The worst break of all

[Philippe Binette]

Have you seen Charles Howell III's ball hit the cup and bounce back in the water when an eagle would have sent him in a playoff or maybe win the championship...

Is it one of the worst break in the history of the game... I know it was not for a major but...

Now the cup and flag are an hazard... Golf is getting difficult...

[CHrisB]

That was the worst break I've ever seen or heard of in golf... It's one thing to be Greg Norman and have the bad luck of other people (Tway, Mize, Gamez, Frost, ...) pulling off some of the shots they did to beat him, but it's something else completely to hit a great shot at the right time and have that happen. He handled it well, though...

That ball flew into the hole...had it stayed in he would have been -16 and Tiger/Lehman would have been on #14 knowing they had to play the last 5 holes in 1 under to tie...

[JESII]

Doesn't the story go that Hogan aimed away from flagsticks for exactly this reason.

Hell, who tries to fly a ball into tha hole anyway?

[Michael Moore]

The worst break I have heard about is the dude who missed at Q school by one stroke when his three footer rolled cleanly into the cup, bounced off the bottom of the cup, and returned to the putting surface.

That's cold.

[TEPaul]

What happened to Howell's ball yesterday has nothing to do with bad breaks and everything to do with the extreme comprehensive psychological power of Tiger Woods which includes such things as hyper-kinetics! You all might think he makes his own luck? He does but he totally influences the luck of those in contention with him if you haven't noticed in the last six or so years! We're talking the second coming of Christ here folks---this is some serious NuNuNU stuff going on here. You guys might laugh about what Earl said about him!

You shouldn't!

Tiger is the new Black, Indian, Caucasian, Thai messiah! Did I forget anything? What was it Tiger used to call himself---something like "Cablasian"? Now he's even got Scandanavian on his side.

[Evan Fleisher]

The worst break I have heard about is the dude who missed at Q school by one stroke when his three footer rolled cleanly into the cup, bounced off the bottom of the cup, and returned to the putting surface.

That's cold.

Good call!  I remember that one from a few years back and it was dumbfounding to watch that short putt dissapear into the heart of the cup at a reasonable speed to have the thing pop straight up and back out of the hole...but 'dems 'da breaks!!!

[George Pazin]

What really made that putt worse, IMHO, is that the cup was set in the ground poorly, at an angle, if memory serves.

[Andy Doyle]

Guy's name was Joe Daley - I think it was the 2000 Tour School.  If I recall correctly, it happened on the 17th hole when he had just 1 hole left to par to earn his card.  I believe the cup/hole liner was slightly ajar, and the ball hit the edge and bounced back out.

I remember all of this because of the magnitude of this tragedy.  I don't know how these guys who play for a living are able to keep from killing themselves.

AD

[JESII]

It was Joe Daley and it was on the 17th hole, but it was during the third or fourth of six rounds, not the penultimate hole.
Amazingly however, he was about 14 under par at that point in the tournament and in the top 5, the putt that went in/not was for bogey or double. He finished the 6 rounds at the same number he started that 17th hole and it was one stroke too many.

Probably the worst thing I have heard of on a golf course, especially when you look back a few years later and see the trajectory his career was on compared to where it is.

 

[Dan Kelly]

CA(ucasian)BL(ack)IN(dian)ASIAN.

Cablinasian.

[JakaB]

I(rrational)R(acist)I(ncoherant)S(hort dicked)H(omophobe)

Irish

[TEPaul]

Dan:

Tiger said he came up with that word (Cablinasian) all by himself so not only is he the second coming of Christ I guess he's a helluva wordsmith too, huh?

John B:

You're Irish, right?

[Gerry B]

The late Payne Stewart received a bad break during the final round at Olympic at the 1998 US Open. His tee shot came to rest in a sandy divot and after much discussion was not granted relief by the USGA. He  bogeyed the hole - probably cost him the tourney - not to mention that Friday pin placement on 18 -where his short downhill putt came to rest 30 feet past the hole. At least he was vindicated the following year when he won his second US Open at Pinehurst.

[Philippe Binette]

A sandy divot is not a bad break...

I am a huge fan of Payne Stewart but...
On the divot situation at Olympic, Payne did two things wrong:

1) Bad attitude toward the situation, he didn't accept the lie life had given to him. A ball in a divot happens that's it...

2) He still went for the flag... With a lot of green to the left. Payne went for the flag when I knew, as everybody knows on Tour, that a divot lie will create a weak right ball...

It was not a bad break in itself... Payne made it believe so..

[JakaB]

Don't forget...the great Tom Meeks put Payne on the clock for slow play during the divot situation....little did he know that Payne's time would soon run out..

The slow play warning has to rank as one of the greatest rulings in the history of golf...

[Allan Long]

Daley's break was bad, but I believe it hit the liner of the cup and came out, not the bottom. Speaking of the effect on his career, what about Taylor Smith? Who you say? He was the guy DQ'd at Disney (after either going to win or be in a playoff with Tiger) a few years back when his putter grip was non-conforming. His bad break was unlike Howell's or Daley's because it could have been avoided by knowing the rules.

