Adam Hadwin never could have seen it coming.
There was the champagne, for one thing. He’d busted out a bottle of bubbly and was already mid-spray by the time it happened. It’s tough to see through the sparkle.
There was the emotion of the moment, too: Hadwin, a proud Canadian, had stuck around to root on his good friend and countryman Nick Taylor. And now Taylor had finished off Tommy Fleetwood on the fourth playoff hole of the RBC Canadian Open.
There was the shock value of what had just happened, too: Taylor had poured in a 72-foot eagle putt to end a historic drought of Canadian winners with the longest made putt of his PGA Tour career.
And then there’s Hadwin himself: He’d finished up his competitive week a couple hours earlier, closing out a final-round four-under 68 with birdies at 17 and 18. Then he’d donned an unassuming green hoodie to watch the rest of the proceedings, looking very much the everyman as he stood alongside also-hoodied Canadian pros Corey Conners and Mike Weir. At 5-foot-8 and 165 pounds, Hadwin in street clothes doesn’t necessarily scream “professional athlete,” after all.
Whatever the specifics, the viral moment of the tournament — Taylor’s 72-foot bomb — was quickly supplanted by what happened next. As Hadwin rushed onto the green, champagne bottle in hand, an overzealous security guard made his move. Before he knew it Hadwin had been planted on his back, his threat fully neutralized.
Check it out below:
A few other angles of the moment trickled out shortly thereafter; this one showed that Hadwin and the security guard making nice after the misunderstanding (and CBS’s Amanda Renner cracking up at the surreal scene, too).
The combination of Taylor’s putt and Hadwin’s tackle were the perfect end to an intense week on Tour.
Taylor’s putt was a reminder of all that is good and meaningful about golf and sports; the Canadian faithful, who literally sang the national anthem every time a Canuck appeared on the 14th tee box, were rewarded at long last with a countryman victor — and in dramatic fashion!
And Hadwin’s moment was a perfect reminder that in a sport worth billions of dollars, it’s these ridiculous moments that break through. It’s the spontaneous stuff, the hilarious stuff, the stuff you couldn’t make up that matters.
Oh, yeah — and Adam’s wife, Jessica, says he’s okay. And that he apologized.
What could be a better ending to the Canadian Open than that?
