Story by Harry Crowther
Golf is a game that is played on a 5-inch course — the distance between your ears.
— Bobby Jones, World Golf Hall of Fame member
John Rudolph stood over a 5-foot bogey putt on the 18th hole at Grandfather Country Club in Linville, North Carolina. The date was Aug. 29, 2022.
Five feet were between Rudolph, aged 64, and the greatest round of his life. Five feet to complete what could be the most miraculous, unbelievable round ever played.
He went through his pre-shot routine. But Rudolph’s mind still raced. He struggled on short putts. For years, he’d been suffering at the hands of a demon, a mental monster known as the yips.
His hands weren’t steady. Everything threatened to come undone.
“That was the hardest shot,” he says. “I was completely aware of everything that it meant.”
***
Four hours earlier, Rudolph walked confidently to the first tee. A University of Alabama graduate working in commercial real estate in Charlotte, he’s played golf almost his whole life. He’s better than a scratch golfer, routinely breaking par, and has won several prestigious amateur tournaments.
Rudolph’s playing partners were Mickey Bell and Paul Johnson, two guys familiar with pressure: Bell is a former UNC basketball player, and Johnson was the head football coach at Navy and Georgia Tech. Good friends who play together often, they were competing in a money game on this day against the groups in front of them.
The opening hole at Grandfather is a par 5, and Rudolph hit a perfect tee shot down the middle of the fairway. Using a hybrid club for his approach, he hit it to 5 feet. He made the putt.
Eagle. Two-under par after one.
“We had seen an eagle from John on that hole before,” Bell says. “We certainly didn’t know what the future held. We were excited that we started well for our little match.
“But we didn’t know how special that day was going to be.”
Rudolph made pars on the next four holes. On the par-5 sixth hole, he had a 3-foot putt for birdie. Bell and Johnson encouraged him to pick it up. It was a gimme.
“No, I’m going to putt it,” Rudolph said.
He missed it.
***
Missed 3-foot putts were common for Rudolph.
The yips cause a sudden and often unexplained loss of motor skills in athletes, often in times of high pressure. They are characterized by the fear of a bad outcome and the weight of expectation. Rudolph has a people-pleasing personality. He wants to make the short putts not just for himself, but for others too.
For Rudolph, the yips took away his control of small muscles. His right hand would twitch. His brain got in the way of what his body knows how to do.
“It’s like having a little demon in your head,” he says. “Everything is going fine. You’re on the course, and all of a sudden, you hear that guy. He shows up. He’s been awakened, and he’s saying, ‘Now what are you going to do about it?’”
L.D. Simmons, a golf mental skills coach in Charlotte, owns Simmons Performance and works with amateur, college and professional players. He says those with the yips have high expectations. They struggle with acceptance.
“You have to recognize that it’s just one,” Simmons says. “And that’s really hard when you’ve gone through a three-month phase of really struggling with short putts. Reframing how you’re responding to it and responding in a more optimistic explanatory style, you’re more likely to get yourself out of it.”
***
After a par on the seventh, Rudolph hit a great short-iron approach into the par-4 eighth. He couldn’t see his ball land because the green is on top of a ridge. Bell was the first to get to the green.
“I don’t see your ball,” Bell said.
“It must have spun back into the rough,” Rudolph replied.
“I don’t think it’s in the rough,” Bell said.
He went up and checked the hole.
“You don’t need your putter.”
Eagle number two. Four-under through eight.
On the par-3 ninth, Rudolph missed the green. He faced a delicate chip with 30 feet of break — nearly an impossible up and down. He went ahead and holed it too for a birdie to get to 5-under.
“In my head, I’m thinking, ‘He just shot 31,’” Johnson says. “I didn’t say anything. We were just playing.”
Rudolph made par on 10. The 11th hole is the third par 5 at Grandfather. He hit another good drive and another good hybrid, this time to 12 feet, and rolled in the putt.
Three eagles. Seven-under-par. Seven holes to play.
If there was any question before, there wasn’t anymore. Rudolph was in the zone — or as Simmons calls it, “flow.” No focus on mechanics. Everything seems easy. Like Steph Curry raining threes.
