I didn't actually see Tom Kite's golf ball strike the bird, but then neither did Tom Kite.

All Kite knew was that he had struck a seven iron about as well as he could hit it, but all of a sudden the ball came tumbling out of the sky, landed on the bank fronting the 17th green at Nashawtuc Country Club, and rolled into the water.

The golfer and his caddie, Sandy Jones, found it difficult to believe that they'd miscalculated that badly on their club selection, a view that was endorsed by playing partner Bruce Fleisher, who estimated that Kite's tee shot to the par-3 hole was destined to wind up no worse than 12 feet from the pin.

The avian angle had occurred to no one until the party reached the green, when a spectator told Kite his ball had collided with a bird in flight.

"Yeah, right," said Kite, who confessed to thinking "This is a guy who's sat up in the stands drinking Michelob way too long."

But by the time he had taken a penalty drop, chipped onto the green, and two-putted for a double-bogey five that effectively ended his pursuit of winner Larry Nelson in Sunday's final round of the FleetBoston Seniors' Classic, Kite had heard from half a dozen more spectators who thought they'd seen the same thing.

It was only then that the CNBC television people examined their footage of the episode and confirmed that there had indeed been a midair collision between Kite's Titlelist Pro V1 and a bird (subsequently identified as a purple martin) above the pond.

In replay, the ball appears to behave like a smart missle, tracking the path of the bird, which then plummets to earth. Once CNBC began to air the replay, the switchboards soon lit up with phone calls from bird-loving viewers concerned about the fate of the bird. Many of them pointed out that Nashawtuc, located a stone's thrown from Thoreau's Walden Pond, is but a two-minute drive from a Massachusetts Audobon Society shelter. This latter concern would appear to have been misplaced, for by all accounts the martin would appear to have been killed instantaneously.

The episode called to mind a well-chronicled incident earlier this year in which Randy Johnson, the hard-throwing Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher, uncorked a fastball that hit a pigeon halfway to the plate (video footage of that one showed the unfortunate bird literally exploding in a puff of feathers), the principal difference being that Johnson was not penalised for what was deemed outside interference.

Now, had Kite's ball struck, say, a telephone line or an electric wire, he would have been allowed to replay the shot without penalty, but dealing with nature and all her elements is endemic to Kite's sport, and there is no recourse to hitting a bird in flight.

"If a ball in motion is accidentally deflected or stopped by any outside agency, it is a rub of the green and the ball shall be played as it lies," say the Rules of Golf.

It was Kite's misfortune that the ball wound up lost in a hazard. "If it had been Tiger Woods," a friend remarked the next morning, "the ball would have hit the bird and fallen into the hole!"

The skies, which had been threatening all afternoon, had finally opened up just moments before Kite reached the 17th tee. "I've got 154 to carry the water and 162 to the hole. Just a nice, smooth, easy seven iron, and I hit a pretty good shot," he recalled the moment. "It was starting to rain and the wind was kicking up, and when the ball hit the bank and came back into the water, both Sandy and I saw it fall out of the sky. I'd thought at first it might have caught a gust of wind or something."

The 1997 Ryder Cup captain joined the Senior Tour last year, when a celebrated trio consisting of himself, Tom Watson, and Lanny Wadkins were supposed to breathe new life into the over50 circuit. Although he won two Senior events in 2000 and is among the statistical leaders in virtually every meaningful category, Kite has yet to win this year.

Like Watson, he has also continued to play the odd event on the regular Tour, particularly when it comes to the majors. Just a week earlier, Kite had fired a blistering 64 in the final round of the US Open at Southern Hills before rushing off to catch a flight for Boston and a two-week stay in Massachusetts that began with last week's FleetBoston event in Concord and continues with the US Senior Open which commences at Salem Country Club this morning.

When Kite signed his scorecard in Tulsa he was in 23rd place. By the time his plane crossed the Mississippi River he was tied for fifth, and the way things were going that day for Mssrs Goosen, Brooks, Cink, et al, it is not unfair to say that had the tournament lasted five more holes Kite might have won it in absentia.

Last Sunday he appeared well on his way to duplicating that final round performance. He had begun the day six under par, but gone out in 31 and picked up two more birdies on the back nine to find himself tied for the lead with Nelson with five holes left to play before he made bogey on the par-four 14th.

Even then, Kite reckoned that he was on track for another 64, possibly even 63, until his ball was intercepted by the bird. (The bird, of course, would probably maintain that precisely the opposite had occurred.)

At the conclusion of play, members of the Nashawtuc grounds crew returned to the site and recovered the remains of the offending avian, which had plummeted to earth and landed in the rough left of the pond. It was brought to the clubhouse, where it was identified by amateur ornithologists as a purple martin.

It wasn't Kite's first golf encounter with a bird, but it was certainly his untimeliest.

"You'll hit some birds from time to time," he said. "You know, seagulls out on the West Coast. They're flying all around Pebble Beach, and I've hit a couple of them. But it's unfortunate when you've got a chance to win a golf tournament and stuff like that happens."

Kite termed the incident "a bum break".

"With a little bit better luck, things could have happened," he sighed.

He was right, of course, but in bemoaning his misfortune he overlooked one thing. However unlucky he might have felt his day had been, the bird's luck was even worse.