Lowry: “One Of The The Stupidest Thing I’ve Done In Golf”.

4 months ago by Comments Off on Lowry: “One Of The The Stupidest Thing I’ve Done In Golf”.

Shane Lowry had shown his golfing disgust on day one of this year’s US Open by hurling an on-course microphone but it seems Oakmont got its own back on the Irishman on day two of the year’s third men’s major.

Already five-over for his second round and 13-over in total and headed for the weekend off Lowry walked onto the 14th green to mark his ball for a putt, only he forgot to put down a coin and just picked it up.

Frozen in disbelief for a second or two, Lowry turns to caddie Darren Reynolds looking at him before breaking out in laughter amongst the Ryder Cup trio group of also Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose, and with Lowry forced to take a one-stroke penalty and walk off with a double-bogey ‘6’ and eventually post a 78 for a shock 17-over tally and miss the halfway cut by a remarkable 10 shots.

Lowry said afterwards: “Probably one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done. I picked the ball up, had the ball in my hand, turned around to Darren and he basically said to me: What are you doing? By then maybe my mind was somewhere else.”

The Rules of Golf state: “If the player lifts the ball without marking its spot, marks its spot in a wrong way or makes a stroke with a ball-marker left in place, the player gets one penalty stroke.”

Lowry was smiling about it, but there were grimaces throughout the day as he collapsed out of the event with a whopping score of 17-under over par.

Asked what had gone wrong, Lowry said: “I don’t know to be honest. I drove it in play a lot Thursday, did what I was supposed to do off the tee and then just didn’t have my game that I’ve had for the last while.

“Then I really struggled on the greens and the round got away from me out here and that was it.

“They let it sort of do what they said it wouldn’t do, but that’s all fine, that’s the US Open.

“I just made obviously too many doubles, too many big mistakes and then when I got a couple chances, I didn’t convert them.

“I didn’t really do much right to be honest, other than I drove the ball as good as I’ve probably driven the ball in a long time. So, yeah, weird couple of days.”

Lowry’s early exit was on the cards long before his marking mistake and the Ryder Cup star has been joined on the weekend scrapheap by a number of his European colleagues.

Ludvig Aberg was unable to do enough to stay in the event and is headed home just like Tommy Fleetwood, who fell away late on Friday to finish at nine-over par.

  • Thanks to my own Daily Record.


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