Ten 59s on TOUR: Here’s how they rank

NAPA, Calif. — After taking off last week, Kevin Chappell gets back into action at this week’s Safeway Open at Silverado. When we last saw him, he was finishing T47 at A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier, his first PGA TOUR start after undergoing major back surgery last season. A ho-hum finish. But, of course, Chappell shot a second-round 59. It was the 10th such score on TOUR, 42-plus years after Al Geiberger authored the first. Blame David Letterman, Bo Derek, or the decimal system, but those 10 59s are just begging to be ranked. Call them the Terrific 10. (There’s also been a 58, shot by Jim Furyk, which naturally tops every 59 and will not be ranked here. For more on the 58, click here.) Criteria include whether or not the player won; the quality of the 59th shot; whether the round was shot on a par 70, 71 or 72; Strokes Gained; and intangibles. For example, the intangible that Chappell hit the magic number in his first TOUR start since undergoing major back surgery. To be clear, there’s never been a bad one, and because finding fault with a 59 would be like finding fault with a rainbow, there are no losers here. Every 59 is beautiful, and golf’s most sacred number must be respected, hence the three-way tie for eighth place. Here are the top 10. 1. David Duval, 1999 Bob Hope Chrysler Classic (now The American Express),  PGA West – Palmer The third-ever 59 remains vivid two decades later: Duval in a blousy, butter-colored shirt, untucked, rolling in a six-foot eagle at the last to win. The W helps put him No. 1 on this list – half (five) of the 59-shooters have won – as does his special round coming on a par 72. While four of the 59s (Duval, Adam Hadwin, Chip Beck and Geiberger) have come on par 72s, Hadwin finished second, and Beck T3. Just Duval and Geiberger won. Duval gets the nod for the top spot here because he was so hot (about to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated) and winning at such a rate, people were actually debating who would be better, him or Tiger. Golf felt positively electric. 2. Al Geiberger, 1977 Danny Thomas Memphis Classic, Colonial CC – South The mild-mannered Geiberger was so en fuego that news footage of the round later burned up in a warehouse fire. He gets bonus points for using old equipment on a 7,282-yard course, being on a par 72, and winning, but also for being the first to break golf’s version of the four-minute mile. According to ShotLink – oh, never mind. There was no ShotLink back then. Suffice it to say, Geiberger beat the next best score that day, Ray Floyd’s 65, by a country mile. “Skippyâ€� hit every fairway, every green, and took just 23 putts. But he did not have cameras in his face, which he later said would’ve made it harder, and was playing under lift, clean and place rules. 3. Brandt Snedeker, 2018 Wyndham Championship, Sedgefield CC) What an opening round. His Strokes Gained: Approach the Green measured +5.54, he took 22 putts, and beat the field average by 9.71 strokes. Crucially, he later won. Snedeker also gets style points for his final stroke, a birdie putt from the fringe of 20 feet, 4 inches. The quality of the 59th stroke matters in part because a handful of them have been tap-ins, while others have been mere knee-knockers. Knowing what he needed for 59, Snedeker made the longest 59th stroke on this list by far, the next longest belonging to the guy right behind him on this list. 4. Justin Thomas, 2017 Sony Open in Hawaii, Waialae CC Like Snedeker, Thomas shot his 59 in the first round. Like Snedeker, he made a bogey. (There have been three among the Terrific 10, with Furyk, below, making the third.) And like Snedeker, he later won – no small feat, given the hype after carding a 59 on a Thursday. Thomas stands alone, though, in that he was the only one in the Terrific 10 with two eagles. He hit just eight fairways, tied with Chappell for fewest among the 59 shooters, but more importantly found a way, ringing up an eagle from 14 feet, 11 inches at the par-5 18th hole at Waialae to hit the magic number. Clutch. 5. Jim Furyk, 2013 BMW Championship, Conway Farms OK, fine, Furyk did not actually win. Two days after he shot a back-nine 28 for a second-round 59, he shot 71 to finish third. But he gets the nod over Stuart Appleby, who did win, because of one crucial factor: Furyk’s 59 beat the field average by a ridiculous 12.09 strokes, which means, if you have your calculator handy, that he shot golf’s most hallowed number on a day when his peers, some of the finest golfers on the planet, averaged 71.09 strokes. He absolutely crushed them – it’s the biggest gap between a 59 and the field average among the eight 59s charted by ShotLink.       6. Stuart Appleby, 2010 A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier, The Old White TPC In the final round and in the hunt for the win, he converted from 10 feet, 10 inches at the last for 59. He beat the course record of 60, which was first shot by Sam Snead in 1950, and finished a shot ahead of Jeff Overton for the victory, ending a four-year drought. That counts for a lot, as does the final stroke – the third longest among the 59 shooters. Appleby’s 59 was the first on a par 70, which left some debating its merits, and on a course where J.B. Holmes had shot 60 earlier in the week. It also came less than a month after Paul Goydos shot 59 at the John Deere Classic. 7. Paul Goydos, 2010 John Deere Classic, TPC Deere Run He made a clutch 7-footer for birdie to get it done in the first round while beating the field average by 10.53 strokes. The round was just the fourth 59 in TOUR history, the first on a par 71, and came approximately 10-1/2 years after Duval’s. Goydos was locked in on the greens, where he took just 22 putts – tied with Snedeker for second best among the Terrific 10 – and measured +7.39 in Strokes Gained: Putting. The judges awarded extra credit here for the quality of the final stroke, and the blazing-hot finish of eight birdies in his last nine holes.    T8. Kevin Chappell, 2019 A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier, The Old White TPC “Surreal,â€� he called it after making history in his first TOUR start since undergoing major back surgery, and that about covers it. He had the shortest 59th stroke among the Terrific 10 – a 14-inch tap-in for par – and didn’t break 70 the rest of the week to finish T47. That’s by far the worst finish by a 59 shooter, the second worst being Chip Beck’s T3 at the 1991 Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. But still … 59. Neither Phil Mickelson nor Tiger Woods has reached that exalted number in an official TOUR round. Chappell rose above his injury, ignored the fact that he really didn’t have his A+ game, and rode a hot streak all the way in for the feel-good story of the week. T8. Adam Hadwin, 2017 CareerBuilder Challenge (now The American Express), La Quinta CC Hadwin one-putted 15 times in his magical third round, and his 21 putts are the fewest of the Terrific 10. He tied Chip Beck’s TOUR record with 13 birdies, shooting 59 just nine days after Thomas did it at the Sony. (That the 59s were shot so close together is a strange quirk of history and should not minimize how hard it is to break 60.) The first Canadian player to shoot 59 on TOUR, Hadwin credited playing partner Colt Knost for keeping him loose despite the fact that, as he later admitted, “I was thinking about it. I knew exactly where I was. I knew exactly what I needed to do.â€� He nearly let it get away but salvaged a scratchy par with a 4-foot putt at the last. T8. Chip Beck, 1991 Las Vegas Invitational (now Shriners Hospitals for Children Open),  Sunrise GC It had been 14 years, 4 months and 123 days since Geiberger became Mr. 59. In the third round in Vegas, Beck drained a 60-foot birdie on his first hole, the 10th, and became the second player to break 60. Some questioned the course, a 6,914-yard par 72 that played even shorter in the dry desert air. (Geiberger was on a 7,282-yard track, with much older equipment.) Still, Beck was the only one to sign for 59 there, and at a time when the mystique of joining Geiberger was enormous. Also, he was acutely aware of the $1 million 59 bonus offered by the Hilton Corp. hotel chain – half to Beck, the other half to junior golf and PGA TOUR charities – that hung in the balance.

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