Broadcasters at The Open Championship found themselves dealing with an unusual occupational hazard when a bat started wreaking havoc in their broadcast booth.

On the list of animals you would not want to be trapped in a confined space with, I'd probably put a wolverine, a hungry Great White Shark, and (speaking from experience) a gassy French bulldog toward the top, but I don't think bats would be too far outside the top three.

So I can understand why NBC's Dan Hicks and Kevin Kisner wouldn't be welcoming Earth's only mammal capable of sustained flight into their workspace.

There are two kinds of people when a bat invades an area like this. You could be like Hicks and start cracking up while waving your hands wildly to shoo the bat toward your broadcast partner.

Or, you could go the Kisner route and hide until the bat leaves, and who knows how long that could take. For all we know, the bat may have moved in, and Kisner is still cowering under that desk.

I feel for these guys because they were without what everyone knows is the greatest anti-bat weapon on Earth: a tennis racket.

I'm not really sure why — probably the significant surface area, which makes hitting a zig-zagging bat a little bit easier — but every story about someone getting a bat in their house includes the line, "…so I got the tennis racket out of the garage…"

The bat's only known weakness is a well-timed smack with a Wilson racket that hasn't seen any on-court action since the Bush administration.

Maybe even the Bush 41 administration…

I guess if a tennis racket isn't around you could probably use a cricket bat if you've got one of those (you don't), but Hicks and Kisner probably weren't going to have much luck finding a tennis racket in a broadcast booth on a golf course in Scotland, so they were left to their own devices.

Fortunatley, it appears they were no worse for wear.

No word on the bat, though, but with the absence of tennis rackets, I'm sure it's fine.