Second acts

ark Roe’s best-of-the-day 67 placed him among the leaders in the third round of the 2003 Open Championship at Royal St George’s. What is more, the fact that he had spoken of “a level of calm” he had never known before was quite something from the European Tour’s court jester. His post-round conversation with the media had moved on to how he would be playing alongside his great hero, Tiger Woods, the next day. And that’s when a call came for him and Jesper Parnevik, his playing companion, to return to the scorers’ hut. Straightaway, the 40-year-old Englishman was pretty sure that he knew what it might be about. With Parnevik having posted a shocker of an 81 to his 67, he thought he could have jotted the Swede down for a shot too many. Parnevik had answered the official’s call first and was walking out of the hut as Roe was on the way in. “I’m sorry if I made a mistake,” Roe said, before suggesting where he could have gone wrong. The Swede stopped him in his tracks. “It’s worse than that,” he mumbled. “Much worse.” The now 62-year-old Roe can still picture the scorers sitting at their table with the two scorecards turned around so he could read them. Straightaway, he realised that he and Parnevik had forgotten to exchange cards at the start of the round. And what that meant was that the 81 was under his name, and the 67 under Parnevik’s. The result? Both players were disqualified for signing incorrect scorecards. R&A officials apologised but said there was no way to circumvent what most agreed was an unfair rule. (Three years later, Rule 6.6d was altered so that a recurrence of that day’s error would never again result in disqualification.) Inevitably, the media wereRead More