FedExCup Playoffs: Ben Griffin rebounds from wild start after a ‘creatine overdose' at BMW Championship
Griffin opened the final round of the FedExCup Playoffs event in Maryland by going 6-over through his first three holes of the day. He made a triple-bogey on the first hole, too.
His reasoning, he revealed after, was stunning. He was dealing with what he described as a 'creatine overdose.'
'I take creatine as a supplement, and this morning I didn't take it until I basically teed off on one. I was at the end of my batch, and I had this like, basically a snowball of creatine. So it had been in my bucket for a month, and broke it up and put it in my water bottle. Whatever, I'm all good. I've taken it on the golf course before. It's fine.
'I started taking it after my second shot and I accidentally swallowed one of the big rocks that was in my water bottle. I've never overdosed on creatine before, but I think I did in the moment because I didn't really drink any water after that. I basically just inhaled like a snowball.'
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That 'snowball' of creatine, he said, hit him almost instantly.
'I started getting super shaky,' he said. 'I've never felt like this before, and I literally felt like I had tremors.'
After his tee shot went out of bounds on the second hole, Griffin said his caddie stepped in and forced him to chug an entire water bottle and helped him calm down.
'It was probably more just like, a little bit flustered,' he said. 'I was fine after the second shot on two, and I felt good.'
That type of start would doom just about any golfer, especially with a spot in the Tour Championship on the line. But remarkably, Griffin turned things around once he downed that water bottle.
Griffin made three straight birdies to close his front nine, and then he made four more birdies in his final six holes of the day to end with a 1-under 69. That brought him to 3-under on the week and moved him up the leaderboard — though he was still well out of range from Scottie Scheffler and the others fighting for the trophy at Caves Valley Golf Club.
'I can't remember too many times where I've been all the way up to 6-over and shot under par in a round,' he said. 'That has to got to be up there. Pretty proud of myself."
Griffin is also safely into the Tour Championship next week, where the top 30 golfers in the FedExCup standings will compete in Atlanta. Griffin picked up his inaugural wins on Tour this season, first at the Zurich Classic in April and then again at the Charles Schwab Challenge the following month. He also finished T8 at the PGA Championship and T10 at the U.S. Open, and climbed as high as No. 15 in the Official World Golf Rankings — which is his all-time best.
Griffin is also in the mix for a Ryder Cup spot with the U.S. team later this fall. He entered this week, the final week of the automatic qualification period, at No. 9 in the standings. He'll have to rely on a captain's pick from Keegan Bradley to make the team.
Though Griffin said he's not going to stop taking creatine, he's definitely going to adjust how he takes it moving forward.
'I don't think I'll be taking too much creatine in the future,' he said. 'I will take it but not in the amount that I probably did on the golf course, which wasn't probably a healthy amount.'
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