Jack Floydd's Wild Ride: A Bullet Train, a U-Turn, and Two Eagles
There's a particular feeling that settles into your bones when you think your tournament is over. The grip loosens, the focus softens, and the mind drifts to home, to comfort, to the next event on the calendar. Jack Floydd knows that feeling intimately now—and he knows how spectacularly wrong it can go.
The Train That Wouldn't Wait
At the HotelPlanner Tour's Le Vaudreuil Golf Challenge in France, the English professional had posted an even-par total through two rounds at Golf PGA France du Vaudreuil. Believing his week was finished, Floydd did what any sensible person would do: he boarded the bullet train bound for England.
Then his phone buzzed with rather different news.
"Literally, we got wedged in on the train when we knew we were sort of going to make the cut," Floydd told the HotelPlanner Tour's social media team afterward. "So we just had to go to England because there's no way we could get out."
Picture it: a professional golfer, gear in tow, hurtling through the French countryside at 200 miles per hour, suddenly realizing he needed to be hurtling in the exact opposite direction. The train doesn't stop for miscalculated cut lines.
The U-Turn of All U-Turns
What followed was the kind of logistical scramble that would make a travel agent weep. Upon reaching England, Floydd and his team hit the motorway, executed what he described as a "U-ey at the first junction," and pointed themselves back toward France.
The roughly 400-mile round trip deposited him back at his hotel around 1 a.m. on Saturday morning. Fortune smiled: they had rooms available. Floydd checked back in, no doubt operating on pure adrenaline and perhaps a strong coffee or three.
"So yeah, been a bit crazy," he said with characteristic British understatement.
When Saturday Went Sideways—Then Didn't
Sleep-deprived and road-weary, Floydd's third round started exactly as you might fear. Double bogeys arrived on the second and fifth holes. A bogey followed on the sixth. The universe seemed to be asking: Was this trip really worth it?
But here's where the story turns from travel disaster into something approaching folklore. From that low point, Floydd played four-under golf the rest of the way, salvaging a one-over 73 that kept him in the field.
Sunday brought even better. A two-under 70 featured not one but two eagles—a three on a par-5 and, because apparently this week needed more drama, a hole-in-one on a par-3. The kind of finish that makes 400 miles of unnecessary travel feel like destiny rather than disaster.
He finished tied for 44th. Not a victory, but decidedly better than watching the weekend from his couch in England.
He's Not the First—And Won't Be the Last
Floydd joins an exclusive club of golfers who've miscalculated the cut line with memorable consequences. Most famously, Bryson DeChambeau flew from Charlotte to Dallas after the 2021 Wells Fargo Championship, convinced his week was over. He woke up to learn otherwise, caught a 2:45 a.m. flight back, and ultimately finished tied for ninth.
"It was worth it. It no doubt was worth it," DeChambeau said at the time.
The cut line is a cruel mistress. It moves when you're not looking. It shifts with afternoon breezes and missed three-footers and that one guy who holes out from the fairway on 18. Professional golfers spend their weeks calculating it, watching it, dreading it—and occasionally, catastrophically misreading it.
The Takeaway
Jack Floydd walked over 28,000 yards of French golf course last week. He also traveled roughly 400 miles by train and car that he absolutely didn't need to travel. He made two eagles, including an ace, and earned a check instead of an early exit.
The lesson? Maybe wait for the official cut announcement before booking transport. Or maybe—just maybe—the chaos is part of the story. Either way, Floydd's week at Le Vaudreuil will be remembered long after the leaderboard is forgotten.
Sometimes golf gives you the weekend you expected. Sometimes it gives you a bullet train, a U-turn, and a hole-in-one. That's the game.