Stuart Neumann assembled the best Stableford card of Tuesday's links round at Oitavos Dunes. His 36 points matched the field's top score and bettered anything else the group of six could manage. It should have stood as the highlight of round four.

He then found a way to undercut it at the very last hole. The 18th is a par four, ranked the second-hardest on the course. Neumann needed nine shots to get home. A quintuple bogey, zero points, delivered at the precise moment the card was being closed out.

The wider picture is no kinder. His best gross at Oitavos Dunes this TEG was 99. On his only previous visit he carded 95. Four strokes worse, then, and the step backwards was signed off in the most fitting manner available.

David Mullin's final round at Oitavos Dunes produced his worst Stableford score and his worst gross score of the TEG, in the same 18 holes. He returned 22 points, down from the 40 of the previous round, and signed for a gross 33 over par.

The damage arrived in two instalments. He opened with a quadruple bogey 8 at the 1st, a triple bogey at the 2nd and a double bogey at the 3rd. Nine shots gone in three holes, without a single net par to show for them. He steadied through the middle of the round, which in hindsight reads less like recovery and more like reconnaissance. The finish went bogey, double bogey, double bogey, then another quadruple bogey 8 at the 18th, a hole ranked the second-hardest on the course. Four holes, no net par, eight shots dropped from the 16th home. It was, by some distance, the worst round of his TEG.

John Patterson's fourth round at Oitavos Dunes unravelled before it began. He took 10 on the par-4 1st, a sextuple bogey, on one of the harder holes on the course. A double bogey followed at the 2nd, then another at the par-3 3rd. Ten shots gone across three holes, not a net par among them.

Nothing improved. Between the 9th and 13th he shipped a further twelve shots, including a quadruple bogey 7 on the par-3 12th. At the par-4 17th he produced another quadruple bogey, this one an 8. The only calm came at the 15th and 16th, where back-to-back pars briefly stopped the bleeding, though by then the patient was past helping. It was Patterson's first visit to Oitavos Dunes. He leaves it with a gross of 105 and a firm opinion of the opening tee shot.