19th Hole
Gambler’s heartbreaking loss at PGA Championship will make you feel sick

Winning a golf tournament is hard. Winning a major is very hard. Backing golfers to win majors can sometimes be a nightmare!
After the third round of last week’s PGA Championship, Mito Pereira stood on the 72nd tee with a small but significant advantage. He had been fighting all day to keep hold of a three shot overnight lead and, courtesy of two birdies against four bogeys, stood on the final par-4 with a single shot margin and one hand on the Wanamaker trophy.
- Related: Justin Thomas gifts caddie Bones the major winning memento he never got from Phil Mickelson
And then the bad stuff started.
As we all now know, the promising Chilean hit his drive into the creek and took a penalty stroke before flying his ball to the left hand rough. The horror continued as it took three more to record a ‘6’ and a place one shot off a two-man play-off.
Pereira looked distraught and the golf world felt for him, but it may also have felt an element of sympathy for one of Pereira’s backers, sports bettor Rufus Peabody.
Peabody, who oversees data at Unabated, a stat-based sports information company, tweeted a copy of his bet on the former Korn Ferry Tour star – $500 to win $150k. The caption? “Well, that hurt.”
Well, that hurt. pic.twitter.com/6QGCefS9SJ
— Rufus (@RufusPeabody) May 22, 2022
Having made the wager on Friday, Peabody joined the hoards of golf viewers to witness the 27-year-old go from seventh after the first round to second at halfway, before a third round 69 gave him a healthy overnight lead.
Of course, Pereira was surrounded by the likes of Justin Thomas, Will Zalatoris, Matt Fitzpatrick, Rory McIlroy and Cameron Young, so the pressure was on, but all looked calm before that wayward last tee shot and the subsequent double-bogey.
Of course, backers were not playing for the trophy or the status, nor were they playing for what would have been a historic first win on the PGA Tour, but even as a professional sports gambler, it surely hit Peabody hard?
Not a bit.
The large-staking sports investor came back on to tweet calmly:
Yeah, I feel gutted. But nothing I can do. Outside my control. Experience the disappointment. Then reset, and move on. No "what ifs" allowed. That's how you survive doing this as long as I have.
— Rufus (@RufusPeabody) May 22, 2022
It may take a while for Pereira to get over those half-a-dozen shots, but Peabody was back at work on Monday, explaining:
Find joy in the process. As I write this, code is running on my computer, digesting this week's data and recalculating golfer ratings, getting me prepared for next week's PGA and Euro tour events. Whether this week was a win or a loss, tomorrow I start at zero.
— Rufus (@RufusPeabody) May 23, 2022
Rufus will be back this week with updated wagers, and Mito will be back on the course soon enough.
What is gone is gone. Reset.
More from the 19th Hole
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.
19th Hole
How a late golf ball change helped Cameron Young win for first time on PGA Tour

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.
19th Hole
Rickie Fowler makes equipment change to ‘something that’s a little easier on the body’

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.