The cause of one of the worst three-hole stretches of Ben Griffin’s year on the PGA Tour?
A legal overdose.
Yes, really.
On Sunday evening at the BMW Championship, Ben Griffin addressed the media after one of the stranger rounds of his year. The U.S. Ryder Cup hopeful started his day at six over through three holes, including a four-putt and an OB tee shot. He finished the day at one under after a furious rally through his remaining 15 holes. And the story behind what happened? Well, Griffin is chalking it up to the negative effects of an accidental mass dose of the popular workout supplement creatine.
According to Griffin, he filled up his water bottle to start his round this morning with a “snowball” of creatine that had coagulated at the bottom of the jar. Then, on the first hole, he took a swig from his water bottle and accidentally inhaled a considerable chunk of his creatine.
“I’ve never overdosed on creatine before, but I think I did in the moment because I didn’t really drink any water after that,” Griffin said. “I basically just inhaled a snowball. So I started getting super shaky. I’ve never felt like that before and I felt like I had tremors.”
“I four-putted 1 and on 2 I like was freaking out and didn’t know what to do,” Griffin said. “Like I hit it so far out of bounds.”
Griffin said his symptoms were so sudden — and so terrifying — that he wondered if he would be forced to WD from the tournament. Thankfully, Griffin’s caddie Adam Ritthamel came to the rescue, forcing his guy to take a quick seat and reset his system with a water bottle.
“I remember walking off 1 and walking to 2 and I’m like, am I going to have a withdraw?” Griffin said. “I was like, I need to control my body right now. It was a weird thought. Luckily I just took a minute. Probably took too long for pace of play purposes, but took a solid minute and a half and chugged water and reset and hit.”
According to the Mayo Clinic and recent research from Harvard, it is difficult to fully “overdose” on Creatine, but taking larger-than-recommended dosages can cause an upset stomach and unusually high stress on the kidneys, which might have been responsible for the symptoms Griffin reported.
Griffin said he recognizes that blaming a supplement overdose for a six-over start makes him sound a bit like the boy who cried “creatine,” but what happened on Sunday morning was decidedly not normal for his body or his golf game.
“I did hit bad shots, but I was physically shaking like I’ve never felt before,” Griffin said. “And I don’t normally miss a lot of short putts. It was really a weird situation.”
Thankfully, after the reset, his game settled down, and he returned to the form that has made him one of the favorites for a roster spot on the American side in next month’s Ryder Cup. Griffin played his final 15 holes at seven under, good enough to get to 3 under for the tournament, and a T12 finish.
That was enough to get him into the Tour Championship, where a major payday awaits, and where another strong finish could place him squarely in the sights of a Ryder Cup debut in Bethpage. In the meantime, though? More water … and perhaps a new jar of Creatine.
“Yeah, pretty crazy story,” Griffin said. “I don’t think I’ll be taking too much creatine in the future. I will take it but not in the amount that I probably did on the golf course, which wasn’t probably a healthy amount.”
