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There is no thrill of victory without the agony of defeat. And there is no stomach-pit deeper than the feeling that you’ve defeated yourself.
The 2025 Travelers Championship will go down as one of the most exciting non-major finishes of the 2020s because it serviced both ends of the emotional spectrum in a final 10 minutes that was as exhilarating as it was excruciating.
Late-tournament collapses usually result in one player handing the tournament to another. But the final hole at TPC River Highlands was equal parts gift and theft. The 1999 Open Champion will forever be Jean Van De Velde's folly, but Tommy Fleetwood and Keegan Bradley will share equal notoriety after the 2025 Travelers.
Fleetwood’s misadventure started with a classic precursor to disaster: indecision. He and caddie Ian Finnis seemed to waffle on club selection from the fairway, and Fleetwood’s approach from 148 yards came up listlessly short, on the front fringe.
It’s one thing to open a door, another to walk through it. Fleetwood’s mistake dovetailed perfectly with a heroic gutcheck from playing partner Keegan Bradley: a brilliant approach shot that Bradley later described on Golf Central as an “ear-to-ear 9-iron” from 139 yards that never left the flagstick. The 2011 PGA Champion's six footer was made easier by Fleetwood's terrible first putt settling right behind his ball mark, granting a perfect read for what turned out to be the winning putt.
Now Bradley finds himself in a tantalizingly awkward position himself. He's been appointed the 2025 Ryder Cup captain for Team USA. He can't possibly leave himself off his own team, can he?
Recency bias being strong, Jason, I feel like the 2025 Travelers is one of the most gut-wrenching non-major finishes I've ever seen. Which brings to mind a question: what other all-time brutal flameouts do you recall?
Jason Scott Deegan: I think it's worth noting that the raucous pro-Bradley, pro-USA crowd was partly to blame for Fleetwood's flop. The scene at the 18th hole felt like a Ryder Cup with all the roaring, rowdy fans.
Speaking of the Ryder Cup, the biggest collapse I've ever witnessed in 25 years covering the game was not from a single player. It was an entire team. The 2012 U.S. team melted miserably at Medinah, despite holding what felt like an insurmountable 10-6 lead heading into Sunday singles. It was shocking and painful to watch. Eight Americans lost their matches that day, plus a Tiger Woods halve, in a disheartening 14 1/2 to 13 1/2 loss to the Europeans on home soil.
If I must pick a single-player scenario, it's definitely Jordan Spieth at the 2016 Masters, not only for the spectacular way it unfolded (two balls in the water on the par-3 12th) but the unlikely winner who benefited (Danny Willett).
Tim Gavrich: For me, the 2006 U.S. Open will always be the greatest - or worst, I suppose - late parade of misery in golf history thanks not just to Phil Mickelson, but Colin Montgomerie, Jim Furyk and Padraig Harrington, all of whom could have won that tournament had they kept their wits about them. But on the non-major front, the event that sticks out to me for its sheer shock-value is the 2012 Farmers Insurance Open, where Kyle Stanley, who had led by seven shots at one point in the final round, hit a carelessly high-spinning wedge that sucked back into the water on the final hole of regulation, resulting in a disastrous triple-bogey, sending him to a playoff he would lose to Brandt Snedeker.
Stanley's loss at Torrey Pines came from a similar position to Fleetwood's at TPC River Highlands. Like Fleetwood, Stanley had not won a PGA Tour event despite showing considerable promise. But in an all-time-impressive seven-day turnaround, Stanley erased some of his heartbreakby winning the 2012 Waste Management Phoenix Open the following next week to capture his maiden tour title. Does "Tommy Lad" have a similarly soft landing coming?
Comments (2)
The 1999 Open Championship at Carnoustie stands out to me. Vandevelde blew it after standing on 18 tee with a 3 shot lead. Three questionable shot choices in that collapse including taking driver off the tee, then still trying to hit the green with a long iron, and then hitting at the green again from the deep rough instead of just getting it back onto the fairway. Implosion both mental and physical.
In my opinion, nothing remotely matches what happened to Greg Norman when he suffered the greatest collapse I’ve ever witnessed , during the 1996 Masters. After an opening round 63, Norman held a six-shot lead going into the final round. On Sunday’s outward half, he shot 2-over. Then the wheels quickly fell off:–four over on the stretch from ten through twelve. Though defeat wasn’t quite certain, Norman fully sealed his fate with a double at sixteen after plunking his tee shot into the pond. Nick Faldo benefitted from Norman’s string of miscues by shooting a final-round, bulletproof 67 to Norman’s abysmal 78; he beat the not-so-Great White Shark (on this day anyway) by five shots. Faldo finished at 12 under par.
What was puzzling, certainly, about this collapse was the utter confidence and composure Norman exuded during rounds one through three, when he shot three straight under-par rounds that totaled -13. His lifetime record in the majors was disappointing (lots of top-10 finishes, “only” two wins), considering his sterling performance as leading money winner multiple times on the PGA Tour and around the world. Worth noting, too, was Norman’s 1986 downfall on the back nine (another 40) of the 1986 PGA Championship.
Norman has to be considered among the greatest golfers ever despite the epic failures. He was widely acknowledged as the best driver of his era, and did pretty much everything else well. Later in his career, he did concede that he had sometimes played with too much aggression.