Hearing two similar stories that are unusual from your perspective in a short time creates the false impression of a trend.

but I'm not educated in either sinkholes or the ugly details of fracking. ?? Funny, I just made the connection a few days ago in my mind, and mused about it, wondering if sinkholes could happen here in the midwest. Turns out, I only had to wait a few days for my answer. Now I have to do some more digging into the matter.

Several decades ago, the Bealing PA Soccer team was playing a Soccer game, one of the players was doing a control kick of the ball down field, then you just saw the ball rolling, the player had fallen into a sink hole.

The Bealing soccer field was and is built over the old abandoned Bealing Coal mine. Thus there was no question what caused the sink hole.

By the way, under the rules of soccer the ball was still in play even as the player climbed out of the sink hole.

Out of sight, out of mind, and soon forgotten. Even knowing this, as you pointed out to me, it's just something I would never think about much.

Over time water eats away at the limestone and caves develop. Eventually as the cave gets bigger the topsoil above becomes thinner. Also, golf fairways have sand added both in construction and continually every year. So the soil was weak. Eventually this guys was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Fracking takes places thousands of feet below ground.

So, the short answer is this is in no way related to fracking.

The county where this course is at is the cave capital of Illinois.

This map included the entire St. Louis area, Missouri and Illinois. This entire area is chock full of underground caves/rivers/voids of all types. There is huge potential for sinkholes in the St. Louis area.

Most likely a natural phenomena, due to the landscape-altering strength of the huge Mississippi River.

and drinking water supplies. The interstitial space between grains of sand is usually filled with water. With groundwater extraction there is only air left in those spaces so the soil particles slip, the ground weakens and then subsides.

glad that he is around to tell his golf story.

Glad he wasn't seriously injured.

"While disturbing, such sinkholes aren't uncommon in southwestern Illinois, where old underground mines frequently cause the earth to settle. In Mihal's case, the sinkhole's culprit was subsurface limestone that dissolves from acidic rainwater, snowmelt and carbon dioxide, eventually causing the ground to collapse, said Sam Panno, a senior geochemist with the Illinois State Geological Survey.

That region ''is riddled with sinkholes,'' with as many as 15,000 recorded, Panno said"

(From the Fox Sports site)

Or one-in-a-hole, or something.

I might be pretty t'd off about it if I were him though.

Which club would you use for that? Wedge?