SUTTON COLDFIELD, ENGLAND | Niklas Nørgaard overcame a five-minute head-spin to claim his first DP World Tour victory on Sunday in the British Masters at The Belfry’s Brabazon Course.
The Dane’s weekend was a classic case of the sublime to the ridiculous, one that ended with him seated in a Union Jack-patterned armchair with a huge smile on his face. However, one might suspect that at some point over the next seven days he might find himself breathing heavily into a brown paper bag after recalling what happened around the 15th hole of his final round.
Before then, the 32-year-old Nørgaard had carded a sensational third round of 8-under-par 64 to turn a two-shot halfway deficit into a four-shot 54-hole lead over South Africa’s Thriston Lawrence, who closed his own Saturday round with four straight birdies.
When Nørgaard found greenside rough in two blows at the par-5 15th, he continued to lead the field by four as playing competitor Lawrence, still Nørgaard’s closest pursuer, was struggling to better par.
Whereupon the Dane completed an unholy trinity of three disastrous chips. The first was guilty of deceleration, the second was more or less a shank, and the third was a duffed chip which easily could have been worse because it was a double-hit (recent rule changes meant he was not further penalised).
“I never thought I’d cry because I almost didn’t cry at my wedding. You have no idea how much this means to me. I’ve been dreaming of this since I was 10 years old. I’ve had kind of a long career, moving slowly, every year getting a little bit better. But there is more than one way to the top, and I’m kind of proving it.”
Niklas Nørgaard
By the time he had found the bottom of the cup, his double-bogey 7 had halved his lead and left his head frazzled beyond belief. He later conceded that he had been “so nervous in the morning that I very nearly threw up on my breakfast,” and that the nausea had briefly resumed as he walked to the 16th tee. “The thing is, I was not that nervous,” he said. “I’m just sometimes really bad at chipping.”
His caddie, Kasper Broch Estrup, husband of the LPGA’s Nicole Broch Estrup, later said: “Every lie was terrible, but it was the most stress I have ever experienced on a golf course. It peaked right there and then.” Veteran Søren Kjeldsen said that the Danish golfers who were watching the television broadcast in the hotel bar had collectively slumped with their heads in hands.
“After that show on 15,” Nørgaard said, “I did wonder if I had thrown everything I have worked so hard for all away.”
Which rather puts what happened next into magnificent context. He thrashed a 350-yard drive, the longest of the day at the par-4 16th, to the middle of the fairway.
But if he thought the drama was over, he was unprepared for the duffed 65-yard pitch that followed. To his credit he got up and down for par, and then completed a birdie-4 at 17 to match Lawrence’s. “I knew I needed that birdie,” he said. “I wanted – I needed – a two-shot lead going up 18. That birdie was big.”
A safe par on 18, watched by his fellow Danes who had emerged from the bar, secured the win and prompted a few tears.
“I never thought I’d cry because I almost didn’t cry at my wedding,” he said with a laugh. “You have no idea how much this means to me. I’ve been dreaming of this since I was 10 years old. I’ve had kind of a long career, moving slowly, every year getting a little bit better. But there is more than one way to the top, and I’m kind of proving it.”
His story is actually rather intriguing. His first tour win came way back in 2011 on the third-tier Nordic Golf League when he was a 19-year-old amateur. He didn’t join the professional ranks for another four years whereupon he bobbed up and down between the second and third tiers, adding two victories on the NGL, before finally earning a DP World Tour card for 2022, six months before his 30th birthday. He clung to his card in 2022, finishing 110th on the Race to Dubai. Last year was a lot safer in 77th.
He first claimed a share of a 54-hole lead in last year’s British Masters before slipping into a tie for seventh following a final-round 73. He even tied the first-round lead in this summer’s Scandinavian Mixed before falling outside the top 20.
So many doors. So many times he banged his head on them. Finally one opened.
“I have never even won on the Challenge Tour,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief when told he is now ranked sixth in this year’s Race to Dubai. “I was just aiming to make the top 50 so I could play the DP World Tour Championship.”
“His career and how he bounced back from what happened on 15 says so much about him,” a proud Broch Estrup said. “He was mentally very strong out there, and it has been going that way for a while now. I asked him a few times how he was feeling, and every time he told me he was doing OK. Last year’s experience of sleeping on a lead was very important for him. It helped him win today. It helped at 15 and 16.”
Danes rather like The Belfry in an even year. Rasmus Højgaard won the UK Championship there in 2020, Thorbjørn Olesen in 2022 and now Nørgaard in 2024 have claimed the British Masters (which Thomas Bjørn won at the Forest of Arden in 2005).
“To win my first DP World Tour event, one in which other Danes have done well, where they were there watching me, where the Ryder Cup has been held,” he said. “I feel very good about it.”
Ah, the Ryder Cup. He was informed that the tournament was the first qualifying event and that he was therefore now leading the rankings for the 2025 match.
“Am I?” he gasped. “I didn’t know that. Oh, wow. Let’s cut it off now!”
Matt Cooper