A small one-engine plane made an emergency landing at a Plano golf course on Thursday afternoon, bogeying the fourth hole.
The small, newly rebuilt 1964 Cessna 172 landed in a sand trap at the Prestonwood Country Club at about 4 p.m.
"I did what I could do," Lance Sparks, the pilot, said. "The winds were real strong today, and at our altitude, we were dropping fast."
Sparks said engine failure and a strong head wind caused him to miss the runway at nearby Airpark Dallas by about 500 feet.
"I realized that there was enough room here to get stopped without injuring anyone else, and it would be the safest place to put her down," he said.
Kaylee Connell saw the plane while she was playing in her back yard and ran to tell her father.
"I said, 'I saw a plane come down,'" she said.
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"It's not the normal thing to come out of a 5-year-old's mouth, not at all, but when the rest of the kids came from the park, we knew something had happened," Kaylee's father, Kevin Connell, said.
The only damage? Golf games were cut short on an 80-degree day. Sparks walked out of the cockpit on his own, and no one on the ground was injured.
As with any emergency landing, an investigation will be conducted to determine what went wrong.
