A Lesson Learned at Turnberry

When The Open Championship last came to Turnberry in 1994 the scoring was unusually low. Turnberry set an Open record when 148 rounds were played under par for the tournament. Low scoring wasn’t the only unusual happening at this Open. Nick Faldo made a true rookie mistake when he played the wrong ball during the first round. Faldo accidently played the ball of his playing partner, Jim McGovern, and with the two stroke penalty he shot a seventy five. John Daly hooked a drive onto the beach on Friday. Unable to find the ball, he took a triple bogey and four putted the next hole. He finished in last place overall. For the first three rounds, Open hero and forty four year old Tom Watson played excellent golf. He was tied for eighth after fifty four holes, but his putter failed him on Sunday and he faded from the leader board. In addition to those strange events there were some hard lessons learned at Turnberry. The person that learned the most significant lesson was Jesper Parnevik. Parnevik had told himself he would not look at the leader board coming home on the back nine. He choose to play the final holes of the oldest and most important major championship without knowing where he stood on the leader board. There is some merit in that idea. It should have allowed him to escape some of the pressure in the final round of a major and make it less stressful for himself. Instead, it cost him the tournament. Standing on the eighteenth tee, he thought he needed a birdie to win. He hit his driver into the right rough and was left with a difficult approach. Parnevik choose to attack the green and left his wedge short of the green. His chip was short and after two putts he took a bogey. Back on the tee, Nick Price had just birdied seventeen. He was watching the leader boards and knew he needed par to win. He played two conservative irons to the center of the green. After two putts he was the Open Champion and Parnevik was left to contemplate his strategy. If he had seen where he stood, he could have played irons to the green for par and at least finished tied for the lead. Afterward, Parnevik was honest, “I guess I screwed up.” If he had known he had the lead he said, “I would have just hit for the middle of the green, I think.” That’s a lesson learned the hard way.