Louis Oosthuizen, I share your pain.
The South African golfer nearly pulled off the most spectacular winning shot in golf history, holing a double eagle on the second hole in the Masters golf tournament. (Some people might mention Gene Sarazen’s double eagle in the 1935 Masters, but that was before the days of television, when everyone in the world could see the shot.)
(For any readers who don’t know golf, a double eagle is scoring 2 on a par-5 hole. It’s rarer by far than a hole-in-one.)
The only problem was that he didn’t actually win the golf tournament! The shot got him into a playoff with Bubba Watson, but Watson won the playoff with a spectacular shot of his own. Instead of winning $1.4 million for first place, Oosthuizen had to settle for the second prize of $800 thousand, plus a little bit of golf history.
In a much smaller way, my day was like Oosthuizen’s. A great beginning, followed by a disappointing but not too disappointing finish. I already mentioned that I won a very nice game in the morning round at the Larry Evans Memorial. That got me onto the stage for the last round, against master Carl Haessler. Unfortunately, he outplayed me very convincingly. If I had to lose in the last round, this was the kind of game I would want to lose. I didn’t make any terrible blunders, I put up a very good fight, and I will definitely learn something from the game.
Winning was never in the cards for me, but if I could have at least drawn the game I would have won $400 or so (I think). Instead I had to settle for a consolation prize of $78. Okay, so Oosthuizen’s day was a little better than mine.
Now let’s go on to the main results of the Larry Evans Memorial. As expected, the #1 and#2 seeds, Sergey Kudrin and Alexander Ivanov, tied for first place with 5 points out of 6. John Bryant joined them in a three-way tie, and Ivanov won the blitz playoff by defeating first Bryant and then Kudrin (1½-½).
Haessler’s reward for beating me was a tie for fourth with Enrico Sevillano at 4½ out of 6.
The top experts were all young whippersnappers: Kesav Viswanadha, Cameron Wheeler, and Colin Chow, who scored 4 out of 6. It was really great to see so many teenage players (and even younger!) doing well. I wish I could have upheld the honor of the old geezers by tying with them.
Oh well, better luck next time! Same to you, Louis.
