19th Hole
The last-second club switch that cost Colin Montgomerie the 2006 U.S. Open
Phil Mickelson’s final hole collapse at Winged Foot will always be the primary talking point amongst golf fans when discussing the 2006 U.S. Open. However, the reality is that there was Colin Montgomerie’s own final hole collapse that year which was much more brutal and equally as heartbreaking.
The Scot arrived at Winged Foot as the best player never to have won a major, with 30 European Tour wins to his name, a dominant Ryder Cup career under his belt and having suffered plenty of major close calls in the past.
About to turn 43, time was running out for Monty to get the elusive major he had always dreamed of winning. But it looked like the stars were about to align at the 2006 U.S. Open for Monty when on the 71st hole, he holed the putt of his life from 40 feet to claim a share of the lead.
Visibly emotional, Montgomerie steadied himself and ripped a driver down the fairway on the ferociously difficult 18th hole to put himself in prime position.
Waiting to play his approach shot to the final green, Monty was made to wait nervously, as playing partner Vijay Singh found himself in trouble down the left rough. That wait to hit his approach shot lasted almost 15-minutes, and throughout that period, Monty looked poised to hit his 6-iron for his approach.
Cleared to play, Monty changed his mind at the final moment, and grabbed 7-iron from his bag. Instantly, Johnny Miller in the booth said: “I’m surprised he’s just switched clubs when you’ve had 10 minutes to think about it.”
Monty took one practice swing with the 7-iron, pulled the trigger and played the worst shot of his life. Whatever the correct club was – the indecision, rushed strike and non-committal swing proved damning.
He would go on to make a sorry double bogey to miss out on a playoff by one stroke, and claimed afterwards that his last-second choice to hit 7-iron was fuelled by the belief that adrenaline would kick in.
On the most excruciating moment of his career, Monty would say years later that if Vijay Singh had hit the fairway and he had not had to wait and had so much time to overthink his approach shot he would have finally won that missing major. In his 2012 autobiography, Monty wrote about the shot saying:
“By the time it was my turn, I was beginning to second-guess myself. Was it a seven-iron? Was it not a six? Was it a big seven-iron or a little one? Did I detect a touch of wind?
Why did I hesitate on that backswing? I don’t exactly know anything more beyond the fact that my mind certainly wasn’t clear. I knew at the time that I had hesitated. It would have been possible to pull out of the swing since it wasn’t complete and that’s what I should have done. Stopped, regrouped and started all over again.”
Following his double bogey on the last, Monty made his way to the press center and put in a spirited performance with the media. You would never have thought he had just blown his big chance at winning a major, as he showed off his razor-sharp wit when a reporter asked him if he allowed himself to think about winning after holing his putt on 17, responding:
“No, you don’t think about winning when you’re one ahead with one to play, no. Not at all, no thoughts of victory at all. I was just having a Sunday game, just a game with Vijay, just a few thousand people watching, that was all.”
However, the reality of Montgomerie’s true feelings were far more raw. The defeat had begun to sink in when he boarded his flight home that evening. In his autobiography, Monty laid bare how he truly felt over his failure to capitalize on the opportunity he had waited his entire career for:
“I had a very bad flight home that night. I remember sitting there in a daze, not knowing what to say or do. I wasn’t crying. I had gone beyond that. I was incapable of any analysis. The same three words, ‘What just happened?’, kept going through my head.”
Turning 43 a few days later, Monty hoped that his close call would inspire more challenges at the majors later in his career. It didn’t. The 2006 U.S. Open would be the final time he would contend at a major, and it remains the ultimate heartbreak which will always haunt the Scot.
19th Hole
‘Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight’ – LPGA pro offers candid take following rough AIG Women’s Open finish
An opening round of 77 left LPGA pro Jenny Shin with a mountain to climb at last week’s AIG Women’s Open.
However, fighting back with rounds of 69 and 67, Shin found herself six shots off the lead and just outside the top 10 heading into Sunday as she went in search of her first major victory.
Shin, who won the US Girls’ Junior at just 13, couldn’t back those rounds up on Sunday, though, and after playing her opening nine holes of the final round in level par, she then bogeyed three holes coming home to slip down the leaderboard and eventually finish T23.
