Westworld star Jeffrey Wright has admitted the 1999 Open at Carnoustie could rival any plot served up in the cowboy-robot drama.
Wright stars in HBO’s $100m reboot of the largely forgotten 70s sci-fi movie about cowboy robots running amok in a futuristic theme park which has become the biggest TV sensation since Game of Thrones.
The 52-year-old, who plays the scientist Bernard Lowe, has revealed he was in the gallery at Carnoustie in 1999.
He said he knows reality can be far more sinister than anything on stage or screen.
Paul Lawrie came from a record 10 shots back to win a play-off after Jean van de Velde’s famous flounder in the Barry Burn at the final hole.
“Golf’s version of the Hindenburg,” said Wright.
“And then, appropriately, it started to rain.
“It was just the most miserable, weird, glorious spectacle.”
Jean van de Velde famously threw away the 1999 Open at the final hole despite teeing off with a three-shot lead.
The Frenchman chose to use his driver off the tee and proceeded to drive the ball to the right of the burn.
Rather than laying up and hitting the green with his third, van de Velde decided to go for the green with his second shot.
His shot drifted right, ricocheted backwards off the railings of the grandstands by the side of the green, landed on top of the stone wall of the Barry Burn and then bounced 50 yards backwards into knee-deep rough.
On his third shot, van de Velde’s club got tangled in the rough on his downswing, and his ball flew into the Barry Burn.
He removed his shoes and socks and walked through the water as he debated whether to try to hit his ball out of the burn around the 18th green.
Van de Velde eventually took a drop and proceeded to hit his fifth shot into the green side bunker before blasting out to within six feet from the hole.
He made the putt for a triple-bogey seven, dropping him into a three-way play-off with Justin Leonard and Paul Lawrie.
Scotsman Lawrie eventually triumphed in the play-off.
Westworld star Wright – who started playing golf aged four – still can’t believe what he witnessed.
In the following days he decided to play the course for himself after a teaching pro in Florida decided his swing needed a complete overhaul.
“I was an absolute mess,” he said.
“The wind was howling, and I had this unfamiliar swing.
“If Van de Velde had witnessed it, he might have felt a bit better.”
