Jon Rahm expressed his sympathy for Shane Lowry’s plight after joining the Offaly man for round three of the 153rd Open Championship at Royal Portrush, and the two-time major winner believes that Lowry was in “a no-win” situation.
The incident occurred on the 12th hole in round two, when Lowry, taking a practice swing, caused his ball to move ever so slightly, but since the 2019 Champion Golfer of the Year was unaware of the transgression and played the ball from the wrong spot the one-stroke penalty for causing the infringement was doubled to two.
In a post on social channels, the R&A explained that being unaware of the infringement was not a valid excuse as they believed that it should have been visible to the naked eye, writing: “the naked eye test is satisfied whether or not the player was looking at the ball when it moved”.
Lowry, conscious of the potential for a social media storm, did not argue with the decision, even though the evidence that it was in fact visible to the naked eye is weak as there is only one camera angle and it’s zoomed in on the ball at the time. Rahm, who’s had his own issues with the rules in the past, most notably when he was handed a two-stroke penalty himself following the final round of the 2020 Memorial Tournament in another incident where the ball clearly moved but it was also highly unlikely that Rahm had any knowledge of it doing so, was sympathetic to Lowry’s plight.
“Well, I can relate because I’ve been there,” Rahm said. “They’ve done exactly the same thing to me where they give you the iPad, and look what happened.
“Yeah, you’re in a no-win situation because if you say I didn’t see it, therefore I don’t think it should be a penalty, even though the rule says it should be visible to the naked eye, you always run the risk of being called something you don’t want to be called. And if you take it on the safe side, you’re taking a two-shot penalty.”
The two-shot penalty for Lowry effectively removed any hopes he had of getting himself back into the mix at the top of the leaderboard, though Rahm felt that at -2 instead of at level-par, those chances were significantly stronger.
“If he starts at two-under today, you have a good Saturday, you can put yourself in contention,” he stated.
“When you get 10 shots back, it’s a little bit harder.
“It’s a tough spot to be in. From what I understand from the whole thing, and I haven’t seen the images, this is just from what I heard, it needs to be visible without a camera.
“If the rule says visible to the naked eye, we need to uphold that more than anything else.”
Questions are likely to be raised about the rule itself, but Rahm doesn’t have a solution ready to go.
“I don’t know,” he said when asked if the rule needed changing. “It’s always going to be based on the situation, and when you get in the rough, it’s tricky.
“But if he didn’t see it, I just don’t know — there’s enough people, I’m assuming if he was in the rough on 12, right or left, there’s enough people around you that if they see it, they’re going to say so.
“Something needs to be changed for sure, I just don’t know exactly how they could change it.”
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