Posted: June 29, 2010 |(1) Comments

Bayside — Unless you were actually out on the golf course with Michael Kalloch on the day it happened, you have no idea whether his story is true - or whether he and his golfing buddy are just pulling your leg.

But spend five minutes talking to Kalloch and you'll likely walk away believing what the 50-year-old Bayside man has to say: that a golf ball he hit about 175 yards on the Mee-Kwon Park Golf Course in Mequon found its way into an evergreen and ultimately landed in small bird's nest, with the Titleist logo face up.

Kalloch, who works the night shift as a nurse at the Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center, was on the fifth hole of the county course on June 10 when his tee shot veered to the left and into the rough, he said.

His three golfing partners, who fared better on their first shots than Kalloch did, went ahead of him while he tracked down his ball.

"I hit my second hit long and it ended up going into a pine tree by the green," he recalled. "The guys I was playing with said they saw it go into a small of pine trees, which happens a lot. Balls get stuck in trees all the time."

After searching for the ball for a while, one of his friends saw that it had landed exactly in a bird's nest.

"I got to the tree and he pulled back a branch and there it was - in a nest about a foot-and-a-half off the ground," said Kalloch, who has been a regular golfer for about 16 years.

It was hard for even Kalloch to believe.

"I immediately accused someone of putting it there, but the guy who pulled the branch back and found it is a respectable guy," Kalloch said. "None of us believed it and we tried to figure out the chances of something like that happening."

The "respectable guy" who found the golf ball in the nest was Dennis Garrett, who quickly grabbed his iPhone and snapped a photo.

"I saw his ball bounce into or behind an evergreen tree," Garrett said. "When we looked for the ball, it was not immediately visible. I tried to look under the tree from the edge of the tree, but it was not easy. So I separated the branches and there was the ball.

"Unbelievable."

Dan McElroy, the pro shop manager at Mee-Kwon, said he has heard of golf balls landing in nests before, but never at his course.

"There was a ball in an eagle's nest in Florida once," McElroy said. "The odds are pretty high, but it's happened."

But, McElroy added: "That's not considered a birdie. Only a real egg is a birdie."

When Kalloch e-mailed the photo of the golf ball in the bird's nest to North Shore NOW, there was some skepticism in the newsroom about how the ball could travel 175 yards and wind up in a bird's nest that was about 4 inches in diameter.

And Kalloch understands those who may doubt his story.

"If someone showed me that photo, I'd say, 'Right. Sure.' It was hard to believe," he said.

And while that day on the fifth hole is something he'll never forget, Kalloch has just one regret:

"I would have much preferred a hole in one."