Palace's Jason Puncheon strolled up to the spot at Spurs in January, 48 hours after tempting/goading fate with some Twitter banter aimed at Norwich's Bradley Johnson: "Do you want me to give you some penalty lessons??" He sliced, skied and shanked it.
Imagine my embarrassment on the first when I took a nine-iron approach to the green and shanked it viciously in the direction of Ian, who was standing only a couple of yards in front of me.
Sport is rarely interesting to an outsider but Wallace knows how to fix our attention: "There's Nadal's habit of constantly picking his long shorts out of his bottom as he bounces the ball before serving, his way of always cutting his eyes warily from side to side as he walks the baseline, like a convict expecting to be shanked".
With his forehand sometimes looking as uncertain as a club player's (he hit the balls long, wide, into the bottom of the net, shanked them off the frame, and nearly fanned one), and with his surgically precise topspin backhand often failing him, Federer somehow didn't panic.
In a match for Everton against Tottenham Hotspur in late February, he shanked a laughably easy shot right in front of the goalmouth, in what the British football press pronounced "the miss of the season".
"One got caught and shanked up".
In this, the strangest season of his N.F.L. career, David Akers connected on a 63-yard field goal, nearly shanked his way out of employment in San Francisco, underwent treatment for a double hernia injury, received death threats on social media, shuttered his Twitter account and won a job competition that took place before the playoffs started.
Coughlin said he did not instruct Bradshaw to stop short before the play, preferring to take the guaranteed points and not play for a last-second winning field goal when something could go wrong, like a bad snap or a shanked kick.
Otherwise, the 49ers' only other hope would have been if Koch shanked his punt after the safety.
Chicago (6-1) toveroner on the Carolina 38 after Brad Nortman shanked a 6-yard punt, and Cutler connected with Kellen Davis on a 12-yard scoring pass with a little less than seven minutes left.
He shanked kicks with alarming regularity, missed right and left and short, but left most often.
