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Law of Averages

DP World Tour pro bounces back from quadruple bogey with hole-in-one on next hole, sums up golf perfectly

October 06, 2022

Golf is like a rollercoaster. Your friends guilt you into riding the ride, you reluctantly agree, you wait in line for awhile before being plunged from heady heights to bowel-wrenching lows, ending back where you started, wobbly legged and dehydrated, unable to tell up from down, elated from eviscerated. But don’t take our long-winded theme-park analogy at face value. Just ask DP World Tour pro Daniel Gavins, who bounced back from a brutal quadruple bogey at the Open de Espana on Thursday with an ace on the very next hole. Like we said, a rollercoaster.

Talk about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Seconds after Gavins carded a likely weekend-killer eight holes into his tournament, he struck back with a good ol’ fashioned one, bringing him right back to even par for the day. That's pretty much the most disastrous score you’ll ever see a professional golfer card to the best that mathematics permits, all in the span of seconds. Somebody get Gavins a neckbrace, because he’s gotta have some serious whiplash right now.

Not that he’ll be that surprised. That’s just golf and he’s played plenty of it, you know, given his chosen occupation and all. If Gavins (and countless other pros like him) can’t roll with the punches and accept that there are no vindictive golf gods out to smite you, only a swirling vortex of chaos, then they’re in the wrong line of work. Or on the wrong ride. Or whatever. I don’t know. I can’t keep up with all these metaphors.