This is a common occurrence, although the outcome is not at all common. A player on the reserve list gets a place in a tournament due to a last minute withdrawal. So far so normal. But what is very rare is that one of these reserves who gets in at the last minute wins the tournament.
Well, that’s what happened to Australian Rod Pampling in the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, of the American PGA Tour. And the funny thing is that he got his place thanks to an administrative error. The tournament organizers decided to cut the number of players to 132 instead of the planned 144 because the date of the competition had been moved from October to November and there were fewer hours of sunlight. However, this change in the total number of participants was not entered into the computers and the 144 players previously planned were informed that they were registered for the tournament.
“They realized the mistake, but at that point there was nothing they could do,” said tournament director Patrick Lindsey, referring to the organizers.
As a result, 12 players, including Pampling and Gonzalo Fernández-Castaño (both have returned to the PGA Tour this season after regaining their card thanks to their great performance in the Web.com Tour), who were going to be dropped were finally able to play in the tournament. Pampling, 47 years old opened his performance with a round of 60 strokes, which helped him to remain as leader during the following days and win the victory and a prize of 1,188,000 dollars.
Of the other eleven who were able to play in the tournament thanks to the administrative error, seven made the cut. Fernández-Castaño finished in 48th place.
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