Ged Scott on the Atherstone man's failure to play well enough to achieve a very low score.
Paul Broadhurst already has a place secured in the Open Championship records at the R&A for the third-round 63 he shot at the home of golf 16 years ago.
Along with six other players, Broadhurst's nine-under-par effort round St Andrews that July Saturday in 1990 remains the joint lowest in the Open.
Only once, by Denis Durnian at Royal Birkdale seven years earlier, has Broad-hurst's 29 strokes for the front nine over the famous Old Course been bettered.
It is therefore entirely understandable that a little bit more record-breaking was playing on his mind when he holed his chip at the long tenth yesterday morning to go five under for his round.
With two more par-fives to come at the 16th - which he had birdied all week - and at the 18th, the chance of a very low score was starting to become a possibility. But only Broadhurst himself knew that he really was not playing well enough to sustain it and he was perhaps the least surprised person on the golf course when two double bogeys in four holes, at the 11th and 14th, ended his hopes of a late push for a bigger cheque than the one for £29,000 he pocketed.
"I know everyone's going to say at five under after 10 that it was there for the taking," he said. "But only you know how well you're playing and I knew in the back of my mind I just wasn't swinging well."
Keeping it tight and trying to par in might have done more to help boost his Ryder Cup chances. But thoughts of the K Club in September are simply not an issue for Broadhurst until if and when it happens. And the only thoughts he and his caddie Paul Smith had by the time he had turned for home yesterday afternoon was trying to post an even better score.
He said: "I said to my caddie 'I'm not going to back off now. I've just got to keep going for everything.
"I didn't want go out and just defend five under. I thought could get to seven under, which I'd have got without the two doubles.
"I kept thinking that, sooner or later, I was going to hit the shot that made me think I've found it again and I'm back in the groove but it never happened.
"The last eight holes were hard work. My God it was shocking. I blocked it off ten and again at 11, where I had a horrible stance. Then I hooked it off 12 and did well to make par and then blocked it again at 13 and hooked it at 14.
"But then, after hooking it again at 17, I hit it miles left at 18, ran a three-iron through the back and still made four."
Disappointing though he was in the end not to have finished a little higher than tied for 26th, that still made it his best Open in ten years -and he was happy just to be back on the course where he had been the last professional to win an event, the European Pro Celebrity in 1991.
"There's more to a golf course than just the playing of the tournament," he said. "I don't know about how the general public feel about it, how it was to view, how the parking's gone or how busy the traffic's been all week because, as players, we're lucky enough not to have to think about things like that.
"But I really hope they don't take it off the roster now it's back on as it's a great course.
"It's a course you really have to think about. I've hit every club in the bag, mind you, not every one of them quite like I ought to have done.
"But it's been freak conditions that it should have been so bone hard and protected by so little wind.
"You could see what might happen when the wind got up on Friday afternoon and it changed the cut mark from one under to level. But it just did not blow enough." Paul Broadhurst had double bogeys at the 11th and 14th to end hopes of a late push for better finish.
