TROON, Scotland — Shane Lowry was coasting through the second round at the British Open, playing some great, boring golf. Lowry ranked fifth in greens in regulation and seventh in fairways hit through his first 27 holes, and led the field by two shots.
Then the 2019 Open champion arrived at Royal Troon's par-4 11th hole. With railway tracks flanking the right side and gorse bushes on the left, it's not just one of the hardest holes on the course, but in all of major championship golf.
It wasn't the drive which undid Lowry on this hole, though. His drive found the rough on the right side of the hole, and left him 176 yards from the green.
“I did the hard part,” Lowry said afterward. “I hit my drive where you could find it, which is obviously a hard thing to do on that hole. I had a nice lie in the rough.”
That's when things went wrong. An overzealous cameraman distracted Lowry in the final moments before he hit his ball. The ball squirted directly left and flew directly into the gorse bushes.
Annoyed, Lowry took a deep breath, closed his eyes, then dropped a provisional ball in the event he couldn't find his first shot. He hit it well: That shot finished about 15 feet away.
Lowry preferred to play that ball and hopefully salvaged a bogey. Under the Rules of Golf, that would have been fine unless his original first ball not been found. Lowry told the rules officials he wanted to play on, until one informed him that a spectator who thought he was being helpful had found it. You can spot here when Lowry then confirms it’s his.
That left Lowry with three options:
- Attempt to play his ball from the gorse bush
- Take two club-lengths of relief from the spot of his ball
- Re-hit from his previous position
After some deliberation, Lowry decided on option two. His relief got him to a reasonable path of trampled rough.
From there, Lowry pitched his ball 70 yards to the front of the green, then two-putted for a double bogey.
Afterward, Lowry explained what was going on in his mind at the moment.
“I felt like through that whole process of that 20 minutes, it was whatever it was, of taking the drop, seeing where I could drop, and I felt like I was very calm and composed and really knew that I was doing the right thing, and I felt like [caddie] Darren [Reynolds] did a great job too just kind of … he kept telling me, we have loads of time. We don't need to rush this. We just need to do the right thing here.
“To be honest, I was happy enough leaving there with a 6. It was not like … it wasn't a disaster. I was still leading the tournament."
Indeed, Lowry followed it up with three consecutive pars, then birdied two of his last three holes to close with a 69 and finish 36 holes leading the tournament at seven under.
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