PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland – Shane Lowry’s bid for another claret jug at home took a massive blow Friday when he was assessed a two-shot penalty after officials determined that he caused his ball to move while he prepared to play his second shot on the 12th hole.
Lowry wasn’t informed of the potential infraction until he was walking up the 15th fairway. At the time, he was 2 under par for the championship, on the fringes of contention as one of his fellow playing competitors, Scottie Scheffler, sprinted ahead of the field at Royal Portrush.
Lowry ended up making birdie on the 15th after the discussion and parred out the rest of the way to sign for what was ultimately a 1-over 72. The 2019 Open champion is at even par for the tournament, 10 shots back of Scheffler.
But there was plenty of confusion after the second round, as Lowry’s group didn’t emerge from the scoring trailer for more than 20 minutes, causing two other three-balls to stack up outside.
The point of contention was whether Lowry’s rules infraction as he sized up his second shot from the wet rough left of the 12th fairway was visible to the naked eye. It appeared, on zoomed-in, slow-motion video replay, that Lowry may have inadvertently caused the ball to move, but Lowry said afterward that he didn’t see it in real time as he made a practice swing and that there was only one close-up camera angle.
“I’m still not sure, to be honest, whether it was or not,” Lowry said, “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.
“It’s obviously very disappointing. I felt like I played really, really well today. And yeah, that’s hard to take. But I’ll just have to dust myself off and get out there tomorrow and give it a go.”
When he entered scoring, “I think they had it in their heads the ball moved,” Lowry said of the officials. He asked for a different replay that showed the entire area, but he was told there was only one angle. His par-5 on the 12th turned into a double-bogey 7.
The R&A issued the following statement:
During Round Two, Shane Lowry’s ball was seen to have moved while he was taking a practice swing for his second shot from the rough at the 12th hole.
The Rules require three things to be assessed in such situations:
1. Did the ball leave its original position and come to rest on another spot?
2. Was the ball’s movement to another spot discernible to the naked eye?
and
3. If the ball did come to rest on another spot and the movement was discernible to the naked eye, is it known or virtually certain that the player’s actions caused the ball to move?
Assessing whether the movement of the ball was visible to the naked eye in such a situation assumes the player being in a normal address position for the stroke.
In Shane Lowry’s situation, the movement of the ball to another spot, including the movement of the logo, was discernible to the naked eye. The naked eye test is satisfied whether or not the player was looking at the ball when it moved.
It was clear that the ball moved immediately after the player’s club touched foliage close to the ball during a practice swing and that the player’s actions caused the ball to move.
In these circumstances there is a one stroke penalty and the ball must be replaced. However, as the ball was played from the spot where it was moved to, the player played from a wrong place and incurs a total penalty of two strokes.
“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.”
Scheffler, who watched the rules discussion unfold in scoring, said that it was a “very tough situation” for Lowry.
“From what I looked at very briefly on the video, it looked like it was very difficult to see if the ball moved,” Scheffler said. “One of the great things about the game of golf is that you call your penalties on yourself. This situation, 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 as a player to watch him 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.”
