“I was hunkered down reading my putt when the thought suddenly came into my head, ‘f**k, did I take that other rescue out of the bag?’” Pictured in Germany recently by Eoin Clarke www.golffile.ieWaterville’s David Hggins admits that he has no-one but himself to blame for the extra club error that cost him his chance to qualify for The Open.

The 40-year old explained in his regular column on GolfcentralDaily.com that he had dried and stored all his gear, inclucing a spare rescue club, after finishing on five under in Local Final Qualifying at North Berwick.

Believing he would only have an outside chance of forcing a play-off for perhaps one place, he had lunch and watched the scores. A few hours later he was left kicking himself after remembering he’d put a 15th club in his bag:

Explaining how his afternoon developed out, Higgins wrote:

“I couldn’t believe it but was delighted to see the way things were panning out as I moved up the leaderboard and became more confident that I could get one of the spots available in the playoff.

“I decided to go the range to warm up again and hit a few balls. I just took driver, mid iron and wedge. It was still raining really hard so I kept the rain cover on my bag.  My caddy for the day, Monty, a local man that knows north Berwick like the back of his hand, had done a great job all day and was up for the playoff.

“We headed for the tee. I hit a good tee shot, and good second to about 15 feet. I was hunkered down reading my putt when the thought suddenly came into my head, ‘f**k, did I take that other rescue out of the bag?’

“I stood up and felt a bit sick in my stomach as I walked over to the bag to check. And there she was looking up at me! “B****x”……….

“It was a horrible thing to happen but I have no-one to blame only myself. I guess the excitement/ adrenaline rush of getting another opportunity to play in the greatest golf event in the world clouded my judgement and I made a mistake.”