Extra wedge in bag at Barclays costs Furyk $131,250 in lost winnings

JERSEY CITY, N.J. (AP) — Jim Furyk was penalized four strokes in the third round of The Barclays when he and caddie Mike “Fluff” Cowan left an extra club in the bag, a mistake that ended up costing Furyk $131,250 and 188 FedExCup points. Furyk discovered the 15th club while preparing to play a shot near the second green Saturday and had to take two penalty strokes for each hole, turning his opening pars into double bogeys. He finished with a 70 in the rainy morning round, then shot a 69 on Sunday to tie for 15th at 3 under — six strokes behind winner Heath Slocum. The extra club was a 60-degree wedge with extra bounce, something Furyk thought he might need on shots into the grain from the many runoff areas around the greens. He decided to go with his usual low-bounce model with a sharp leading edge, but the other club was inadvertently left in the bag and went unnoticed — in part because he had the rain hood on his bag throughout the warmup session and on the course. “It was a chain of events that added up to a stupid mistake,” Furyk said. “I assumed he (Cowan) knew I was going to play this 60 and he didn’t know which way I was going to go. … It’s one of the simplest rules in golf. It’s so easy. “I pride myself on being really prepared — and to do something like that. I think mental errors are much harder to overcome on the golf course than physical errors. The ones that you make because of an absent mind or not paying attention or not doing your homework, those are the ones that hurt the most because you can control that.” Furyk tried to put the error quickly behind him “He (Cowan) was kicking himself,” Furyk said. “I said, “Hey, I don’t want to hear it. Let’s just play golf and we’ll figure it out.’ “We’ve been through too much together for a long, long time. He’s been on my bag for over 10 years. He does what he does. He shows up on time. He’s a good person and he’s a good caddie. The last thing I want anyone to do is blame it on Mike. The fact that we both made the error is what surprises me. That’s the shocker. I can see one person being a bonehead for 30 minutes, but two people is disappointing.”