Bizarro: Here's why Joel Dahmen was penalized 4 strokes to start the Shriners Children’s Open

There are tough starts to tournaments, then there are Joel Dahmen’s first two holes Thursday at the Shriners Children’s Open at TPC Summerlin in Las Vegas.

It’s quite simple really. He started the round with 15 clubs in his bag. The infraction was discovered when he was on the fourth tee.

Rule 4.1b in the Rules of Golf states that a player must not start a round with more than 14 clubs or have more than 14 clubs at any point during the round.

The catch? The player is slapped with a two-stroke penalty for each hole played with the extra club, but there is only a maximum of four penalty strokes that can be added. That’s why Dahmen was given two shots on the first hole, two on the second and none on the third before noticing he had too many on the fourth.

"Bizarro," Dahmen said. "Never happened to me before. I travel with 15, 16 clubs. I think most people out here do depending on conditions and courses. You know, been traveling out here for a long time and never happened before. I'd like it blame [caddie] Geno [Bonnalie]. That would be the easy thing to do. It's not his fault either. I played Tuesday and Wednesday out here. We didn't see it in there. It was an extra 4-iron, so I had two 4-irons in the bag.

"Why, I don't know. I don't know how it got there. It sucks. It sucks at the spot I'm in as well. Yeah, we got to 4 tee and I grabbed a water and I walked over to my bag and I saw a 4-iron that was in the wrong spot and our stuff is always in the right spot. It wasn't in the right spot.

"You know, you just want to get so mad and you want to get mad at everything. At the same time, just got to keep playing golf, and I didn't do a great job of that afterwards. It's tough to refocus. Shot one over if you take the penalties away, which is not very good out here today. Frustrating, disappointing, but if you play golf long enough weird stuff will happen out here."

The 36-year-old, who won the 2021 Corales Puntacana Resort and Club Championship, is No. 124 in FedEx Cup standings and is looking to improve the number for better status on the PGA Tour in 2025. He missed nine cuts this year and his best finish is a 10th place tie at the RBC Canadian Open.

Dahmen tied for seventh place at the Shriners Children’s Open last year. This year, after the start where he was four over after two holes, he made two more bogeys and one birdie to turn at five-over 40 and was in last place in the 132-man field. He shot 76.