From Badds to Worse for Jeff Quinney

by Mulligan Stu on Feb 4, 2007 6:34 PM EST

All day, Aaron Baddeley chased Jeff Quinney. And all day, Quinney held him off. It appeared a storybook finish was in the offing at the FBR Open in Scottsdale, Ariz., where Quinney had attended college and lived.

Coming off back-to-back Top 10 finishes, the rookie Quinney seemed ready for his first PGA Tour victory.

Then the wheels came off. Leading by one on the 17th tee, Quinney went for the green on the 332-yard par-4. Instead, he found the water. After a brilliant recovery shot, Quinney still appeared to have a par. But then he compounded the mistake off the tee by badly pushing the par putt.

Quinney bogeyed, Baddeley birdied, and instead of Quinney getting his first career win, Baddeley claimed his second.

The NBC announcers made a big deal about Quinney going for the green with a one-stroke lead and two holes to play, on a hole were a slight mistake brought water into play, and on a hole where Quinney had already watched Baddeley come up short of the green.

Why did Quinney do it? Because everybody does it.

The 17th hole at TPC Scottsdale is a par-4 that nearly every golfer on the PGA Tour can reach from the tee, and so almost every golfer goes for it. Quinney probably should have had the wherewithal to resist the urge, but hey, he's a rookie. (You can bet he learned his lesson.)

The 17th hole at TPC Scottsdale, by the way, is the site of the only hole-in-one on a par-4 in PGA Tour history. From About.com Golf:

The hole was No. 17, the year was 2001, and the golfer was Andrew Magee. But the circumstances were anything but normal.

Magee, just an average driver of the ball, didn't think he'd be able to reach the green on the 332-yard par-4. So he didn't wait for the group ahead to clear the green. Instead, he teed up, and - steaming over a double bogey two holes earlier - muscled up. He let her rip, and the ball went farther than he expected.

So far that it ran up onto the green while the group of Steve Pate, Gary Nicklaus and Tom Byrum were still putting. Byrum was in the address position, ready to putt, as Magee's ball bounded onto the green.

The ball kept rolling. Pate and Nicklaus followed its path, their heads turning to the track the ball. And the ball rolled right into Byrum's putter! It clanged off Byrum's putter, caromed about 10 feet, and dropped right into the cup.

Hole-in-one. Still the only par-4 ace on the PGA Tour, and surely one of the more unusual aces of any kind on the tour.

Quinney should be proud of his three straight Top 10 finishes in his rookie season. But Top 10 finish No. 3 is probably going to hurt a while.