Joel Dahmen has opened up on his frustrations after being hit with a four-shot penalty at the Shriners Children's Open.
The 36-year-old was found to have 15 clubs in his bag, one more than the maximum, and thus was hit with a significant blow as he looks to retain his PGA Tour card for the 2025 season.
Dahmen is currently No. 124 in the FedEx Cup Fall rankings and he must remain in the top 125 at the end of the season to keep his card, though his chances to climb up the rankings have been damaged after he found an extra 4-iron in his golf bag.
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He was hit with the maximum shot penalty as a result as he only realised his error on the fourth tee box. Dahmen struggled to regroup after his mishap became clear and hit a 5-over 76 on the opening day of the competition, leaving him at risk of not making the cut.
However, Dahmen refused to blame his caddie Geno Bonnalie for the mistake, although he did concede that doing so would be the ‘easiest’ option. He told the PGA Tour: “Bizarre.
“Never happened to me before. I travel with 15, 16 clubs, I think most people out here do pending conditions and courses. I've been travelling out here for a long time and it's never happened before.
"If you play golf long enough, weird stuff's going to happen out here."
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) October 18, 2024
An unfortunate 4-stroke penalty for Joel Dahmen leads to a 5-over first-round @ShrinersOpen.
He came into the week at No. 124 in the #FedExCup Fall standings, needing to stay inside the top 125 in order to… pic.twitter.com/2MI6k2Banj
“I would like to blame Geno. That'd be the easiest thing to do but it's not necessarily his fault either. I played Tuesday and Wednesday out here. We didn't see it in there. It was an extra 4-iron, so I had two 4-irons in the bag."
Dahmen admitted that the charitable nature of the competition also prevented him from getting particularly angry about the severe punishment, concluding: “I think there might have been a couple of curse words, but I had a lot of people out supporting me today, helping our family foundation.
"It was one of those moments where you want to lose it and you want to get so mad, be mad at yourself, be mad at Geno, be mad at the world. But you look around and people are donating a bunch of money to our foundation and life is not that bad.
"It's a mistake. It's going to happen. Unfortunately it happened at this moment in time. It's one of those where you live and learn. Geno feels terrible. I feel terrible. We'll tee it up tomorrow morning and try to make a bunch of birdies."
