No one can explain Max Greyserman’s final-round implosion at the Wyndham Championship better than he can, but the odds add some perspective.
After Greyserman, a PGA Tour rookie who was looking for his first career win, holed his second shot from the fairway at the par-4 13th to take a four-shot lead, his odds to win were -3000, according to GolfBet’s Will Gray. That meant bookies believed Greyserman had a 96.8 percent chance to win the Wyndham with five holes still to play.
You don’t see that often on the PGA Tour.
But after he wiped his tee shot on 14, hit his fourth shot into a bunker and took four more to get in for a quadruple-bogey 8, dropping him back into a tie with Aaron Rai, his odds plummeted to +115.
According to the PGA Tour, he’s the first to follow an eagle with a quad in 15 years in any round on Tour.
What made his collapse all the more stunning was that he rebounded, following the quad with a birdie. In the three holes, he had only dropped one shot.
But then he shot himself in the foot again by four-putting the 16th green by missing two putts inside three-and-a-half feet.
Rai ended up making birdie on 18 after a dart of a 4-iron in the dark to beat Greyserman by two.
Afterward, he took questions from the media and said he would still take away the positives from the week.
“Played good enough to kind of run away with it. Obviously stuff happens in golf that sometimes it’s not meant to be sometimes,” Greyserman, who two weeks ago finished solo second as well at the 3M Open, said. “I’m just going to walk away that I played really, really good golf, executed really well, had probably a four- or five-shot lead, I don’t know, four-shot lead. I had a four-shot lead with five holes to go? If you’re doing that in a PGA Tour event, you’re doing something exceptionally well so that’s what I’m going to walk away with.”
But why wasn’t it meant to be? What happened?
Greyserman broke that down with Amanda Balionis on CBS after he finished on 18.
He began recalling his dramatic eagle on 13 and how felt on the next tee. He waited for nearly 10 minutes on the 14th tee between shots as he waited for Matt Kuchar and Chad Ramey to finish.
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“I was obviously pleased to make an eagle. I haven’t holed out with a wedge in a while. Got to the next tee, everything felt like it did for the first 13 or so holes,” Greyserman said. “I hit a bad drive. It didn’t deserve to be in the fairway. But it landed on the cart path and next thing I know it’s OB. I wish it didn’t land on the cart path, but also it’s my fault for not executing and making a poor decision after that, after hitting the next drive.
“I just needed to lay up and take my medicine short of the bunker and I was kind of caught in between and made a huge mental blunder there because I could have walked away with a six, pretty easily, or even a seven, pretty easily.”
Greyserman wasn’t out of the tournament yet. He even regained the lead with a clutch birdie at the par-5 15th. What sunk him was the four-putt on the 16th hole. He powered his 41-footer birdie putt by the hole and then power-lipped consecutive three-and-a-half-footers. In four holes, he went eagle-quad-birdie-double.
Still, after he thought about the hack out on 14, he paused for a moment. When he started talking again, he was chuckling.
“I don’t know,” he started, trying to fight the grin on his face. “It kinda feels like my own 2006 Phil Mickelson moment. So hopefully that equals good things to come [for me] like it did for him.”
In 2006, Mickelson, having won both the 2005 PGA Championship and 2006 Masters, came to the 72nd hole of the U.S. Open at Winged Foot leading by one. The left-hander blocked his tee shot into the left trees and then hit another tree with his second shot before his third shot plugged in a bunker as he ultimately made double bogey to lose by one. It is generally regarded as one of the most brutal 72nd-hole collapses in major championship history.
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Greyserman’s collapse didn’t come with quite the same stakes, as the solo second still helped him move into the coveted top 50 of the FedEx Cup standings.
Later in his session with the media, he also thought back on the cart path bounce. He said the one bad bounce wasn’t the reason he didn’t win, but it also wasn’t the first time something like that had happened to him.
“That’s golf. It’s honestly not the first time that I’ve hit the cart path on the right and it went OB,” Greyserman said. “In Savannah on the Korn Ferry Tour, I was in contention down the stretch and the same thing happened.
“I’ve got to ask the people not to put cart paths on the right side.”
At least in defeat, his sense of humor was still on point.
