The assorted tales of bad bounces in golf could double as campfire ghost stories.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s Joe Daley at Q School in 2000, whose bogey putt dropped into the dead center of the 17th hole<\/a>, but then improbably ricocheted off the bottom of the cup and popped out. Daley ended up missing his PGA Tour card by one. There\u2019s Tiger Woods at the 2013 Masters<\/a>, whose approach into the 15th hole hit the flagstick, his ball caroming into the water and ending his chances.<\/p>\n But bad bounces are most synonymous with the Open Championship. In 2009 at Turnberry, a 59-year-old Tom Watson nursed a one-shot lead on the 72nd hole. From the fairway, he flushed an 8-iron on line with the pin<\/a>, but the ball caught a downslope and rolled off the back of the green. Watson never recovered, eventually losing in a playoff to Stewart Cink.<\/p>\n One bad bounce deprived the golf world of what might have been the most unlikely major win in history, but Watson recognized it was what he had signed up for. He had won five claret jugs between 1975 and 1983\u2014all weeks where he got bad breaks, but plenty of favorable ones as well. The same shot he hit in Turnberry in 2009 was the one that held the green in 1977, leading to a clinching birdie.<\/p>\n The reductive view of the oldest major championship is it\u2019s the one most subject to chance, the confluence of firm, sandy terrain and erratic weather turning a game of precision into a white-knuckle hit-and-hope lottery. Only some of this is true. If the Open invites more unpredictability, it also emphasizes a certain skill that Watson long recognized as essential.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ultimate links golfer is one who can accept the bad bounces with the good bounces,\u201d Watson said. \u201cBecause they\u2019re going to even out.\u201d<\/p>\n Most golfers at least understand the concept. The game is played outside, on uneven surfaces, by imperfect people. But the cruel irony of this challenge is you can\u2019t overcome it with effort or skill. The better the golfer, the greater their command of the ball, the tighter the dispersion of their misses. Especially now with reliance on launch monitors, certain players have enough information about their tendencies they can reasonably expect the ball to behave a certain way most weeks of the year.<\/p>\n Often, though, the more control you believe you should have, the less willing you are to surrender it. It\u2019s why Scottie Scheffler was so visibly frustrated earlier this year when the wind carried an approach shot into the water<\/a>, or why he griped about mud balls last year at the PGA Championship.<\/p>\n \u201cYou spend your whole life trying to learn how to control a golf ball,\u201d Scheffler said. \u201cAnd all of a sudden, you now have absolutely no control over where that golf ball goes.\u201d<\/p>\n