An eight at the last, and half an hour in the clubhouse: Cruickshanks loses the 2017 Legs Open twice on the same hole

Dalmahoy (East) — Sunday 30 July 2017

Bruce Cruickshanks came to the eighteenth tee at Dalmahoy leading the fifth Legs Open at level par nett. He made eight.

Then he had to sit and watch for half an hour while two other men tried, and failed, to beat the number he had just spoiled. One of them beat him anyway, on the same hole, by countback.

A round that was under par for most of the afternoon

Cruickshanks, off twelve, went under par and stayed there. He was one under nett after the first, two under after a two at the 144-yard fourth, and still two under eight holes later at the eleventh — the only wobble in between a dropped shot at the short seventh that he won straight back at the eighth. He turned in 40.

Out in the first group at noon, he was also playing in front of the championship rather than in it. At 15:38, walking to the last, the board had him at level par through seventeen and nobody within two — but Jim Yuille was only through fifteen and Colin Howieson through fourteen. Cruickshanks led, but both of the men behind him still had holes in hand, and the eighteenth at Dalmahoy is a 457-yard par five that played to an average of 6.55 that afternoon, the third hardest hole on the course.

He made eight. With his stroke that is a nett seven, two over par, and a round that had been level par became +2 at 15:53. He was in the clubhouse with the championship still out on the course.

The half hour after he signed

It went to pieces behind him almost immediately.

15:53. Cruickshanks signs for +2. Jim Yuille, off nine and twenty minutes back, is +1 through sixteen and leading the championship outright.

15:58. Yuille plays the 188-yard seventeenth and takes five. Double bogey, +3. At the same moment Howieson comes off his own sixteenth at +1 — and now he is the leader.

16:08. Howieson bogeys the seventeenth. +2 through seventeen, and level with the man sitting in the clubhouse.

16:13. Yuille finishes with an eight of his own at the last. +5.

16:23. Howieson plays the eighteenth needing a nett par to tie Cruickshanks and a nett birdie to beat him outright. He makes five — a nett par. Both men sign for 75, two over.

Cruickshanks had led the championship for most of the afternoon, lost the lead by making eight at the last, and then watched two players in turn take it off him and hand it back — one by doubling the seventeenth, the other by bogeying it.

And then the same hole took it away again

A tie at the top goes to countback, and the first tiebreaker at this championship is holes 1, 2, 17 and 18 played in nett.

• Howieson: +1, −1, +1, level. Total +1.
• Cruickshanks: −1, level, +1, +2. Total +2.

Cruickshanks was ahead of Howieson on the first, level on the second, level on the seventeenth — and lost the championship on the eighteenth for the second time in half an hour. One hole turned his lead into a tie, and then the tiebreak asked him about that same hole and took the title.

Colin Howieson, who does not appear on the cards of any of the four previous championships, won the Legs Open at his first attempt.

The third man, and the four holes that finished him

Jim Yuille's afternoon deserves its own paragraph, because for five minutes he was winning the championship and almost nobody would have known it.

Out in 41, he was one over nett through thirteen. At the fourteenth he took his stroke and made four for a nett three, which put him level par — and when Cruickshanks made eight at the last, Yuille was the leader of the Legs Open.

He played the closing four holes in five over.

• 15th (no stroke): five for a bogey
• 16th (stroke): five for a nett par
• 17th, a par three, 188 yards, no stroke: five. Double bogey.
• 18th (stroke): eight. Nett seven. Double bogey.

There is no kind reading of that. It is not a golf course beating a man — he had made a nett birdie at the fourteenth to get there, and the stretch that undid him contains the shortest hole on the inward half. It is what happens when a player looks up, works out where he actually stands, and then has to hit the next shot anyway. He led the Legs Open, briefly and probably without quite believing it, and finished five behind.

The eighteenth, for the record, took eight from Yuille and eight from Cruickshanks — the two men who had held the lead inside the previous half hour, signing for the same number on the last hole of the championship, neither of them the winner.

The weather, for once, was not the story

It needs saying, because the year before it was the only story.

At Southerness in 2016 the field played into a wind that would have justified calling the championship off. Eleven men started, five failed to return a card and a sixth withdrew injured, and the golf course played to 42.3 shots over par for the field. The winning score was nett 86.

At Dalmahoy the conditions were decent. Twelve started, ten returned a card, and the course played to 22.5 over — very nearly twenty shots a round kinder. The winning score came down from 86 to 75.

Some of that is Dalmahoy being a different golf course, 6,956 yards and a par of 73. Most of it is that nobody was trying to stand up.

The scoring says so in every direction. Howieson's 79 was only the second round under 80 in the five championships on record — Alastair Campbell's 75 at Carnwath in 2013 is still the best of them — and his inward 39 was the only half under 40 all day. Ten men completed eighteen holes, where the year before only five had managed it.

Five birdies and no more

For all that, Dalmahoy did not give much away. The field returned five scores under par in the whole championship and not a single eagle:

• George Burns and Stephen Magowan both birdied the opening par five
• Cruickshanks' two at the fourth — the shortest hole on the card
• Robert Hamilton and Howieson birdied the tenth

The thirteenth, 441 yards and stroke index one, was the hardest hole on the course as the card says it should be, averaging 5.82. The fourteenth was barely easier at 5.75. And the eighteenth, which decided everything, took an average of a shot and a half from everyone who played it — Cruickshanks was not alone there, merely the man who could least afford it.

Two players failed to return. Toby Stanton picked up at the thirteenth having been round in 46 to the turn. Colum Watters played seventeen holes, arrived at the last, and picked up there — a card lost on the final hole of the day, which given what happened to Cruickshanks on the same hole seems about right for this eighteenth.

The consolation, and it is a real one

Howieson's 79 was the lowest gross score returned, so the Scratch title went to him as well.

The Stableford went to Cruickshanks — on 34 points, which is exactly what Howieson scored. Under the rule that the Main champion cannot also take the Stableford, the title passed to the man he had just beaten on countback, on identical figures, having beaten him by nothing at all.

Final standings, Main (nett): Howieson +2 (playoff) · Cruickshanks +2 · Yuille +5 · D. Burns +6 · G. Burns +7 · Hamilton and Magowan +9 · MacLeod and Lewis +10 · Alston +13. Two no returns.

Bruce Cruickshanks led the fifth Legs Open for most of the afternoon, shot the joint-best nett round of the day, won a championship title, and lost the one he wanted on a single hole — twice. Jim Yuille led it for five minutes and finished five behind. Colin Howieson led it for ten minutes, gave it back, and got it again on the last green;