DP World Tour contender decries ‘ridiculous’ pins at European Masters

“A day to forget but a day to forget @DPWorldTour judges,” Smith wrote. “These greens are the fastest they’ve ever been, but they still decide to use the same pins as the old ones plus with strong winds today. Even with the perfect conditions yesterday, some of the pins were ridiculous.”

Then, a few minutes later, Smith added: “Plus the forecast came out at 6am with the first set time being 7:30/45 so there was time to change them!”

Winds of 35 mph caused increased scores on Saturday, resulting in a field score average of 74.16, almost five shots higher than it was in the first two rounds, which averaged 69.83 and 69.81, respectively.

After a third-round 73, Matt Wallace led the field by four shots and shared his thoughts on the course’s difficulty.

“Brutal, really hard,” Wallace said. “I felt I hit the ball just as well, in the right areas – they were the wrong areas from the look of it.

“Today was not about shooting at high levels,” he continued. “It was to keep my lead and I did that and I’ll try to take the ego out of the three, which I’m not happy about those kinds of goals, but I probably left two or three shots that would have been. an incredible result.”

According to Golf Channel analyst Jim Gallagher, Jr. Smith’s complaint was justified.

“It’s a legitimate fight, especially on the 12th hole,” Gallagher said on “Golf Central.” “They probably got caught thinking it wasn’t going to blow that hard. But when you start taking balls off the green and into the penalty areas, it’s a bit ridiculous. And we saw that, especially on the back nine. Some hole locations were scary. You get the greens that are as fast as they’ve been, the wind blowing like that, it’s going to get silly.”

After a final round of 67 on Sunday to get to five under overall, Smith eventually finished T12 – six shots off Wallace’s winning score of 11 under. Wallace ended up picking up his fifth DP World Tour win – and first DP World Tour win in six years – defeating Spain’s Alfredo Garcia-Heredia with a birdie on the first playoff hole.

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