Matt Kuchar makes a comical quadruple bogey Royal Troon’s Postage Stamp

Matt Kuchar must have thought he was looking at an instant replay when he had to reload and try again to get his ball out of that treacherous right front bunker on the par-3 eighth hole at Royal Troon.

The steep face of the pot bunker from which Rory McIlroy needed six shots to escape during a British Open practice round earlier in the week forced Kuchar to knock his shot out backwards. Even with a slightly less daunting wall in front of him, Kooch clipped the turf with his club and ball but ended up safely into the rough.

“You know a bunker’s tough when you’ve got a guy like Kuchar, who’s such a good ‘up and inner’ [and] he’s got to go that way,” observed NBC’s Johnny Miller.

What happened next is the stuff of nightmares, and why the 116-yard Postage Stamp hole has gained such renown. With a decent lie between two tufts of fescue, Kuchar attempted a flop shot to the front pin placement. Except he came up short of the green and watched as the ball dove back into almost the exact spot it had been moments before.

“And he’s right back to where he started,” said Miller’s colleague Dan Hicks.

Miller noted that even the ever-affable Kuchar would have a tough time grinning through his travails.

“Wow, I’d like to see him smile after that,” Miller said with a chuckle. “He usually can smile through anything. Right now, not so much.”

Rinse, wash, repeat for Kuchar, who played the same shot again but had a shorter approach to the green. A two-putt quadruple bogey-7 tied the highest score of the week on the “Wee Beastie.”

The misadventure at No. 8 dropped Kuchar to 5-over for the week.