Joel Dahmen was given a four-stroke penalty at the Shriners Children’s Open on Thursday for having too many clubs in his bag.
Dahmen discovered on the fourth tee that he had more than the allowed 14 clubs. Under the Rules of Golf, he was given a two-stroke penalty for each hole on which the violation occurred, with four strokes being the maximum penalty.
Dahmen made pars on his first two holes, but they were converted into a pair of double bogeys, immediately putting him in last place with 4 left.
“You know, I’ve been traveling here for a long time and it’s never happened before. I’d like to blame (caddy) Geno [Bonnalie]. That would be the easiest. It’s not his fault either. I played here on Tuesday and Wednesday. We didn’t see it there. It was an extra 4-iron, so I had two 4-irons in the bag,” Dahmen said after shooting 5-over 76.
“Why, I don’t know. I don’t know how it got there. It sucks. It sucks where I am too. Yes, we have to [No.] 4 tee and I grabbed a water and I walked to my bag and I saw a 4 iron that was in the wrong place and our stuff is always in the right place. It wasn’t in the right place.”
The former Tour winner is currently 124th in the FedEx Fall standings, with 125 being the cutoff for fully exempt membership for 2025.
“It was one of those moments where you just want to get it out and get angry, angry at yourself, angry at Geno, angry at the world,” he said. “But if you look around, people are donating a lot of money to our foundation and life isn’t that bad. It’s a mistake. It’s going to happen. Unfortunately, it happened right now.”
There are four fall events remaining after this week’s stop in Las Vegas.