However, regardless or not if HE made his own bad break, that is one guy who really got hurt by it, and has fallen off the map.

[JakaB]

Shivas,

The only hole I watched this weekend was the last one...did you see Tiger's routine before he fanned the 3 iron...his slow play has to compound the possibility of a choke.   I'm getting ready to go play 18 with three Pally Walnut Union BA's...they only thing I'm gonna tell them about the cold is play fast and we will be ok...this could get ugly if a guy starts taking practice swings at 32 degs...

[Philippe Binette]

Shivas, you don't get the slow play rule right...

To have a penalty for slow play, this is what you need to do...

1) Being called out of position, which is on the PGATOUR, having a full hole behind the group in front... If you are out of position, then the clock starts tiking...

2) Then, you have to play a shot that takes more than 45 seconds, from the time you're ready to play...

So, Tiger, like most of the time on Tour, can take more than 45 seconds because they are not called out of position.

Word of a caddie who has been in this situation many times...

[JESII]

Shivas

Are you certain they take 5 hours to play on the weekends? My experience has been that they do play in under 4 hours most of the time.

Thursday and Friday are a problem, 5.5 hours for the last players to finish.

[John_Cullum]

2 years ago at a Junior tournament, a friend I were serving as rules officials. They played in threesomes carrying their own bags (girls and boys) at Sea Island Plantation, hardly a lay down course.

We both noted a threesome of Jr. Girls carrying their own bags finished in less than 4 hours.

Professional pace of play is horrible.

[A.G._Crockett]

2 years ago at a Junior tournament, a friend I were serving as rules officials. They played in threesomes carrying their own bags (girls and boys) at Sea Island Plantation, hardly a lay down course.

We both noted a threesome of Jr. Girls carrying their own bags finished in less than 4 hours.

Professional pace of play is horrible.

John C.,
If you were working an AJGA tournament, you saw the very best pace of play system in the golf world.  The AJGA sets up various timing stations around the course, and groups are timed on particular holes based on standards determined by the Committee before play starts.  A group which misses those standards is given a card, which they can get rid of later by speeding up their total time for the round.  If they still have a card when the round ends, they are assessed penalties.  It works wonderfully.

If you want to see the worst pace of play in the world, bar none, go to an NCAA tournament.  Far, far worse than the PGA or the worst group at your club.  The AJGA method was devised to NOT mirror what the NCAA does.

Also, for what it is worth, they were playing in threesome's at Torrey on Sunday.  

[JESII]

Shivas

I think if we look into this coming weekend we will find out that they play in under 4 hours on the weekend. I am not making excuses for them, because how long do you think it would take you and I to play 18 holes? I bet 3 hours would be on the high side if were playing the same course as them with something riding on it. The fact remains, all of your points above are accurate as to why they should be able to play faster than they actually do, but the Tour has not pushed it on them to an extreme degree, and really why should they?

Sully

[John_Cullum]

AG

It was not AJGA. It was the Georgia PGA Junior Tour. The tournaments are conducted in the same manner as the Ga. PGA Section events, including hole location sheets, marking hazards, and rules officials on the course. Unlike most PGA sections, the GA section is absolute with its pace of play policy.

Our group does a number of NCAA events as well, and we put them under the same pace rules, and they do adhere to them because we have shown we will enforce them. It just takes rules officials with the balls to do it.

[A.G._Crockett]

AG

It was not AJGA. It was the Georgia PGA Junior Tour. The tournaments are conducted in the same manner as the Ga. PGA Section events, including hole location sheets, marking hazards, and rules officials on the course. Unlike most PGA sections, the GA section is absolute with its pace of play policy.

Our group does a number of NCAA events as well, and we put them under the same pace rules, and they do adhere to them because we have shown we will enforce them. It just takes rules officials with the balls to do it.

You are absolutely correct.  Players, especially young ones, will do exactly what they are expected to do IF you hold the line and enforce the penalties.  BTW, its possible some of my HS players were in that tournament.  Hope that they played fast and played well!

[JohnV]

A few years ago, a PGA Tour official came to a Rules workshop that I was at and said that they usually play 18 holes in 4:35 for groups of 3 and 3:45 for pairs.

I worked a AJGA event last year and I do like their pace of play policy.  It might be the best I've seen for getting groups to keep up and to catch up.  The only negative I have with it and pace of play policy being used by a lot of associations out west is that they penalize the entire group when it might be one or two players who are the problem.  This can be unfair to the fast player who is stuck with 2 or 3 slow ones (especially bad in groups of 4).  I know that the AJGA policy includes the right of a player to request that the group be timed so that the slow ones are caught, but I think that it would be pretty difficult for a kid to ask for that.

The real way to get players around fast is to set the pace of play strict enough and to have enough qualified rules officials who are willing to time AND penalize slow players.