By Brian Boone
Everybody makes mistakes. Even professional golfers. And even during important tournaments they had a shot at winning. In celebration of National Golf Day, here’s a look back at some of the sport’s most fantastic flubs and failures.
Golfer: Hale Irwin
Tournament: 1983 British Open
Whoops: All Irwin had to do to finish up his third round was tap in the ball from a distance of about two inches. Seeing it as no big deal, Irwin attempted to knock the ball in with his putter, one-handed. But he missed — he’d been so casual that he’d hit the ground, not the ball. That counted as an extra stroke, and the next day, after the fourth and final round, Irwin lost the British Open to Tom Watson… by one stroke.
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Golfer: David Toms
Tournament: 2003 Wachovia Championship
Whoops: On the 72nd and final hole of the tournament, Toms sat in first place by a seemingly insurmountable six shots. Challenge accepted. Toms’ first shot off the tees wound up in the woods, his second in a bunker, and then his third and fourth shots got him closer to the green. And then it took him four putts to finish. Somehow, Toms still won the Wachovia Championship — but just barely.
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Golfer: Jean Van de Velde
Tournament: 1999 British Open
Whoops: It was a foregone conclusion that Van de Velde would win the tournament, as he approached the last hole of the whole thing with a comfortable three-stroke lead. (They’d even started to engrave his name on the trophy.) On his first shot, Van De Velde missed the fairway and his ball wound up in the rough. On his second shot, he hit the bleachers and was stuck in the rough once more. Then he hit the ball into a water hazard, retrieved the ball, and took a penalty stroke to place the ball in a strikable place. The next shot hit a bunker, then it took Van de Velde one more to get onto the green, and then he putted it in. That meltdown eliminated Van de Velde’s lead and put him into a playoff with Paul Lawrie, who won the four-hole mini-match by three.
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Golfer: Dustin Johnson
Tournament: 2015 U.S. Open
Whoops: If Johnson completed a relatively easy (for a pro) 12-foot putt on the last green of the last hole of the last tourney day, he’d win the U.S. Open, his first Major. But he biffed it. No worries — if he got the ball in on his next shot, he’d trigger a playoff with Jordan Spieth. He biffed that, too. Speith won the U.S. Open outright.
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Golfer: Rory McIlroy
Tournament: 2011 Masters
Whoops: At the beginning of the fourth day of this iteration of most prestigious event in professional golf, McIlroy was four strokes of four other golfers. Little errors throughout the fourth round added up, and by the time McIlroy approached the final nine holes, he was up by just one stroke. Then he really started to falter — three strokes over par on hole no. 10, one stroke over on hole no. 11, two strokes over (because of a four-putt fiasco) on hole no. 12, and one stroke over on hole no. 15. When it was all over, Charl Schwartzel had won the Masters; McIlroy finished in a tie for fifteenth place.