“You see the picture of what you want to do,” Simmons says. “It’s very clear.”
Rudolph gives Bell and Johnson huge credit for keeping him in the flow state. He wasn’t thinking and they weren’t saying a word. Rudolph was pitching a no-hitter.
***
The 18-hole scoring record in a PGA Tour sanctioned event is 57, recorded by Christopher Del Solar in the 2024 Astara Golf Championship on the Korn Ferry Tour. It would be inconceivable to shoot a round that low — or even anything in the mid-60s — without making a birdie putt.
A great round is not defined just by the score. Circumstances matter. Francis Ouiment became the first amateur to win the U.S. Open in 1913. He shot 72 to beat British titans Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in an 18-hole playoff. The greatest round of all time might be Johnny Miller’s 63 in the final round of the 1973 U.S. Open at Oakmont. He is the first player to shoot 63 in a major, and he did it to win on one of the world’s most difficult courses.
The way you shoot a low score also matters. The professional record for eagles in a single round is four. It has been done five times.
Besides winning a major championship, perhaps the greatest feat in golf is shooting one’s age. Sam Snead and Bernhard Langer are the youngest players ever to do it in an official pro event. They both shot 66 when they were 67 years old.
***
Rudolph’s round nearly crumbled on the three holes after the third eagle. On holes 12-14, he made three clutch par putts from between 5-10 feet. The monster was nowhere to be seen.
On the par-4 15th hole, Rudolph had another short-iron approach, much like the shot he hit at the eighth. The picture was clear. His shot landed past the front pin and began spinning back. It hit the pin and stopped. Seconds became hours. Bell got his rangefinder out and looked through the lens.
The ball disappeared. Eagle. Again. Number four. Nine-under after 15.
“Do you think he knows where he’s at?” Bell asked Johnson.
“Duh.”
The gravity of what he was doing started to sink in for Rudolph. He became nervous. His mind was disrupting the flow. He had three holes to go.
“I stopped for a second,” Rudolph says.
There he was. The monster.
Rudolph missed short birdie putts on 16 and 17. He hit a great drive on 18 and had 139 yards to the hole. The wind was in his face. He pulled his 135-yard club, the 9-iron, to take the back bunker out of play. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, and butterflies bounced around in his stomach. He sent the ball into the air.
“I’m looking at it going, ‘Oh my God, I may have made another one.’”
He flushed it right over the flag into that back bunker. Another perilous up and in. No magic this time. He barely got it out and then missed the par putt.
Five feet left. It would be his 64th stroke. One for every year Rudolph had been alive. His heart pounded. He was unnerved.
He rolled the putt.
“It went in, and I don’t really know how I did it.”
64 to shoot his age. Four eagles. Three hole-outs. No made birdie putts. Rudolph had done something that had most certainly never been done before and will likely never be done again.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had that level of angst over a putt before in my life,” he says. “And I did it. That was huge to me.”
Rudolph, Bell and Johnson went to the turn house to call out scores and settle up.
“Y’all play well?” Bell asked the other groups.
They said they had. Bell shook his head and laughed.
“It’s not good enough.”
Weeks later, Rudolph was on the driving range at his home course in Charlotte, Quail Hollow Club. Fellow member and major champion Webb Simpson was there. Everyone was talking about Rudolph’s round. He went over to Simpson.
“What’d you do? What’d you do?,” Simpson asked.
Rudolph told him. Simpson couldn’t believe it.
“Oh my god, you ought to call Guinness,” Simpson said. “That’s got to be a world record.”
***
Several months later, Rudolph started working with mental coach Simmons to help him with the yips. The first thing Simmons told him was to acknowledge what he was feeling, rather than run from it. Simmons told him to give the feeling a name.
Damien the Demon.
Rudolph and Simmons spent hours on the practice green. They worked on breathing and accepting outcomes. They tried to create a consistent routine that led to freedom.
Rudolph has gotten better at dealing with Damien.
“I still have to be cognizant of it,” he says. “It’s a process. It doesn’t go away.”
But in August of 2022, with Damien watching on, Rudolph stared into the demon’s eyes and conquered him.
“It really was unbelievable.”
