Eric Cole, one day after shooting an Open Championship score that bested only nine players, says he didn’t play that badly. He even felt he played “kind of good honestly.”
As you can probably surmise, the circumstances were more than interesting.
“Yesterday was a very interesting day for me,” Cole said.
Friday, he was in good spirits to dish, after shooting one of the day’s best numbers at Royal Birkdale. On his second time around the English gem, Cole followed a 3rd-hole bogey with seven birdies for a six-under 64 that moved him inside the projected cutline when his round finished.
“I was just trying to kind of have a good day and relax and enjoy the Open Championship,” Cole said.
“Then started playing good and tried to keep it going pretty much.”
Then there was Thursday, when he shot a six-over 76. And the very interesting.
– His double-bogey on the par-4 8th?
“I hit the wrong club [off the tee],” he said, “and went up under the lip of a bunker, made a double.”
– His double-bogey on the par-5 17th?
“I drove it, I thought a good drive, and it ended up just in the left rough,” he said. “I went to hit an iron shot, and it caught a weed and shut the face, and I shanked it about 130 yards right into these trees and had to hit that shot again, and I didn’t make any putts.”
– But his double-bogey on the par-4 11th? That was the most interesting.
On the Open Championship’s online leaderboard, Cole’s tee shot was listed as traveling “0 yards to unknown.” He was then penalized a stroke, and he hit his third shot back on the tee.
“My tee shot on 11,” he said, “my right foot completely slipped, and I fell down, and I hit my tee shot from here to the end of this [interview] tent with a driver [about 10 yards]. And we never found the ball. It just rolled into this gunch. So I had to re-tee. That was another double.”
Cole said he didn’t fall, but was “about to.” “Like an ugly version of Scottie Scheffler,” he said. How did the crowd react?
“I think there might have been a couple of ‘oohs,’ like ‘oh,’ that type of reaction,” Cole said. “They were probably worried if I was OK.
“Yeah, I don’t know. It’s the first time I’ve slipped over here.”
The moment brought to mind Richard Boxall, who, during the 1991 Open, broke his left leg after hitting his tee shot on Birkdale’s 9th hole. “I have heard that story,” Cole said.
In light of Thursday’s play, a reporter also wondered what Cole and his wife, Stephanie, talked about. He laughed.
Flights back home to Florida.
“Tee to green yesterday, I felt like I played great,” Cole said. “I know that’s weird to say, but I really did feel like I was hitting the ball where I was aiming and stuff and the swing felt good.
“I’m just chalking it up to random outlier.”
