The 30-year-old Victorian finished tied for sixth place after risking everything over the last two holes to try to pick up the two birdies which he thought would earn him a play-off place against American Cameron Young.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, though, another wayward drive at the 17th quickly put paid to that hope and the LIV Golf star ended up with a bogey that pushed him down to finish in joint-sixth place, one spot outside the top-five berth that would have guaranteed him a start in all four of the majors next season.<\/p>\n
“I am into St Andrews next year; that’s the best Open to play,” smiled Herbert about his week’s work, which had also included a place in the record books for shooting the joint-lowest round ever in a men’s major, a second-round 62.<\/p>\n
“But I’ve missed the top five, which would have got me into all the majors. But it was a great experience, the whole week.<\/p>\n
“I can’t be too upset. A lot of positives to take. It’s my best finish in a major. I genuinely contended, I was up around the lead for the last 45 holes. There’s a lot to take away from that. I’ve learned so much this week.<\/p>\n
“It’s annoying that we’re 12 months away from the next major I’m going to play.”<\/p>\n
The key moment came as he talked to his caddie Nick Pugh before tackling the par-five penultimate hole.<\/p>\n
“The conversation was, ‘I need to make a three,'” said Herbert. “As much as I wanted to finish top-five, all the majors and all that, I still had a tournament to win that I was very much in. So that was why I went pretty aggressive with driver.”<\/p>\n
But just as on Saturday night, Herbert’s bold approach ended with him driving wild; straight into the thick rough, which effectively ensured bogey.<\/p>\n
“Just really struggled with the driver today. Ironically, I felt quite comfortable over it, just couldn’t get it to go straight when I needed it to,” he shrugged.<\/p>\n
“That one stings, but I’ll learn a lot.”<\/p>\n
With three birdies and four bogeys in his uneven round, he added: “Just couldn’t really get any momentum going. Every time I made a birdie, I backed it up with a bogey.”<\/p>\n
Herbert admitted the top-five spot was on his mind, as he had a couple of mates who would have gone to the 2023 Masters if he’d qualified for that edition in Augusta. Instead, he didn’t make it, missing out on a place by just one position in the world rankings.<\/p>\n
“They’ve been in line for four years now. So I was kind of thinking about them, and I’m already looking forward to the texts I’m going to get in that group chat!” he smiled.<\/p>\n
“But it was a great week. Can’t lose my mind too much about it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 30-year-old Victorian finished tied for sixth place after risking everything over the last two holes to try…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-811179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811179","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=811179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}