Hudson Swafford, new PGA Tour winner, once incurred one of the weirdest penalties in golf history
There's a reason why pro golfers are leery of the media, and that's because even when they enjoy crowning achievements like a first PGA Tour win, which Hudson Swafford captured Sunday at the CareerBuilder Challenge, we might dredge up some obscure item from their past in the service of context.
And that's what we're doing here by reminding you of this bizarre penalty Swafford took three years back on the Web.com Tour, when Swafford took a divot with a practice swing, the divot hit his ball, and he incurred a one-stroke penalty. Check it out in case you don't remember.
Swafford was in contention at the Nationwide Children's Hospital Open at the time of the infraction, and he ended up finishing T-7. Nonetheless, he earned his PGA Tour card that fall, and now has a win to his credit after birdieing three of his last four holes Sunday at PGA West.
The whole sequence would have been considered even more bizarre if not for the fact that Justin Rose had the same thing happen to him the day before Swafford's ordeal, at the BMW Championship. Come to think of it, the fact that this happened twice in two days is the definition of bizarre.