It was a day of highs and lows for Hayden Buckley.
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The golf gods giveth and so they taketh away.
Anybody who performs the sport is aware of it to be fickle. One minute, the fates smile kindly on us, solely to darken with our very subsequent swing moments later.
Such dramatic highs and lows don’t simply strike on the beginner stage, although, with Tour professionals experiencing them, too.
As proof, think about the wild sequence of occasions involving Hayden Buckley throughout Friday’s second spherical of the 3M Championship at TPC Twin Cities.
In what had already been a unstable day for Buckley — marked by two double-bogies and two birdies on his entrance 9 — the 28-year-old arrived on the 407-yard sixteenth gap in a less-than-buoyant temper.
He was plus-8 for the match, and his poor outing was about to worsen.
After a flared drive on the par-4 left him in a hazard space alongside the water, Buckley tried hacking out — however the golf gods have been having none of it. Buckley’s ball caromed off a crimson stake simply in entrance of him and ricocheted into the drink, prompting the annoyed Buckley to drag the stake out of the bottom and slam it down. He went on to make a 6 on the opening. His spherical was drawing to an in depth, however destiny wasn’t executed messing with him.
Subsequent up for Buckley was the par-3 seventeenth, taking part in 178 yards over water. With a logjam on the tee, Buckley needed to climate a 20-minute wait.
“It’s by no means enjoyable ready whenever you’re taking part in terrible,” he mentioned.
However his spirits have been about to brighten. Taking useless goal, Buckley jarred his tee shot for an ace, his frustration giving solution to excessive fives.
For good measure, Buckley adopted up his hole-in-one with a birdie on 18, but it surely was too little, too late. He missed the reduce, repeating what he’d executed on the 2023 Gamers Championship at TPC Sawgrass, the place he aced the island-green seventeenth but in addition did not make the weekend.
“I want to determine this complete hole-in-one and make reduce factor,” Buckley mentioned.
Determining the golf gods would possibly take longer.
“Bizarre issues occur on this recreation,” Buckley quipped.
