Anne Van Dam Accidentally Breaks Her Driver On A Rope On The Way To Playoff At Women's Irish Open, Somehow Keeps Her Cool
Dutch professional golfer Anne van Dam suffered an all-time bad break - in the most literal sense possible - just minutes before competing in a playoff at the KPMG Women's Irish Open on Sunday.
Van Dam carded a one-under 71 in the final round on Sunday to get into a three-person playoff for the title on the Ladies European Tour. Each of the three players jumped into a golf cart to get a ride to the Par 5 18th tee for the first playoff hole, but unfortunately, van Dam became a victim of a gallery rope.
Van Dam very casually raised the rope above her head without turning back to make sure it also avoided her clubs. Two seconds later she heard a crashing sound to find her golf clubs fallen off the back of the cart with her driver in two pieces.
How van Dam didn't completely lose her mind in that moment I'll never know. She's very clearly a much calmer person than 99.9% of the rest of the human population.
Amazingly, she didn't let the broken driver affect her whatsoever.
After being forced to hit 3-wood off of the tee, van Dam hit a fantastic long iron into the green and left herself with a great look at eagle. Minutes later Smilla Soenderby said 'anything you can do, I can do better' and hit a long iron of her own just outside of van Dam's eagle opportunity.
Soenderby, a member of the 2021 National Championship team at Ole Miss, stepped up and drained her eagle putt for the win while van Dam narrowly missed her attempt to extend the playoff.
Talk about all the drama imaginable. You've got one player who snapped her driver in half minutes before a playoff, two of the three players knocking it on in two on a Par 5, and an eagle to win it.
Not bad, not bad at all.
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