Watch: Ja Rule loves golf but he had a case of the shanks on Tuesday

NASSAU, Bahamas – Ja Rule nearly took me out at the Derek Jeter Invitational celebrity shootout at Baha Mar Resort.

Who knew that the rapper, singer and actor was a golfer too?

I found out on Monday night at a kickoff party for the charity fundraiser for the Turn 2 Foundation, Jeter's non-profit to empower young people and keep them away from negative influences, where Ja Rule was scheduled to perform along with D-Nice on Tuesday night. 

I was hanging out at Jon Batiste’s Jazz Club at the popular resort where the event was being held when someone bellied up to the bar next to me. DiMarco told me he wasn’t playing in the tournament the next morning but rather would be riding around with Ja Rule, who he works with as his personal DJ. Before long, he invited me to come over to meet the rapper, who he said had become hooked on the game. How did that happen? “Covid,” Ja Rule said. “There was nothing else to do. I bought me a set.”

Just in the last few months, he’s played and performed at tournaments hosted by DJ Khaled, baseball great David Ortiz and now Jeter. Early next year, he’s scheduled to play at the Birds Nest at the PGA Tour’s WM Phoenix Open. Before we parted ways, he told me, “Tell them I’m the best hip-hop golfer.”

Ja Rule says he’s a 15 handicap and a member of his pro-am team told me he played the first four holes more like a 5 handicap. Then the bottom fell out. More like a 40 handicap from there. But it was during the celebrity shootout that Ja Rule took a couple practice swings and shanked his tee shot at the 12^th hole in a closest-to-the-pin contest. It hit a photographer working for Jeter’s foundation standing just in front of me in his elbow, who told me later that he’s been shooting golf for 40 years and he’d never been hit before. Anthony Mackie, better known as the Captain America actor, also hit a spectator with a line drive foul ball. 

It wasn’t their best moment but both he and Ja Rule are golfers and proved with their mishits that they are one of us.