As I said in my last post I met Gary Player a few weeks back on the 14th tee of the Old Course. What I forgot to say was what he said as he walked onto the tee.
He declared that ‘this is where Rory lost the Open, he should have hit 2 full shots to be at worst over the back of the green’.
Now I kind of got what he was meaning as the approach shot into the green at the par five, 14th from a short distance is hugely demanding, particularly in a wind and indeed a down-wind.
But how prescient these words are now, after yesterday’s final round of the Women’s Open. For this is exactly where Nelly Korda lost the championship as she imploded on the wonderful par 5, 14th.
She had hit a great drive and then decided to play safe with her second. She put it short right and then couldn’t stop her 3rd shot on the green. This left her a tricky pitch shot which she failed to get up onto the flat of the green, rolling back to leave a very hard putt up the slope. She took 3 to get down and walked off with a double-bogey 7. Game over.
So Gary was spot on here and age-old wisdom speaks hugely I guess. This is what a championship can come down to folks and is what makes the game of golf so wonderful.
A similar thing happened with my pal, Azzie Paton, in our St Andrews Club Autumn Meeting over the Old. He was romping home at 4 under par after 16 and then hit a safe drive into the rough up the left on 17. Then he did a Nelly Korda and hit a conservative shot to leave himself about a 100 yards out. However he didn’t quite make the fairway, leaving an extremely hard third shot which he didn’t execute that well. He walked off with a double-bogey and lost the Autumn Meeting by one shot.
Of course it is so easy after the event and all that but I believe that a safety shot is not always the best move.
However, the memory of a Monsieur Jean Van De Velde hitting a 2-iron second into the eighteenth at Carnoustie in 1999 suddenly springs to mind!
And I would love to know what Mr Player had to say about that one! Possibly Hoots ma Boots, Oh la la or something much stronger in Afrikaans!