one animal obviously thought that it's not close enough- one giant hippo saw the golfers having fun and dropped by to say hi.

Ockie Annandale and his friends were playing golf and had just approached the 11th hole at Richards Bay Country Club in South Africa when they saw something big and grey coming up the path. It was a local hippo who lives in a lake at the center of the course.

"There are quite a few hippos in there, but they normally come out to forage at night," Annandale says. "This big boy had come out during the day. We saw him near the edge of the green."

The hippo was calmly eating some flesh-cut grass, and Annandale and his friends decided to try and continue their game without disturbing the animal.

“We were seeing if he’d let us putt,” Annandale says. “But the hippo went onto the green and started messing with the flag. My friend actually said, ‘Look, he’s going to take the flag out for you!’”

Watch the video here:

To give us some perspective on the animal’s size, he points out that the flag that the hippo chomped on is actually about six feet tall.

The golfers had no hard feelings – their game was delayed for just a couple of minutes, but they were given a fantastic experience. “It was great. It was awesome!” Annandale added: “My friend and I both made birdies on that hole, by the way.

Damjan