Shane Lowry penalized at Open after ball appears to move

PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — Ireland’s Shane Lowry was assessed a two-stroke penalty following his second round at the Open Championship on Friday after the broadcast video feed appeared to show his ball moving slightly when he took a practice swing in the rough on the 12th hole.

Lowry made par on the hole before the penalty. The two-shot deduction took him from a 1-under 69 to a 1-over 71 and placed him at even par for the championship, making the cut by one shot.

“It’s obviously very disappointing,” Lowry said. “I felt like I played really, really well today. And yeah, that’s hard to take.”

The 2019 Open champion at Royal Portrush said he was unaware that the ball moved or that there was any issue until he was walking up the 15th fairway and a rules official approached him to say there was a possibility his ball moved on his second shot on the 12th.

“I’ve asked him, ‘How many shots penalty is that if it did?’ and he said, ‘Two,'” Lowry said. “Obviously then I feel like I’m on the cut mark then, which is not very nice. I feel like I played well on the way in and then obviously waited to see.”

After a 20-minute wait and discussion inside the scoring tent with rules officials and his playing partners, Scottie Scheffler and Collin Morikawa, Lowry emerged and the ruling was announced.

“I had to take it … I wasn’t arguing my case, but I’m disappointed that they don’t have more camera angles on it,” Lowry said. “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.”

Lowry added that he felt like he took his practice swing well away from the ball. He also said that he felt like officials already had their decision made before they reviewed it with players following the round.

“If the ball moved and I caused it to move and it moved, it’s a two-shot penalty,” he 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.”

When asked about the incident after his round, Scheffler said he thought Lowry was put in a tough situation having the camera zoom in on his golf ball at that moment and added it was very difficult to see in the video if the ball was moving or not.

“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 said. “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.”

Despite the penalty, Lowry still made the cut by one shot. Now, however, he will begin the weekend 10 shots behind Scheffler instead of eight. In 2019, Lowry shot 63 at Portrush on Saturday to take control of the tournament.

“I’m just going to have to take it — it’s a bad break — and move on,” Lowry said. “I’ll just have to dust myself off and get out there tomorrow and give it a go.”