The tiniest of twigs caused Englishman Matt Wallace considerable bother in the second round of the Valspar Championship. Thankfully for him, his honesty about the rules was matched by his own resilience.<\/p>\n
Wallace was playing the par-5 11th hole of Innisbrook\u2019s Copperhead Course on Friday when he drove into pine straw and leaves. As he readied for his shot, he saw his ball move ever so slightly. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis one twig was sticking out, and I think when I was waggling the ball definitely moved,\u201d Wallace recalled after the round. \u201cDidn\u2019t know whether it was in the action of my swing or anything, but I definitely touched it, and then the ball moved from that.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I had to replace it \u2026 didn\u2019t think I would be standing here making the cut after that. But a good bit of karma and managed to make some birdies coming in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet again we have an example of a player calling a penalty on himself when no one else would have had a clue what happened. Wallace couldn\u2019t remember if he\u2019d ever needed to take such an action.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was thinking back after, from the time I did it to walking to the next shot, I was like, \u2018Has that ever happened?\u2019 I don\u2019t think it\u2019s ever happened,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Impressively, Wallace recovered on the 11th to make a par, and then he made birdies at 14, 15 and 17 to shoot 68 and make the weekend. On Saturday, he double bogeyed the par-5 fifth, but bounced back with three birdies on the back nine, shot 70 and was tied for 27th as play continued.<\/p>\n
Wallace, 35, missed the cut at the Valspar last year, but he previously finished T-7 in 2023 and T-17 in \u201924. A solid finish this week would be big for him, since the one-time tour winner had missed the cut in three of his first four starts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one of my favorite courses that we play. It\u2019s so hard,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cNo one\u2019s going to get away from you. You need to play well no matter what. You\u2019re not going to breathe around here. So I still feel like I\u2019ve got a chance to make a run at this weekend. \u2026 That\u2019s the big part for me is not just about this week, it\u2019s about playing well. I\u2019ve got three events coming up now that I like, so carry that on and hopefully get in contention at the weekend at some point.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The tiniest of twigs caused Englishman Matt Wallace considerable bother in the second round of the Valspar Championship.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[4225,64,63,755,138747,44,85],"class_list":["post-560518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-article","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-golf-digest","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}