Bad weather has plagued this PGA Championship at Quail Hollow.
Bad breaks, too.
In the first round Thursday, players came off the curse ruing the preponderance of mud balls they’d encountered after striping tee shots down the middle of the fairway. “It’s just unfortunate to be hitting good shots and to pay them off that way,” Xander Schaufelle said, speaking for many, after his opening one-over 72. “It’s kind of stupid.”
Shane Lowry, who is ranked 10th in the world, had even choicer words for his own spot of bad luck in the second round on Friday. After smashing a drive on the 353-yard par-4 8th, Lowry had just a 57-yard flip remaining to the hole; forget birdie, you couldn’t have blamed him if he was thinking about holing out for eagle.
One problem: When Lowry’s drive had touched down on the soft fairway, it hopped once, twice, thrice, before snuggly settling into another player’s pitch mark. When Lowry arrived at his ball, he found its lower half submerged in the soggy soil.
Free relief? Nope. Under Rule 16.3, you are permitted relief from an embedded lie only when your ball has settled in its own pitch mark. Lowry’s ball was in someone else’s.
After receiving a ruling from an official, the excitable Irishman was none too pleased with the hand he’d been dealt nor none too shy about expressing his emotions.
When his ensuing wedge shot flew low and right into a bunker fronting the green, Lowry went full Hulk.
“F— this place!” he bellowed as he hammered the turf beneath him with his wedge, tearing up a toupee-sized divot.
“Incredibly unlucky,” Geoff Ogilvy said on the ESPN broadcast.
Lowry’s histrionics weren’t finished. After thumping his sand shot to 22 feet, he missed his par try then flipped off his ball. The resulting bogey dropped Lowry to two over the tournament and one outside the projected cutline.
This isn’t the first time Lowry has flashed his temper.
At the 2023 Players Championship, he snapped a club over his knee, and, a year later, at the Open Championship, he blasted a cameraman who’d distracted him. At the Masters in April, when asked to comment on the play of his friend, Rory McIlroy, after the third round, Lowry said: “I know that’s what y’all want me to talk about, but I’ve just had a s— finish, I’ve got a chance to win the Masters tomorrow, and I’m going to go hit some balls.”
Lowry has been in excellent form this season, with seven top-20 in 11 starts, including a runner-up at Philadelphia Cricket Club last week. In 48 major starts before this week, he has nine top-10 finishes, including a win at the 2019 Open Championship at Royal Portrush.
The Open returns to Portrush in July.
