Worst Collapse in a Major?

[saevel25]

Who do you think had the biggest collapse in a major? How does Spieth's collapse rank in the history of Major collapses? If you voted other please post who you picked and why. 

 

[Patch]

I dont see Spieth's loss as a collapse. I just figure he lost the jacket because of some poor swings on a couple of holes. 

If there was any collapses at this major, I would say some of the other players games were collapsed before they hit their first ball, while others' games collapsed during their rounds. . 

Edited April 11, 2016 by Patch

[iacas]

9 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

Who do you think had the biggest collapse in a major? How does Spieth's collapse rank in the history of Major collapses? If you voted other please post who you picked and why. 

I edited your Arnie and Adam Scott posts. You should tell me the situations for the others, too. Arnie didn't really give up a 3-stroke lead, he gave up a 7-stroke lead with 9 to play. That makes the collapse far worse.

[b101]

I'll never forget Jean Van De Velde's breakdown - it was the first major I ever watched and I was utterly transfixed. Coming down the last with three shots to play with is the biggest collapse imaginable; he could have hit two bad shots and gotten away with it. Then again, Carnoustie is a beast of a course and I felt properly gutted for him. Although Spieth's came very suddenly, you felt he'd been battling his swing since Friday afternoon so I wouldn't say it was a total surprise. Maybe how it happened, rather than that it did.

[bkuehn1952]

Palmer's collapse wasn't quite as bad as it first appears.  Casper shot -3 for the inward nine and Palmer +4  Bad but not like going into the final day of the Master's with a 4 shot lead and shooting 80.  I picked Rory.

In some ways Van de Velde was the victim of a bad bounce.  I suspect he wanted to hit it into the stands and get a drop.  Instead it ricocheted back over the burn into gnarly rough and the rest was history.

[ElWagonne]

I voted Van De Velde.  Especially since he was able to make fun of himself by going back and playing the same hole with a putter and making a 6.

[Golfingdad]

48 minutes ago, iacas said:

I edited your Arnie and Adam Scott posts. You should tell me the situations for the others, too. Arnie didn't really give up a 3-stroke lead, he gave up a 7-stroke lead with 9 to play. That makes the collapse far worse.

Also, Speith didn't lose by one, he lost by three.

[saevel25]

4 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

Also, Speith didn't lose by one, he lost by three.

I don't know why I thought he lost by one. Maybe that number was stuck in my head from another thread.

 

[Chilli Dipper]

The most memorable collapses in sports happen when defeat is grasped from the jaws of victory in a way that is, at once, both tragic and farcical. There can only be one answer, and that's Jean Van de Velde.

That said, what happened to Adam Scott still stands out to me, because it happened so gradually that you didn't realize what was happening until it was too late. He wasn't hitting bad shots, but he seemed to get a bad break on every shot he played in that final four-hole stretch. Then Ernie made birdie on 18, and Adam suddenly needed to par the last for a playoff. At that hole, I had watched players hit big drives over the fairway bunkers, or the hazards out of play with an iron off the tee: the only way to find trouble was to hit a 3-wood. Cut to Adam at the 18th tee with a 3-wood in hand, and I think: "Oh my god, Adam was winning this tournament, and he doesn't realize he's already lost it."

Also worth noting: as bad as Phil's collapse at Winged Foot was, Colin Montgomerie had a worse moment just minutes before. Like Phil, Monty finished with a bogey when a par would have taken the championship; unlike Phil, he made a six from the center of the fairway, and he never had another shot to win a major.

[Wally Fairway]

I might vote for Ernie, 1st hole, 80th Masters - were he on the list

[Golfingdad]

With Bill James' calculations about when a college basketball game is likely won running through my head, I thought it would be pretty simple to just look at the math of the numbers given:

Player       Lead         Holes left

Scott           4                 4

Dufner        4                 5

Sneed        3                  3

DJ              3                 18

Norman     6                  18

VDV           3                  1

Rory           4                 18

Phil            1                  1

Palmer       7                  9

Speith        3                  7

Only Scott, Sneed, and Mickelson had an even ratio of shot lead versus holes remaining, and only Van De Velde had a lead greater than his remaining holes ... so despite his excrutiatingly bad luck, I still have to go with him.

---

By the way, along these lines, I just thought of something yesterday that interests me (and perhaps only me ;)).  It's sometimes misleading to say how many shots so and so was leading by at any given time, especially at a place like Augusta.  There are at least two specific stretches at Augusta that lead to this type of score comparison being misleading, and those are holes 10-12 (very difficult) and holes 13-16 (the easiest stretch).

For example, what if a guy is leading the tournament and he "collapses" to a guy who is 3 1/2 holes ahead of him.  In this hypothetical, the guy who choked played 10 through 18 in bogey, bogey, bogey, birdie, par, birdie, par, par, par, whereas the guy who capitalized on the collapse played those same holes in bogey, bogey, bogey, birdie, par, birdie, par, par, birdie.  Over the course of the last nine holes, the eventual champion only beat the second place guy by one shot.  But the headlines will most certainly make a point to remind us about that one moment 2 hours prior, when the first guy was standing on the 10th tee, while the champ was walking down the 13th fairway, and he had "a 3 shot lead with 9 to play."  Except he really didn't.  If you compared them at equal moments in their rounds, they were dead even the entire time, except for 18.

