Can a pro golfer break 80 with 1 club? It was a fascinating watch

Andy Sullivan has won four times on the DP World Tour, played in a Ryder Cup and banked more than $10 million in his professional playing career. But, you might be asking, can he break 80 with just one club? OK, so maybe you weren’t asking yourself that. But Sullivan teamed with the DP World Tour to find out anyway.

The DP World Tour has produced similar fun videos before — like this one with Sullivan, in which he had 500 balls to try to make a hole in one — and this latest edition was just as compelling. Sullivan already had a slight advantage, as he’s quite familiar with the course for the challenge, The Belfry in England, which he’s played hundreds of times in his career. But with just one club? Probably not.

First, he had to pick his weapon of choice.

“When I first got here and actually thought about it, I was thinking 7-iron, and now that I got to the first tee, I’m thinking 5,” Sullivan said, pondering his challenge. “Going to have to bite the bullet and just have 5 [iron], and if I miss the green, it’s going to be entertaining at least. I’m a little bit nervous. I think if I break 80 today I’ll be absolutely buzzing. Going to have to be on it tee-to-green today.”

Sullivan started with a bogey and made pars on the 2nd and 3rd. But he found his first real conundrum on the 4th, when he was left with a 25-yard pitch over a bunker. Take a look at it:

Yet, as you’ll see in the video below, the 5-iron loft didn’t give him much of a problem. He pitched to about 12 feet and nearly made the putt to save par.

“That was good, wasn’t it?!” he said. “That was so good!”

Sullivan followed with three-straight pars and was just two over through seven holes, but he admitted the 8th and 9th at The Belfry would be tricky. They were. On 8, he got caught up on a railroad tie over a creek, ricocheted it back into the water and made triple bogey. That pushed him to five over.

“It go serious all of a sudden,” he said. “I didn’t care really, and now I do.”

So, did he break 80? Watch below and find out.

Josh Berhow

Golf.com Editor

As GOLF.com’s managing editor, Berhow handles the day-to-day and long-term planning of one of the sport’s most-read news and service websites. He spends most of his days writing, editing, planning and wondering if he’ll ever break 80. Before joining GOLF.com in 2015, he worked at newspapers in Minnesota and Iowa. A graduate of Minnesota State University in Mankato, Minn., he resides in the Twin Cities with his wife and two kids. You can reach him at joshua_berhow@golf.com.

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