<
        >

          Ask Steven: Was Rory McIlroy's round of 61 last week an American record?

          Streeter Lecka/Getty Images
          • Steven Lynch, Editor of the updated edition of Wisden on the AshesMay 22, 2015, 02:18 PM
            Close
              Steven Lynch won the Wisden Cricket Monthly Christmas Quiz three years running before the then-editor said "I can't let you win it again, but would you like a job?" That lasted for 15 years, before he moved across to the Wisden website when that was set up in 2000. Following the merger of the two sites early in 2003 he was appointed as the global editor of Wisden Cricinfo. In June 2005 he became the deputy editor of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. He continues to contribute the popular weekly "Ask Steven" question-and-answer column on ESPNcricinfo, and edits the Wisden Guide to International Cricket.

          Was Rory McIlroy's round of 61 last week any sort of record for the American golf tour? asked Simon Norris

          Well, Rory McIlroy's 61, which set up his victory in the Wells Fargo Championship, was a record for the course at Quail Hollow in North Carolina - remarkably, beating McIlroy's own 62 there, back in 2010.

          But the holy grail (or possibly quail) in American golf is a round of 59: there have been only six of them on the PGA Tour. Even McIlroy admitted: "I was thinking about 59 from the 14th tee."

          The first 59 was by Al Geiberger in 1977, and since then it's been done by Chip Beck (1991), David Duval (1999), Paul Goydos and Stuart Appleby (both in 2010) and Jim Furyk (2013).

          There have been nine other 59s in accredited tour events worldwide, plus a 58 by 18-year-old Ryo Ishikawa in The Crowns tournament on the Japanese Tour in 2010.