I don’t get out to the links much, but one time I was out this foursome behind us got too eager to tee off. The last of our foursome was just taking his second shot, a solid five-iron to the green, when their first guy’s tee shot dropped out of the sky less than ten feet away.
My golfin’ buddy made his shot to the green, then changed clubs, dropped two fresh balls out of his pocket, and cleared the tee with ‘return fire’ from his “Big Bertha”.
We had a very quiet round, after that, and, “No,” they did NOT ask to play through.
I DID learn, early on, that it’s not always the guys down range of the tee who are in greatest danger. One course I’ve played has a tee very close to an adjacent road. They put in a chain link fence with 4” diameter posts alongside the tee to shield the road, and it extended some 25 feet beyond the position of the ladies’ tee, about 20 feet off to the side. Well, one of the guys I was with, on this particular day, toed the ball off of his driver stright “BING!!!” into that last fence pole, and it came hissing right back through where we were standing by the bench off to the side of the tee. Nobody said a word; we all just looked at each other. Finally one of the guys looked over to the guy on the tee and asked, “So, you’re takin’ a Mulligan?”
1) Decide they are way, way out of your range, take one less club, and swing easy whizzing your ball right through them.
2) Wait until they are off the hole to make sure they are out of range and then chunking your ball so it rolls 20 feet.
Ask me how I know.