When it comes to surprise winners of The Open Championship, few can compete with Ben Curtis who was 396th in the world when he won the Claret Jug in 2003.
Ben Curtis was making his major championship debut when he won at Royal St George’s. The American capitalised as Thomas Bjorn threw away a three-shot lead with four holes to play.
Curtis would play in The Open another 13 times during his career. And not only would he only register two more top 10 finishes in the event, but he would also only make the cut in four of those 14 starts. Elsewhere, he would register just one top 10 in 25 starts in the other three majors.
But had history played out differently, perhaps it would have been another outsider who triumphed at Royal St George’s.
When Mark Roe was disqualified from The Open while two shots off the lead
Mark Roe only qualified for the 2003 Open Championship by finishing in a tie for eighth at the Scottish Open the week before. The Englishman had not won on the European Tour since 1994, while he had missed the cut in six of his previous 11 appearances in The Open.
However, after three rounds, Roe was just two shots off the lead. In fact, he found himself alongside Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, Sergio Garcia and Curtis himself at one over par after the first three days in Kent. And no-one in the top 10 had gone lower in the third round than Roe as he posted a 67.
Unfortunately, Roe would not get the chance to contend for the trophy on Sunday. It turned out that he and playing partner Jesper Parnevik had failed to swap scorecards before the third round. And thus, the pair signed for the incorrect scores.
That meant that they were both disqualified from the tournament.
What Roe said after being disqualified from The Open
Remarkably, Roe was able to take the positives from his performance rather than focus on the agonising disappointment, and insisted that he did not blame anyone else for the mistake.
“I came in the scorer’s hut and I triple checked my scores, as I always do. I then asked the lady scorer to repeat my scores, which she did. I checked those off on the score card. At no point did any of us notice, not the scorers in the hut, not Jesper or myself,” he said at the time.
“Jesper called me in after my interview with the BBC and the American TV station and he said there’s a problem with the score card. I’ve got to be honest with you, it wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought maybe I put one of his scores down wrong, sometimes you do and sign it and walk out. I knew my score card was perfectly marked, very well lying on the table in front of me, and nothing else they can do but disqualify you.”
What makes the story even more tough to take is that Roe would not play in another major.
He would retire from playing in 2006 and has largely worked as part of the team at Sky Sports ever since.
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