After Jordan Spieth’s ball almost abutted his accomplice’s Sunday, he was left with a nasty lie.
PGA Tour
There are unhealthy breaks, just like the couple of divot holes and plugged bunker lie that Jordan Spieth encountered within the decisive moments of The Sentry on Sunday.
And then are actually unhealthy breaks, like what occurred to Spieth originally of that unlucky stretch, on the par-5 fifteenth gap on the Plantation Course at Kapalua.
Perhaps you caught it on the telecast: After Spieth and his taking part in accomplice, Harris English, had blasted their tee photographs down the suitable facet of the outlet’s steeply sloping fairway, they found their balls had come to relaxation facet by facet in the identical divot gap within the tough, with lower than an inch separating the 2 orbs.
English’s ball was marginally farther from the outlet, so he was away. To give English room to function, Spieth marked his personal ball then moved his marker one club-length away. Trouble was, when English ripped his second shot — from somewhat over 200 yards — he additionally ripped out but extra turf from the present divot gap.
As the Tour explained, “Jordan’s original lie was slightly altered, so he placed his ball in the nearest most similar lie, which was within the same divot.”
The similar divot, yeah, however solely kinda-sorta the identical given English’s landscaping job.
“Yeah, I was kind of in a double divot,” Spieth mentioned later. “I had to place it into his divot, so it was even deeper.”
When golf fingers you lemons, although, what are you able to do however bear down, knock your second shot via the inexperienced after which get up-and-down for a gritty birdie? Or, a minimum of, that’s what Spieth did. But then got here the fried-egg lie on 16 (and a bogey) and one other drive right into a divot gap on 17 (par) adopted by a closing birdie, which moved Spieth to 27 underneath for the week. A tidy effort, to make sure, however finally two shy of winner Chris Kirk’s complete.
To his credit score, Spieth didn’t bemoan his unlucky lies, not even the depraved double divot. “They were balls that hit in the fairway and funneled into it,” he mentioned. “Out here balls funnel into the same spots a lot, it’s not uncommon to be in divots. It kind of stunk that it was three holes in a row, but the plug is what cost me a full shot. I still played the others just fine.”
Still, discovering a number of divot holes in such a brief stretch felt like particularly unhealthy fortune, even at a course the place balls are inclined to bunch. Which got us pondering: What are the percentages of a Tour professional discovering a crater, be it sand-filled or not? The course, gap and subject measurement all affect the likelihood, in fact, however for execs who make, say, 25 begins a 12 months, how could divot holes can they’ll anticipate finding? The Tour doesn’t monitor such issues (notice to ShotLink: we’d like to see a Strokes Gained: Divot Hole Recovery stat), so we resorted to some old-fashion polling.
John Wood, the previous Tour caddie turned NBC roving reporter, estimated execs discover these lies as soon as each couple of tournaments. “Maybe 8 rounds?” he wrote by textual content, including, “Just a guesstimate.”
A former Tour professional I queried Tuesday believed the occurrences to be much less frequent. “Almost all courses have no divots at the beginning of the week,” he wrote in a textual content. “They fill the divots at the end of each round. It is rare that you end up in any divots.” He additionally identified that PGA Tour execs hit, on common, solely 6 in 10 fairways, so a lot of drives don’t also have a probability to search out such a lie.
Try telling that to Spieth.
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