Golf history is usually made not over a whole career but with a single shot or decision. Both good and bad, a golfer\u2019s life can often be defined by \u201cwhat might have been.\u201d If only real golf had mulligans, do-overs, second chances.<\/p>\n
The best example for those of us of a certain age was the 8-iron second shot to the 72nd green at Turnberry in 2009 struck by\u2014egad!\u2014a 59-year-old Tom Watson. It hit a hard spot, bounded over the green, and Tom took three from the edge that kept him from winning a sixth\u00a0Open Championship. My esteemed colleague Jaime Diaz argues it wasn\u2019t the 8-iron he needed the mulligan on but the decision to putt the long one. \u201cOut of fear, he putted it,\u201d says Diaz, \u201cwhen he should have trusted his great chipping and popped up a little wedge.\u201d An up-and-down would have galvanized a generation of gray heads forever.<\/p>\n
Historically, one of golf\u2019s greatest misses has to be Sam Snead\u2019s second on the par-5 final hole at Philadelphia Country Club in the 1939 U.S. Open going for the green in two thinking he needed a birdie to win and making a triple-bogey 8, when a pitch-out par would have taken the title. Four-times a runner-up, Snead never won the Open.<\/p>\n
Or maybe it was Arnold Palmer\u2019s seven-foot par putt he left short on the 71st hole at Olympic in the 1966 U.S. Open for the greatest collapse of his or anyone\u2019s career (leading by seven strokes with nine holes to play). Romantics might say it was Ben Hogan\u2019s third shot to the 71st hole at Cherry Hills that spun back into the water, but it gave a charging Arnie the 1960 U.S. Open, and that was even a better story.<\/p>\n
In modern times, Jean Van de Velde botched the 18th hole at Carnoustie in the 1999 Open when he tried to get on in regulation, though a lay-up would have won. Van de Who? You could also take your pick of Greg Norman\u2019s approach shots flared to the right on 18 to lose a Grand Slam of majors.<\/p>\n
The last hole at Winged Foot posed a mulligan situation for two players in the 2006 U.S. Open\u2014Phil Mickelson foozled his driver into a trash can on another fairway while Colin Montgomerie butchered his 7-iron approach. Both made double bogeys when par would have won for either player. (Honestly, the mulligan I\u2019d propose for Mickelson would be when he passed on the Bob Jones Award for Sportsmanship a decade ago\u2014the only person ever to say no to the USGA\u2019s highest honor\u2014which seemed to signal the beginning of a downward spiral that only has accelerated since.)<\/p>\n
MORE:\u00a0Why nobody goes to golf museums<\/p>\n
The most heart-breaking stroke might have been I.K. Kim\u2019s one-foot putt she missed on the 72nd of the 2012 Kraft Nabisco (now Chevron) that cost her a major, losing in a playoff to Sun Young Yoo. Who\u2019s counting, but Hale Irwin whiffed a two-inch tap-in in the third round of the 1983 Open at Birkdale and lost by one. Maybe Doug Sanders\u2019 yipped two-and-a-half footer on the last hole at St. Andrews to lose the 1970 Open or Scott Hoch\u2019s two-footer on the first playoff hole of the 1989 Masters weren\u2019t so bad.<\/p>\n
You might say Curtis Strange was offered a mulligan in the 1985 Masters when he arrived at the 13th hole with a three-stroke lead in the final round and went for the green in two, coming up short in the water, and then did it again at the 15th hole, losing to Bernhard Langer by two chokes. Speaking of water balls, Jordan Spieth\u2019s splash on the 12th hole in the 2016 Masters robbed him of back-to-back Masters at age 22 and obviously a different career trajectory. Surely 21-year-old Rory McIlroy\u2019s hooked tee shot into the cabins on the 10th hole in the 2011 Masters would have made his Grand Slam career even grander.<\/p>\n
Shots you witness in person carry more weight, so for me I\u2019ll never forget Langer in \u201cthe War by the Shore\u201d at Kiawah when he missed a six-footer on the last hole to tie the match with Hale Irwin and lose the 1991 Ryder Cup, 14\u00bd-13\u00bd. Given a mulligan, I can say with certainty the German would not have missed.<\/p>\n
You might argue the worst miscarriage of justice was the 2017 ANA Inspiration when a TV viewer emailed to report a misplaced drop from the previous day costing Lexi Thompson a four-stroke penalty and what surely would have been her second official major. Can you get a mulligan on a rules violation? Just ask Dustin Johnson who grounded his club in a bunker he didn\u2019t think was a bunker for a penalty that cost him the 2010 PGA at Whistling Straits. If you could use a pencil for a mulligan, Roberto De Vicenzo\u2019s scorecard error in the 1968 Masters has to be in the photo finish. The oddest mulligan might be a wardrobe malfunction that Nancy Lopez blamed for costing her the 1977 U.S. Women\u2019s Open (the title she never won): a broken zipper on her favorite blue shorts that was such a distraction she never could focus on her round and finished two shots behind Hollis Stacy.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the anti-mulligan\u2014the shot pros would NOT want to play over. One that immediately comes to mind is my old pal Jerry Pate\u2019s 5-iron from the rough over water on the 72nd hole at Atlanta Athletic Club with a one-stroke lead in the 1976 U.S. Open. The 22-year-old hit it to two feet and won by two. Among the old-timers, you\u2019d have to include Gene Sarazen\u2019s double-eagle \u201cshot heard round the world\u201d in the second Masters, or Lee Trevino\u2019s flagstick-rattling chip-in for par on the 71st hole at Muirfield in the 1972 Open that Tony Jacklin called \u201cdaylight robbery.\u201d The same could be said for Watson\u2019s pitch-in at the 71st hole of the 1982 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. Seve\u2019s repeatedly punching the air after holing a 12-footer at the end of the 1984 Open Championship at St. Andrews became his seminal moment. But the one that\u2019s hardest to beat in the modern era is Tiger\u2019s miracle pitch from behind the 16th green in the 2005 Masters that became the iconic Nike commercial. It\u2019s so indelibly marked in everyone\u2019s mind, no further description is necessary.<\/p>\n
Augusta National has exercised more mulligans than any tournament in history, making the Masters seemingly more dramatic year after year. It all started when the first Masters in 1934 had reversed nines because the current back nine was in the low-lying areas and experienced frost delays. They switched to the current configuration in 1935. Would the Masters be the Masters if Amen Corner was the second, third and fourth holes? Would Dan Jenkins ever have said, \u201cThe Masters doesn\u2019t begin until the back nine on Sunday\u201d?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a testimony to the men, you might say, that Jack Nicklaus and Bobby Jones don\u2019t really figure in any mulligan debate. The same could be said of Mickey Wright and Annika Sorenstam. You\u2019d be hard-pressed to identify a single shot or decision any of them needed to play over that would have improved their storied careers. Gods have no regrets. They simply made more right decisions and hit more shots flush in the clutch than any golfers in history. In the words of a poker player, you can still hear them say, \u201cNo, thanks. I\u2019ll play these.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Golf history is usually made not over a whole career but with a single shot or decision. Both…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[4225,64,63,755,138747,85],"class_list":["post-859739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-article","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-golf-digest","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859739","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=859739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}