A bizarre series of events resulted in ESPN reporter Michelle Beisner-Buck undergoing surgery Wednesday to repair a damaged nerve in her broken ankle, courtesy of a golf ball hit by her husband Joe Buck.
The “Monday Night Football” announcer was reported by colleague Adam Schefter to have “accidentally drove a golf ball into” his wife’s ankle. Details arrived in an incredible video posted by Buck himself, recorded while dropping Beisner-Buck off at surgery.
Buck explained the incident occurred on July 7 in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, where the couple decided to get a round of golf in before Buck competed in the American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament.
We’ll just let Buck take it away on the “total freak accident” that happened at the 10th hole:
“We got to 10 and I said ‘Why don’t I hit a couple of drives off 10, then we’ll go get something to eat?’ Well, 10 is a little left-to-right hole and Michelle has been known to do headstands during the course of our courtship and marriage, prior to even [their son] Joey arriving on the scene. So she did a headstand at the end of the tee box for good luck, out and to my left.
“At the exact moment that I was teeing off, she decided, with her feet in the air, to do the splits, thereby dropping her right leg a little bit to the side, right in my line of fire. I hit a golf ball, TaylorMade, with little designs on it, into the inside of her right ankle and shattered it.”
All of that might sound ridiculous, but let he or she who has not done the splits while in a headstand near the front of a tee box cast the first stone.
Unfortunately for Beisner-Buck, the damage was severe. She said not only was her ankle “shattered,” but the tibial nerve, a key nerve connecting to the foot, was also “severely” damaged. Nothing could reportedly be done to fix the nerve during her six weeks in a hard cast, and nerve blocks and lidocaine infusions have reportedly not worked.
Hence, surgery to decompress the nerve. The incident has apparently left Buck shaken as well, while his wife insisted it wasn’t his fault:
“Needless to say, my guilt is off the charts. I wake up still in the middle of the night hearing that sound and it makes me sick. It was a bad sound.”