Scottie Scheffler shot the round of the day at Royal Portrush and now has a two-stroke advantage heading into the weekend of the Open Championship, although he spent a significant amount of time after his Friday round tangled in a rules situation that one of his playing partners, Shane Lowry, found himself in.
Lowry, the defending champion at Royal Portrush, prepared to hit his second shot on the par-5 12th hole on Friday and took a practice swing. He brushed the grass next to his ball and, replay later showed, it moved shortly afterward.
“It almost looked like this ball moved as he took a swipe here,” NBC commentator Dan Hicks said. ”You can see there’s a lot of moisture — yeah, it did move. It oscillated back.”
R&A rules official Charlie Maran later added, “If it is deemed that he caused this ball to move then there will be a penalty.”
Lowry didn’t know any of this was happening until he got to the par-4 15th hole, when he was walking down the fairway and an R&A official informed him of the potential infraction. He said they would review it together after his round.
In short, if Lowry wasn’t to blame for his ball moving, there would be no penalty. If he was, it was two strokes.
“I was in there with the rules official and wasn’t arguing my case, but I’m disappointed that they don’t have more camera angles on it,” Lowry said afterwards. “The one zoomed in slow motion, they’re trying to tell me if it doesn’t move from the naked eye, if you don’t see it moving, it didn’t move. I told them I definitely was looking down towards the ball as I was taking that practice swing, and I didn’t see it move.
“But I had to take the penalty because, to be honest, whether it was or not, but I had to take the penalty because I can’t have my name talked about or tossed around like that, and I just get on with it.”
What Lowry is referring to is the slippery slope with a ruling like this. If he didn’t think he caused the ball to move and argued too hard in his favor, critics might say he was trying to bend the rules. He later added, “I think they had their decision made.”
“If the ball moved and I caused it to move and it moved, it’s a two-shot penalty,” Lowry said. “The last thing I want to do is sit there and argue and not take the penalty and then get slaughtered all over social media tonight for being a cheat.”
The penalty changed Lowry’s 5 to a 7 on the 12th, giving him a one-over 72 on the day. At even par, he’s 10 shots back of Scheffler.
Scheffler and Collin Morikawa, Lowry’s playing partners, were a part of the review. That trio stayed in scoring for a while before they left and spoke with the media.
“Ultimately, in golf it’s up to the player, and I felt like Shane was put in a pretty tough situation there when they were zooming in on his golf ball,” said Scheffler, whose 64 was the low round of the day. “In the rough, it’s hard to tell. From what I looked at very briefly on the video, it looked like it was very difficult to see if the ball was moving, if the ball moved. The camera was kind of zooming in as stuff was happening.
“One of the great things about the game of golf is that you call your penalties on yourself. This situation, I think it was just — it was a very tough spot for Shane to be put in. He handled it really well. It’s obviously very frustrating. It’s frustrating for me as a competitor of his and a player to watch him after kind of deal with that because the last thing you want to be known in the game of golf is somebody who cheats. I’m not going to state a strong opinion here in the media on whether or not I thought he deserved the penalty, but all I’m going to say is it was a very tough situation for him to be put in, and I thought he handled it really well.”
Scheffler, at 10 under, has a one-stroke lead over Matt Fitzpatrick and is two clear of Brian Harman and Haotong Li. Five others are at five under.
Lowry, after his two-stroke penalty, is tied for 34th.
“It’s obviously very disappointing,” Lowry said. “I felt like I played really, really well today. And yeah, that’s hard to take. Look, I’ll just have to dust myself off and get out there tomorrow and give it a go.”
; "Scottie Scheffler believes Open penalty put Shane Lowry in 'tough situation'")
Josh Berhow
Golf.com Editor
As GOLF.com’s managing editor, Berhow handles the day-to-day and long-term planning of one of the sport’s most-read news and service websites. He spends most of his days writing, editing, planning and wondering if he’ll ever break 80. Before joining GOLF.com in 2015, he worked at newspapers in Minnesota and Iowa. A graduate of Minnesota State University in Mankato, Minn., he resides in the Twin Cities with his wife and two kids. You can reach him at joshua_berhow@golf.com.
