Sometimes, all you can do is throw up the finger and say a big f**k this, and that’s what Shane Lowry did.
No matter what level of golf you play at, everyone has that one golf course they actively despise, whether it be down to golf course design, form, bad memories or all of the above. For Lowry, it’s Quail Hollow. His latest tale of woe ending with a plugged lie.
Mudballs have been a hot topic over the first two days of the 107th PGA Championship and despite shooting a round of 71 for a two-over total, Lowry squelched his way to just a fourth missed cut in almost three season.
To only add to Lowry’s loveless relationship with Quail Hollow and most likely Charlotte and the entire state of North Carolina for good measure, he initially thought his par on 18 was enough to make the cut only for his score of +2 to edge the wrong side of parity moments later.
The Clara man will make the headlines for his outburst on the eighth hole of his second round. After he split the fairway leaving himself a pitch of 50 yards or so for his approach, his golf ball kicked back off the soggy turf and into a pitch mark.
Lowry would have been entitled to a free drop had his ball been judged by a rules official to have sunk back into its own pitchmark, deeming it embedded in the turf.
The 37-year-old was refused a drop and had to gouge the ball towards the green which he was unable to do. Staring a highly likely birdie in the face, Lowry made an infuriating bogey. After chunking his approach, Lowry took his justified frustration out on the pitchfork and yelled “fuck this place.”
He flashed the middle finger as he left the green – it’s hard to blame him.
Speaking to reporters after the round, Lowry felt aggrieved that an ESPN reporter argued that the ball had rolled into a separate pitch mark to his own which seemed to influence the referee.
“You hit a lovely tee shot and you’re not expecting that”, said Lowry.
“I was just very annoyed with that, obviously. I felt I had quite a bit of momentum going around and I felt standing there with 50 yards to that pin, it’s an easy pitch shot for me. Then I walk away making bogey.
“The ESPN guy was a bit too involved when he didn’t have to be, and that’s what annoyed me. A lot. I was just asking the referee, and the ESPN guy comes straight over saying, ‘That’s not your pitch mark.’
“I’m like, ‘That’s not for you to talk about, that’s for me to call a rules official and decide what happens. I just said to the rules official, ‘What happens the guy who’s at 7.10 and not on ESPN live?’ I guarantee he’s down there arguing it’s his pitch mark.
“I don’t want a drop because it’s not my pitch mark. I’m just saying. And it goes back to I’d a lot of mudballs again today. So. . . yeah.
“It looked like a fresh pitch mark I was in, but it also looked like there was a fresh one beside it. I wasn’t arguing it was my pitch mark, I was trying to be 100% sure. Imagine if I came in and all of a sudden someone told me that was my pitch mark.
“There’s one guy’s producer saying it is, but they told Brooks [Koepka] his ball was okay yesterday and it was on the driving range. You need to be careful about what you’re doing because there’s so much at stake.”
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