iStockphoto / JosephJacobs
Golfers on the US Am Tour competed in The Wine Country Amateur in Sonoma, California on Monday and the scores left a lot to be desired with the winning golfer (Phillip Knowles), recording a +13 round of 85 to beat the field of 8 golfers.
But it was golfer Diane Ventling, 2022 Player of the Year on the US Am Tour, recorded a score of ’29’ on the par-5 16th hole which is 3 strokes more *on one hole* than the lowest 9-hole score in PGA Tour history which occurred when Corey Pavin shot a 26 on the front 9 at the 2006 U.S. Bank Championship at Brown Deer Park.
For golfers, seeing a 29 on a single hole leads to a lot of questions. First and foremost, was it a scoring error? Occam’s razor suggests the explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most often correct but in this case, it appears it wasn’t a scoring error as advanced stats on the par-5 16th hole also account for the 29 and she is listed at dead last on the leaderboard.
I came across this golfer’s 29 on the 16th hole in The Wine Country Amateur when the popular Monday Morning Q account on X, formerly Twitter, shared a screenshot from someone with a joke about how the only way to record a 29 is to miss your putt for 28.
Pretty easy. Missed a 6 footer for 28 https://t.co/xHh185JWrG
— Monday Q Info (@acaseofthegolf1) July 23, 2024
This hole had to have water for a US Am Tour golfer to score a 29, right???
My first thought was this was a Tin Cup type situation where they kept blasting balls into the water. However, there is no water to be found on the 16th hole at the Sonoma Golf Club.
On the Sonoma GC website, they do make the 16th hole sound menacing despite it being the #14 handicapped hole on the course. Their description of the hole reads “This intimidating tee shot has to avoid trees left and a large bunker right. Favor the right side to open the dogleg. Bunkers and wastelands on both sides make your second shot a challenge. Your approach shot is to one of the largest greens on the course. Beware; if you go over it, a sure bogey or worse awaits.”
Presumably, the 68-year-old Brentwood golfer encountered all of those menacing spots on the hole and then some. And at what point in this hole do you just pick up your putter and putt it all the way down the fairway? Because that would have gotten there a LOT faster than 28 strokes, presumably. Also, how do you keep track of 29 strokes on a single hole? I’d have lost count around 15 and withdrawn but that’s just me.
The US Am Tour doesn’t list out shot details for every hole so it is unclear how the 29 strokes on the 16th hole were tallied up so we can only guess at the number of shots that found the bunkers, went over the green, and wound up in the trees to the left.
As someone who has played a ton of golf in his life and I mean that in the sense that I’m often hitting A LOT more strokes than the scorecard calls for, I cannot wrap my mind around a 29 on a single hole. It is the single highest score I’ve ever seen written on a scorecard. I’m extremely impressed.