It was quite a scene at Oakdale Golf & Country Club on Sunday evening as Nick Taylor battled Tommy Fleetwood through four playoff holes to become the first Canadian to win the RBC Canadian Open in 69 years. And Taylor completed the mission in exhilarating fashion, too, draining a ridiculous 72-foot putt to eagle the 18th and claim victory.
Watching it all transpire was not only a gallery full of Canadians but a number of Canadian and European golfers, too. Among them was Adam Hadwin, who was so excited to see Taylor’s putt drop that he rushed his countryman with a bottle of champagne in hand.
One problem: Fans from the gallery stormed the green as well. Amid the chaos, Hadwin got mistaken for a patron and form tackled to the ground by a security guard in an effort straight out of the CFL.
It was such a sight that CBS Sports lead announcer Jim Nantz noticed it live as Taylor began celebrating his improbable putt.
“They’re storming the 18th green now,” Nantz remarked. “They just tackled Adam Hadwin, by the way, who was trying to approach his friend. Security did — not knowing that’s exactly who that was.”
Good news: Hadwin is OK. His wife, Jessica, took to Twitter to explain: “I’m thrilled to report that [Adam] is still among the land of the living and in true Canadian form, apologized to the security guard for being tackled,” she tweeted Sunday night.
Taylor became just the sixth Canadian to win his nation’s open and the first to do it since Pat Fletcher in 1954. The victory was the third in his PGA Tour career, and it marked the fourth Tour event won by a Canadian this year, the most for a single season in records dating back to 1983.