A nightmare pin placement at a high school women's golf tournament left balls tumbling off the final green
@jakebrend23 / Twitter
- The Iowa Girls High School 3A State Championship was derailed due to a poor pin placement on the 18th green.
- With the hole sitting atop a mini-mountain mid-green, putts approached the hole only to roll back off the putting surface.
- The average score on the hole was reportedly a quadruple bogey.
Golf can be a cruel game, with professionals winning and losing millions of dollars based on the outcome of one bad swing.
But while wild shifts of fortune are part of the sport, the cruelty is supposed to come from the drama created by the athletes on the course, not the course itself.
That was not the case at the Girls 3A State Golf Tournament at The River Valley Golf Course in Adel, Iowa over the weekend.
According to Jake Brend, a news director at SCTV who was covering the event, the 18th pin location caused trouble for golfers all day, with players averaging a quadruple-bogey on the hole.
From the video Brend posted, it's clear that the pin was put in a bad spot, with near-misses sometimes rolling off the green. Golf is meant to be a test, but this certainly looked like an unfair one.
—Jake Brend (@jakebrend32) May 28, 2022
Additionally, the poor pin placement slowed play to a snail's pace, with Brend saying that the average group spent 20 minutes finishing out the 18th green.
Rylee Heryford, a senior at Newton High School, eventually won the tournament in a playoff over Eden Lohrbach. Thankfully, the 18th hole didn't cause too much chaos in deciding the state title, with Heryford playing the last hole to a two-putt bogey and Lohrbach turning in an impressive par, one of just three pars on the day.
"No. 18 was tough today. The pin placement was brutal," Heryford said, per the Newton Daily News. "There was nothing you could do to get it to stop. I was happy with my two-putt bogey. Eden came to play on that hole. Getting a par to force a playoff was clutch."
Still, the hole was not without its struggles for the leaders, with Lohrbach forced to wait 45 minutes at the 18th tee box before finally beginning the final hole.
"It was very scary," Heryford said, per the Newton Daily News. "Down on the tee box, they were talking about the pin being in a very difficult spot. So I figured I needed to walk up and get a good look. Even from the looks of it, it didn't seem that severe.
"I was very nervous on the putt. I have never been shaky during a putt before, but I was shaking on that one. A bogey is like a birdie on that hole today. I will take the 5."
Thankfully, after both leaders made it off the 18th relatively unscathed, the playoff was contested away from the contentious green.
Heryford's coach, Ashley Kahler, expressed relief that the title didn't come down to what had proven itself an unnecessarily punishing hole.
"Today was not fair for any girl on the course with the way that hole was set up," Kahler said. "To not have 18 decide it was great. It's more fair this way. This feels more fair."
With a state title now under her belt, Heryford plans to head to Iowa next season to join the Hawkeyes women's golf team as a walk-on.