While the best golfers seldom achieve high results, amateurs or professionals who have a pitch-black day sometimes have nerves of steel and achieve particularly high results, which is a bad result in golf.
In our ranking, we start relatively harmlessly with professional golfers who have had a bad day and would have preferred a bogey or double bogey. But there are frightening scorecards from professionals, which of course are quickly forgotten afterwards. We want to work through these misfortunes and record them in our ranking.
The ranking of the highest golf results
Let’s start with Ignacio Garrido, who played one of his worst tournaments ever at the Masters and seemed to despair. Especially on hole 15, the Spanish professional golfer got into trouble and scored an eleven!
Ben Crenshaw will be familiar to many golfers and spectators. The two-time Masters winner despaired like his predecessor on par 5 (hole 15) and also had to sign the double 1.
The Augusta National Golf Club seems to have a special feature on hole 15. It is no different that our third professional also failed on this hole. The most successful Japanese player Masahi “Jumbo” Ozaki, like his two predecessors, also played an eleven on the par 5.
A twelve (also known as a dirty dozen) was reached by Arnold Palmer in 1961, and at the LA Open his tee shot sailed into the Out of Bounds on the right-hand side with a slice. His second attempt thenlanded with a hook in the left out of bounds. Palmer needed a total of FIVE on hole 9! Tees. When asked how this disaster could have happened, Palmer replied with a smile, “I missed my putt to eleven.”
Let’s get back to the Japanese jinxes. Tsuneyuki “Tommy” Nakajima needed a total of 13 strokes in 1978 at the hole where Phil Mickelson wrote history before. This put him eight shots above the standard.
It could be even worse
Tom Weiskopf stood at the notorious twelfth tee of the Master. In 1980 he hit the tee shot onto the green, but the ball had a different idea and spun back into the ditch. He came out of the drop zone with four more balls and could only return to the green after 11 shots. Weiskopf had to accept a total of 13 shots for this hole at the Masters.
The “Road Hole” in St. Andrews has achieved some high results in history. The highest result of 13 from 1921 was not exactly detailed, because one player did not sign. In 1885, however, Davie Ayton signed an eleven. It took him five strokes alone to get out of the notorious “bunker”.
At the proud age of 74, Billy Casper needed a total of 14 shots on the last par 3 of the Augusta National Court in 2005. The 1970 champ managed to sink five balls into the water.
Martini International 1982 tee of a par 4 – Greg Norman, known as the “White Shark” of golf, also left the green with 14 shots. The reason for this result was the downswing when a photographer took a picture and irritated the player.
One of the biggest unlucky players in golf is Greg Eason, who signed a 15 on a par 5. In the end he signed a 90 on a par 5. The tragic thing is that Eason recently had a breakdown in the Bahamas when he lost an incredible 32 balls in two rounds.
Higher is not possible? Sure you can!
Mitsuhiro Tateyama went under in 2006 when he needed a total of 19 shots at the Acom International on the Japan Tour. However, the Japanese player did not lose his sense of humour and said afterwards: “There were more reporters gathered around me than around the leader. That must have been some kind of world record”.
Ray Ainsley delivered the identical result at the US Open in 1938. The player didn’t know that he could have dropped with a penalty shot outside the obstacle. Before that, the ball disappeared in a ditch and Ainsley tried to get it out of there one by one.
We’ll break the 20-shot mark. At hole 13 of the Open de France, Philippe Porquier managed to break the mark. He hit one ball after the other into the outfield and despaired.
An unknown person cracked this mark at the difficult Court Prestwick Golf Club. At the first event, an unknown player, whose name was not recorded, is said to have taken a total of 21 shots.
Tommy Armour won the Open Championships in 1931. At the US Open, however, the American also received one of his worst results in the course of golfing history. At the Shawnee Open he needed 23 shots, because he hit ten balls out of bounds and his nerves were shattered.