It may be normal for golfers to miss a ball during a competition round, but for a professional, in the Dutchman’s case, Joost Luiten, beat up to three suits! in a tree, well no. And that happened to DP World Tour Championships in Dubai On Sunday.
And what sets many professional golfers apart is their ability to stay calm under pressure, even when pressure sometimes brings out the best of the best. With six wins on the European Tour Luiten, after missing his second shot of the day on the eighth hole, the Dutchman’s frustration boiled over when he missed his tee shot on the ninth.
His reaction was to throw his driver into a tree. Harmless, you thought, just staying there. He then tried to retrieve it by throwing two more sticks at it, but both got stuck in the tree branches.
“I had just bogeyed the eighth,” reflected Luiten after the round. “I was frustrated, one of those weeks where nothing was going my way. I lost and threw my driver and it got stuck in a tree. That pretty much ruined my week. I tried to get it out by throwing of other clubs and two more I got stuck in the tree, so I couldn’t get them out.”
Luiten pressed on and played the rest of the final hole of the front nine with 11 clubs, recording a bogey and dropping to five over par for the tournament. Fortunately, thanks to the help of a volunteer, he recovered his clubs in time to play the tenth.
His wife, Melanie-Jane, eight months pregnant with her first child and watching the scene, she helped take the sticks from her husband.
“I just went ahead and played the rest of the hole and one of the volunteers took them out, otherwise it would have been a fun round to end up with 11 clubs,” said Luiten, who has seven top-ten finishes this season. He made three consecutive birdies from the 13th hole on the back nine to post a 73 (he finished second to last), a round that will likely live long in his memory.
Source: La Verdad
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