Meltdown: Top Six Major Chokes in Golf History (Video)

Even after nearly two decades, Jean van de Velde’s triple-bogey on the final hole of the 1999 Open Championship remains the most horrifying major meltdown in the history of golf.

Heading into the 1999 Open Championship, Frenchman Jean van de Velde was a little-known European Tour member with one win to his name, but he would leave Carnoustie as a notorious example of how to throw away a golf tournament.

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Thanks to steady play in the tough conditions, van de Velde was able to open up a five-stroke lead through 54 holes. Throughout the final round, he was challenged by players like Justin Leonard and Craig Parry, but he held tough and arrived at the final tee with a three-shot lead.

That’s where disaster struck. Van de Velde made the questionable decision to tee off with a driver and hit it way right, finding the rough. His next shot bounced off the grandstand and off a rock into an even deeper section of rough, this one with grass up to his knees. His third shot went sailing into a burn in front of the green.

Removing his shoes and socks to study his lie in the water-filled burn, he decided to take a drop and hit his fifth shot into a greenside bunker. From there, van de Velde finally got it up and down, but the triple bogey put him into a four-hole playoff with Leonard and Paul Lawrie. He was doomed by a double-bogey on the first playoff hole and wound up three strokes behind Lawrie, who got to hoist his first and only Claret Jug.

Van de Velde never got his major. He didn’t win again until 2006, when he notched a one-stroke victory over Lee Slattery at the Madeira Islands Open. He may have enjoyed a long career on the European Tour, but his meltdown on the 18th at Carnoustie remains one of the most unfortunate episodes in the history of major golf.

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Jordan Spieth didn’t intend to put himself into golf’s history book with those two disastrous tee shots on 12 at the 2016 Masters, but then neither did McIlroy, Norman, Johnson, Scott and van de Velde in their equally memorable meltdowns. It’s golf. The meltdown happens.