Imagine starting a major championship two strokes down before your opening shot even lands. For Garrick Higgo, that was not imagination, as he failed to abide by the PGA rulebook, which resulted in him being penalized.

Garrick Higgo was due to tee off at 7:18 AM alongside Shaun Micheel and Michael Brennan at Aronimink Golf Club, but he was on the practice putting green rather than within the area defined as the starting point at his starting time. The PGA of America confirmed the breach of Rule 5.3a, which requires players to be present and ready to play at their exact assigned tee time.

The rule has a narrow exemption: arriving within five minutes of your tee time means a two-stroke penalty in stroke play rather than disqualification. Beyond five minutes, you are out of the tournament entirely. The South African golfer fell within that window, so he kept his place in the field but started his round two shots behind.

Those two-stroke penalties can be a big drawback in a major. PGA Championships are regularly decided by one to three shots, and cut lines at this event typically fall around even par or one over. Higgo effectively started at +2, meaning he needed to outperform the projected cut line by multiple strokes just to play the weekend. Even ESPN’s David Duval, a former world No. 1 and 13x PGA Tour winner who finished runner-up at three different majors before winning The Open Championship in 2001, called it “really inexplicable.” From someone who spent years learning how thin major margins are, that reaction says plenty.

That’s a steep ask given where his season sits. In 13 PGA Tour events in 2026, Garrick Higgo has earned around $133,920 with a best finish of T40 at the Cognizant Classic. He has missed the cut seven times, including at THE PLAYERS Championship and the Valspar Championship, and sits 84th in the world rankings. He ranks 161st on tour in both strokes gained, approach, and putting this season.

It is not the first time a procedural penalty has reshaped a major. At the 2010 PGA Championship, Dustin Johnson was penalized two strokes on the 72nd hole at Whistling Straits for grounding his club in a sandy area designated as a bunker under a local rule. That single penalty cost him a playoff spot, which Martin Kaymer eventually won.

Garrick Higgo did show some form at the RBC Heritage in April, shooting a final-round 66 and sinking putts from nearly 127 feet on Sunday. But he has lost strokes tee-to-green in five straight starts since the players, and at a major setup, two borrowed strokes before the opening tee shot leave almost no room to operate.

And golf’s history is filled with moments where two strokes changed everything.

When two strokes rewrote the Script at the PGA Tour

Brooks Koepka’s 2023 Masters experience showed how even an uninvestigated potential violation can derail a player’s focus at Augusta. No penalty was issued, but the scrutiny alone created pressure mid-tournament. In majors, the mental cost of a rules situation often hurts as much as the strokes themselves.

Jordan Spieth and Henrik Stenson learned that the hard way at the 2021 Hero World Challenge. Both played from the wrong tee box on the ninth hole, each picking up two-stroke penalties. Stenson finished 19th; Spieth finished last. A single moment of confusion buried both of them in the final standings.

Go back further to the 1985 U.S. Open, and Denis Watson was penalized two strokes for waiting too long over a hanging putt. It seems minor until you realise Andy North won that tournament. Watson later admitted the ruling significantly damaged his chances at a title that came down to the finest margins.

Each of these cases points to the same reality. Garrick Higgo now joins that list, carrying a two-stroke deficit into the opening round of the 2026 PGA Championship at Aronimink. Johnson lost a major because of two strokes. Spieth and Stenson fell off the leaderboard. Higgo needs to avoid the same fate.