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Brooks Koepka walked away with the victory at the 2023 PGA Championship, but the most memorable story to come out of the tournament was easily the wildly unlikely performance of club pro Michael Block.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting a repeat this year based on what transpired during his first round in Louisville.
It’s hard to imagine many golf fans were familiar with Michael Block prior to the start of the PGA Championship in 2023. The man who serves as the head pro at Arroyo Trabuco Golf Club in California had previously earned the right to play in 25 PGA Tour tournaments (including six majors) but never came close to making the cut, and there was no reason to believe things would be different when he arrived at Oak Hill Country Club.
However, Block was not only able to make it to the weekend but headed into his final round in a tie for eighth place. He ultimately finished in a tie for 15th but was able to earn an automatic invite in 2024 with the help of the hole-in-one he dunked the 15th hole on Sunday to put an exclamation point on his Cinderella run.
There was reason to believe Block had what it took to compete at Valhalla Golf Club this week when you consider he tied the course record of 63 last year during a scouting round, but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to be the case based on the scorecard he posted after wrapping up his first 18 holes on Thursday.
Block bogeyed the first hole and saw the wheels come off once he arrived at the second. His approach shot on the par 4 landed in the rough next to the green, and he overshot it before putting his fourth shot in the bunker amidst a comedy of errors that ultimately led to him recording a quadruple bogey to fall to +5 after two.
Block was able to regain his composure a bit while birdieing the 4th, 13th, and 18th to cancel out the three bogeys he recorded over the course of a round that ended with him heading to the clubhouse at +5 after posting a 76.
As of this writing, he’s currently near the bottom of the leaderboard and thirteen strokes behind leader Xander Schauffele as the first-round action continues to unfold.