Match play can be a strange format. One moment, you can let your guard down and think you have the hole easily won. You’re on the green in two, 10 feet left for birdie. Your opponent is in a greenside bunker. Worst-case scenario, your opponent gets up -and-down for par, and you two-putt to tie. Or so you tell yourself.
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It’s in those moments when you always have to remind yourself that you should expect your opponent to make their next shot, regardless of where they are hitting it from. If not, the shock of an ensuing holed out chip can be so difficult to overcome you suddenly lose a hole you thought you had in the bag. That can in turn affect your strategy on the next hole, and the hole after that. There is a term for this type of situation in match play – Mongolian Reversal.
It’s only a matter of time before the term is eradicated in our overly sensitive world, but for now Sahith Theegala still felt comfortable using it during the U.S. team’s post Day 1 press conference on Thursday at the Presidents Cup. The only part of the phrase he forgot was the “reversal” part, which perked up some ears in the media center at Royal Montreal.
“Match play is a funny thing, man,” said Theegala, who teamed up with Collin Morikawa to defeat Min Woo Lee and Adam Scott 1 up. “There’s always some Mongolians and things go the ways that you don’t think it would go. But yeah, it was really intense. To finish how we finished was awesome, to get a point.”
Those who have heard the phrase before knew exactly what Theegala meant. But our very own Shane Ryan asked Theegala just to clarify what he meant by “mongolians,” leading to this hilarious explanation that had Xander Schauffele, Keegan Bradley and Scottie Scheffler in stitches:
Sahith Theegala mentioned there were a couple “mongolians” out there during his match today. The great @ShaneRyanHere asked him to clarify what that meant, and Theegala handled it perfectly
“Please don’t cancel me.” pic.twitter.com/35hgMzu4yG
— Christopher Powers (@CPowers14) September 26, 2024
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Well handled, Sahith. And he’s right about it being a Fred Couples term, as the great Michael Bamberger pointed out in this piece about golf terminology back in 2019. Next time, we’re certain Sahith will make sure to add the second half of the phrase to avoid any confusion, and potential cancellation.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
