Getting your name on a competition club board is one of the biggest honors a golfer can have, especially when it's a Club Championship.
These tournaments are when the crème-de-la-crème at the club rise to the top. A weekend of full-on, traditional, competitive golf.
If you've ever played in one, you know anything can happen and, at St Enodoc's Club Championship, that's exactly what occurred, as an incredible 10-hole playoff was needed to determine the Men's Scratch champion.
Located on Cornwall's North Coast, and ranked among the top 100 golf courses in the UK and Ireland, competitors were in for a day of 36-holes of traditional Links conditions - firm and fast fairways, thick juicy rough, 30-35mph gusts and plenty of rain.
However, despite the incredibly tough circumstances, it didn't stop some great scoring from two of the club's best players - Finn Ellis and Louis Archer.
Ellis, a 19-year-old who is heading to Wingate University in North Carolina in September on a golf scholarship, and Archer, the defending Club champion who also claimed a second Cornwall County Championship in May, both finished on one-over-par scores.
In fact, before the playoff even commenced at 7pm, Archer had rolled-in a massive 50-foot putt on the 18th for birdie to shoot one of the few under-par rounds of the tournament.
Here in the UK, we are in the midst of summer and, in terms of the sun setting, it will usually happen at around 9.30pm. That left around two-to-three hours of play to determine the winner which, on paper, left plenty of time... or so you'd think.
The playoff holes for Ellis and Archer would be the par 5 1st, a 515-yard hole that had been playing into the wind, and the par 4 18th, a 444-yarder that had been playing downwind, albeit to a narrow strip of fairway.
Order-wise, it would be the 1st, 18th, 1st, 18th and so on until a winner was decided, something that, over two hours later, eventually happened.
Certainly, both men would likely agree that they didn't expect to see each hole a total of five times and, below, we have listed how the mammoth 10-hole playoff played out.
Hole |
Finn Ellis |
Louis Archer |
1st (Par 5) |
Par |
Par |
18th (Par 4) |
Birdie |
Birdie |
1st |
Par |
Par |
18th |
Par |
Par |
1st |
Par |
Par |
18th |
Par |
Par |
1st |
Par |
Par |
18th |
Par |
Par |
1st |
Par |
Par |
18th |
Birdie |
Par |
Teeing off at 7pm, a total of eight playoff holes were wrapped up in 1 hour and 45 minutes and, with no winner in sight, the Club's Captain, Mike Roach, actually asked whether they would like to finish the event all-square - a request that both players turned down.
As the clock struck 9pm, the question of daylight was bought into the equation and, after some deliberation, the pair were informed that there would only be enough light left for two more holes.
A result needed to come soon but, as both parred the par 5 1st for a fifth time, it was all down to the 18th, a hole that had seen a total of two birdies and six pars throughout the playoff.
With the clock now going past 9.15pm, it was eventually Ellis who handed his opponent the decisive blow.
Pounding a 350-yard tee shot down the narrow corridor, a wedge shot to a tucked flagged checked-up to five-feet and, with Archer only able to par, it left the 19-year-old a chance of winning, something that he managed to do in front of the remaining members who had stayed out to watch.
“Competing in a playoff with a decent crowd was a first for me and I really enjoyed it," stated Ellis after his 150-minute battle.
"After 5 or 6 holes of pars and a single birdie, the nerves and adrenaline had worn off and the last few holes became a grind... Knowing a birdie would be enough to win the playoff, I hit a good putt online that caught the right edge of the hole.
"I would like to thank my opponent Louis Archer for a great playoff and being a good sport. I am very proud to win a Club Championship at such a great club like St Enodoc. Hopefully the first of many!”
Surpassing the longest playoff ever seen on the DP World Tour, which is only a mere nine holes... the playoff between Ellis and Archer would rank second in the all-time longest playoffs on the PGA Tour.
That record belongs to Cary Middlecoff and Lloyd Mangrum, who took 11 holes to decide a winner during the 1949 Motor City Open. At that event, we never actually saw a winner, though, as darkness came in and both were eventually named 'co-champions'.