Taking to X following the final round, Shin offered a frustrated and honest take on how she was feeling, posting: “Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight. What a crappy way to finish.”
Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight. What a crappy way to finish
— Jenny Shin (@JennyShin_LPGA) August 3, 2025
Shin has made 11 cuts in 13 starts on the LPGA Tour this season, but has been plagued by frustrating Sunday finishes throughout the year. Shin ranks 102nd on tour this year out of 155 for Round 4 scoring in 2025.
Miyu Yamashita won the 2025 AIG Women’s Open with a composed final round of 70 to win her first major of her career by two strokes.
Cameron Young won the Wyndham Championship on Sunday for his first victory on the PGA Tour.
Young dominated all weekend at TPC Sedgefield, running away from the pack to win by six strokes and put himself in contention for a Ryder Cup pick in September.
Ahead of the event, the 28-year-old switched to a Pro V1x prototype golf ball for the first time, following recent testing sessions with the Titleist Golf Ball R&D team.
Interestingly, Young played a practice round accompanied by Fordie Pitts, Titleist’s Director of Tour Research & Validation, at TPC Schedule early last week with both his usual Pro V1 Left Dot ball and the new Pro V1x prototype.
Per Titleist, by the second hole Young was exclusively hitting shots with the Pro V1x prototype.
“We weren’t sure if he was going to test it this week, but as he was warming up, he asked to hit a couple on the range,” Pitts said. “He was then curious to see some shots out on the course. Performance-wise, he was hitting tight draws everywhere. His misses were staying more in play. He hit some, what he would call ‘11 o’clock shots,’ where again he’s taking a little something off it. He had great control there.”
According to Titleist, the main validation came on Tuesday on the seventh hole of his practice round. The par 3 that played between 184 and 225 yards during the tournament called for a 5-iron from Young, or so he thought. Believing there was “no way” he could get a 6-iron to the flag with his Left Dot, Young struck a 5-iron with the Pro V1x prototype and was stunned to see the ball land right by the hole.
“He then hits this 6-iron [with the Pro V1x prototype] absolutely dead at the flag, and it lands right next to the pin, ending up just past it,” Pitts said. “And his response was, ‘remarkable.’ He couldn’t believe that he got that club there.”
Following nine holes on Tuesday and a further nine on Wednesday, Young asked the Titleist team to put the ProV1x balls in his locker. The rest, as they say, is history.
Rickie Fowler fired an opening round of one-under par on Thursday at the Wyndham Championship, as the Californian looks to make a FedEx Cup playoff push.
Fowler is currently 61st in the standings, so will need a strong couple of weeks to extend his season until the BMW Championship, where only the top 50 in the standings will tee it up.
Heading into the final stretch of the season, Fowler has made an equipment switch of note, changing into new iron shafts, as well as making a switch to his driver shaft.
The 36-year-old revealed this week that he has switched from his usual KBS Tour C-Taper 125-gram steel shafts to the graphite Aerotech SteelFiber 125cw shafts in his Cobra King Tour irons, a change he first put into play at last month’s Travelers Championship.
Speaking on the change to reporters this week, Fowler made note that the graphite shafts offer “something that’s a little easier on the body.”
“I mean, went to the week of Travelers, so been in for, I guess that’s a little over a month now. Something that’s a little easier on the body and seemed to get very similar numbers to where I was at. Yeah, it’s gone well so far.”
Fowler has also made a driver shaft change, switching out his Mitsubishi Diamana WB 73 TX for a UST Mamiya Lin-Q Proto V1 6 TX driver shaft in his Cobra DS-Adapt X, which he first implemented a couple of weeks ago at the John Deere Classic.
However, according to Fowler himself, the testing and potential changes are not done yet.
“Probably do some more testing in some different weight configurations with them once I get some time. Yeah, I feel like we’re always trying to search, one, to get better but are there ways to make things easier, whether that’s physically, mentally, whatever it may be. So yeah, I thought they were good enough to obviously put into play and looking forward to doing some more testing.”
Fowler gets his second round at TPC Sedgefield underway at 7.23 a.m ET on Friday.
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