We’ve all been there. You’re playing a round and standing over a tap-in putt, trying to get out of everybody’s way. The next thing you know your ball rims out and you’ve embarrassingly got an even longer putt to finish up the hole.
The thing is, when we do it, there’s usually not all that much on the line. When Joe Durant did this very thing on Sunday at the PGA Tour Champions’ Shaw Charity Classic, well, the tournament was sort of hanging in the balance.
Durant was on the par-4 17th hole, sitting at 14-under-par. He played the opening 11 holes at Canada’s Canyon Meadows Golf & Country Club in five-under, but had bogeyed the 13th and 15th to fall into a tie for the lead with Scott McCarron.
Looking for a birdie to retake the lead on the penultimate hole, Durant missed, leaving himself around a foot to finish with a par. Surely he was thinking get this in and get on to the par-5 18th, a hole where birdie was in play and the chance for his fourth career senior win was real.
But then, well, let’s just say some viewer discretion is advised.
Oh no!
Durant misses a short one at 17 and falls out of a share of the lead. @ShawClassic pic.twitter.com/3IXLGWd2iW
— PGA TOUR Champions (@ChampionsTour) September 2, 2018
Wow, indeed!
Unfortunately for Durant, McCarron moments later made a birdie on the 18th to jump to a two-stroke lead. So when Durant wound up birdieing the 18th himself, he wound up finishing one agonising stroke short of a playoff.
