Legendary commentator Peter Alliss will forever be associated with the epic Open disaster suffered by Jean van de Velde at Carnoustie in 1999.
The words of the late Alliss became the stuff of legend.
Van de Velde was in the midst of arguably the most astonishing collapse in the illustrious history of The Open 25 years ago.
Leading by three strokes standing on the 18th tee, Van de Velde needed just a double-bogey six to claim the title and become the first player from France to win The Open since Arnaud Massy in 1907.
What happened to Jean van de Velde at Carnoustie?
The smart play was a long-iron lay-up off the tee, another lay-up and a wedge to attempt to make a par four, or a two-putt bogey.
Instead, he pulled out his driver and hit a wayward shot that came to rest on the 17th hole.
Van de Velde then decided to go for the green with his second shot rather than laying up before the Barry Burn.
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.
Enter the Voice of Golf…
“His golfing brain stopped about ten minutes ago, I think,” Alliss said.
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.
“This is so, so, so sad and so unnecessary . . . oh Jean, Jean, Jean,” said Alliss, as the French golfer took off his shoes and socks and contemplated taking on a shot out of the burn around the 18th green.
“What are you doing?
“What on earth are you doing?
“Would somebody kindly stop him, give him a large brandy and mop him down?
“This really is beyond a joke now, he’s gone ga-ga.
“To attempt to hit the ball out of there is pure madness.
“He could end up not finishing in the top 20.”
But Van de Velde put his shoes and socks back on and eventually took a drop.
“Thank goodness,” said Alliss.
“Good sense prevails.”
He 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.
What has Jean Van de Velde said about Carnoustie 1999 episode?
Alliss told viewers that he himself should have been “sitting at home enjoying a glass of malt by now, and waiting for the old lady to bring in a nice steak”, as the shadows lengthened at Carnoustie.
Aberdeen hero Lawrie won the play-off by three strokes to seal his one and only major.
Reflecting on the Carnoustie collapse in 2018, van de Velde said: “Golf is a large part of me but it doesn’t make me who I am as a human being.
“A lot of bad things happen around us, whether it’s family related or illness or more dramatic stuff, I always had the perspective to put the game of golf where it belongs.”
Would he have changed his approach and been more conservative?
Speaking to Golfweek magazine last year, he added: “I don’t think it would’ve changed anything.
“You could always argue the choice of the second shot [at the 18th] but how about the first 71 holes that put me so far ahead.
“Are we going to argue any of those?
“Everyone was hitting iron off the tee. I was pretty much the only one hitting driver.
“You could argue I had the wrong strategy except I pretty much had the right strategy.
“I was ahead of everybody else. I looked at my friends’ hitting irons into the rough and realised I might as well hit the bloody driver in the rough because you’ll be 60 yards up ahead.
“It’s common sense. Instead of chopping out and still having a long third, I had a short iron in my hands.”
Alliss gave a final interview to The Courier
Peter Alliss died in 2020 at the age of 89.
He broke off from his US Masters preparations to give a final interview to The Courier just months earlier where he told how his friendship with the late Sir Sean Connery was forged on the fairways of Gleneagles.
The commentator gave Sir Sean some tips to look the part before a golf scene in Goldfinger in 1964 and little did the two of them know it was just the start of the James Bond star’s love affair with the game.
After Alliss’ death, 18-time major champion Jack Nicklaus said golf had “lost one of its great players, broadcasters, writers, ambassadors and, most important, one of the game’s true friends”.
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