Australian Open: How Geoff Ogilvy threw away his shot at title

Geoff Ogilvy pushed his tee shot down 10 and found himself in a bunker that had a lower-hanging lip than his own.

Australia's Geoff Ogilvy plays his third shot on the 16th.

Geoff Ogilvy made eagle down O’Sullivan Road. His swooping three-shot navigation of the 7th hole was played to the background music of blasting car horns from a primary thoroughfare between Bondi Beach and Rose Bay.

He ripped a whistling birdie up the 8th hole before walking through a backslapping traffic jam of spectators applauding the three-shot lead he was taking to the 9th tee at the Australian Open. Game over.

Ogilvy pulled his drive into the trees and made a gulping bogey. Game back on? Hurrying now, overcompensating for the pull, he pushed his tee shot down 10 and found himself with an impossible lie in a bunker that had a lower-hanging lip than his own.

His trucker’s mouth revealed the building pressure valve and turned the sky a deeper shade of blue before he poked a disconsolate wedge 30m downfield. He clunked his approach and two-putted for another distasteful bogey to be scribbled on his card.

Seven players were on his heels again and as he mumbled under his breath before marching onwards, he could not f. king believe it. Ogilvy was furious.

He was furious at luck having deserted him. He was furious to be blocked by trees when on another day, say the 2006 US Open, he might have received an uninterrupted passage. He was furious to be cruelled by the bunker when another metre of roll would have allowed a more uncomplicated passage to the green. He appeared furious about the swirling winds that seemed to change direction, increase or disappear altogether between the moment he chose his club and the instant he attempted to swing it.

He was furious at himself, most of all, because less than half an hour ago the Australian Open had been his to lose, and he was doing a spectacular job of losing it.

Flash forward to 4pm and Ogilvy was in a four-way tie for the lead with Ashley Hall, who was in the clubhouse, Cameron Smith, who was in the clubhouse with Hall, and Jordan Spieth, who was two holes from being in the clubhouse with Hall and Smith. Games were on at every turn. Twelve-under was the target. Hall and Smith were sitting on it.

Ogilvy and Spieth had time to overtake it or fall away from it. So did Ogilvy’s playing partner, Aaron Baddeley, resembling a Bee Gee in his white shoes, tight white pants, white belt, pastel shirt, white cap and longish hair.

Baddeley’s hopes stopped staying alive and when Ogilvy thought things could not get worse, they did.

He stood over his ball on the par-five 16th with a couple of matters to address. The ball, for starters, which had come to rest next to an unblinking and uncaring tree. He needed two chip shots to emerge from the woods, he found the sand with his unconvincing fourth stroke, flopped his bunker shot to about 12m, missed the putt and rued a double bogey on the hole most everyone else, namely Spieth, was grabbing a birdie on.

It was game over again. Over for Ogilvy, whose beard appeared to have become 50 more shades of grey since he was first sighted on the bright side of O’Sullivan Road.

“I didn’t have my golf swing all week, to be honest,” he said.

“On 16, I drove it crap but I got hosed there. It could have gone somewhere other than right up against a tree. Then it was just one of those shut-your-eyes pitch-outs. It just miffed out of the grass, if miffed is the right word. Pretty disappointing. What do I take away from all this?

“Hit it better. Get better. Somehow. That was a bad tee shot on nine. I haven’t hit one of those in years. That was a brain fade and threw me for a loop.”

Outside the scorers’ hut in which he wrote his non-fiction horror of four-over-par for his last 10 holes, missing the playoff by two strokes, Ogilvy added: “You get exposed on a day like this. It’s the Sunday of an Australian Open and if you’ve got anything there that isn’t right, it gets exposed. I was getting away with an average day.

“It was one of those things. The tournament was mine for a while but it showed up that I wasn’t quite there. I was getting away with it but, like I said, Sundays expose you at any tournament.

“I’m a leaderboard watcher and 13 or 14 under was the number I had in my head to win. It turned out 13 would have been enough. I’d been at 14-under. It’s a bit of a sour taste for the end of the year.”