Anyways, like I said, just a thought I found interesting. (This doesn't apply to yesterday, by the way, because Willett didn't make a bogey all day.)

[Grumpter]

Spieth was up 5 with 9 to play wasn't he?

[DrvFrShow]

Spieth 2016 Masters. You have the wrong information up. Consequently I voted wrong. Spieth had a 5 shot lead with 9 holes to go. Had a quad on 12. He lost by 3.  Spieth went bogey, bogey, quad to go down by 1 stroke. He followed with two birdies and a bogey but could never catch Willett.

So if you begin the meltdown at the start of Amen Corner where Spieth held a 5 stroke lead, it was pretty horrendous and shocking. But you could almost feel it coming.

I also don't know why he dropped so far back from the water on his second attempt on 12.

 

[Golfingdad]

1 hour ago, Grumpter said:

Spieth was up 5 with 9 to play wasn't he?

Yes.  He was also up 4 or 5 at different points on Friday and Saturday only to see both of those leads evaporate back to one each time.  3 double bogeys and a triple bogey total those three days.

3 minutes ago, DrvFrShow said:

You have the wrong information up. ...Spieth had a 5 shot lead with 9 holes to go.

Yes, this is true, but what he wrote about being up by 3 with 7 to go is also true.  It's a matter of personal opinion to decide which is more headline worthy though.  Some will say 5 with 9, and others 3 with 7.

(And I pointed out to him as well that he screwed up the "lost by one" part).

6 minutes ago, DrvFrShow said:

I also don't know why he dropped so far back from the water on his second attempt on 12.

I know this one.  :)  He said during his interview yesterday that he hated the drop area option because it was only 65 yards and he specifically wanted a shot where the ball would end up at the same spot where it first struck the ground.  Where it would take one hop and back up a tad.  He determined that shot to be 80 yards.  Unfortunately, the first time he hit it 50 yards and the second time he hit it 88 yards. 

[boogielicious]

I wanted to vote Van de Velde, but that was a bad shot with a bad bounce off of grandstands. I could have happened to anyone. So I vote for Palmer. He was the favorite and really just played poorly down the stretch for 9 holes. Each one of these also involved someone else playing very well to take the lead.

[Grumpter]

15 hours ago, Golfingdad said:

...

Yes, this is true, but what he wrote about being up by 3 with 7 to go is also true.  It's a matter of personal opinion to decide which is more headline worthy though.  Some will say 5 with 9, and others 3 with 7.

...

I am not sure a reasonable argument can be made for being up 3 shots with 7 to go is better than being up 5 shots with 9 to go. Statistically you are much better off up 5 with 9 holes to go.

Up 5 with 9 to go you can lose .444 strokes per hole and still win by 1
Up 3 with 7 to go you can only lose .286 strokes per hole to win by 1

[Golfingdad]

3 minutes ago, Grumpter said:

I am not sure a reasonable argument can be made for being up 3 shots with 7 to go is better than being up 5 shots with 9 to go. Statistically you are much better off up 5 with 9 holes to go.

Up 5 with 9 to go you can lose .444 strokes per hole and still win by 1
Up 3 with 7 to go you can only lose .286 strokes per hole to win by 1

True, but also consider the nature of the collapse. Saying "up 3 with 7 left" leads you to wonder what happened next, and that's where the collapse occurred.  If he just made 6 straight bogeys then everybody would just say "5 with 9 left."

[Pendragon]

18 hours ago, Chilli Dipper said:

The most memorable collapses in sports happen when defeat is grasped from the jaws of victory in a way that is, at once, both tragic and farcical. There can only be one answer, and that's Jean Van de Velde.

That said, what happened to Adam Scott still stands out to me, because it happened so gradually that you didn't realize what was happening until it was too late. He wasn't hitting bad shots, but he seemed to get a bad break on every shot he played in that final four-hole stretch. Then Ernie made birdie on 18, and Adam suddenly needed to par the last for a playoff. At that hole, I had watched players hit big drives over the fairway bunkers, or the hazards out of play with an iron off the tee: the only way to find trouble was to hit a 3-wood. Cut to Adam at the 18th tee with a 3-wood in hand, and I think: "Oh my god, Adam was winning this tournament, and he doesn't realize he's already lost it."

Also worth noting: as bad as Phil's collapse at Winged Foot was, Colin Montgomerie had a worse moment just minutes before. Like Phil, Monty finished with a bogey when a par would have taken the championship; unlike Phil, he made a six from the center of the fairway, and he never had another shot to win a major.

I voted for Scott's collapse. Most of those listed above were quite memorable in their own way, and Van de Velde's was the most surreal of the bunch. .