Shane Lowry has received a two-stroke penalty for causing his ball to move in the rough during the second round of the 2025 Open.
The 2019 Open champion was in the rough down the left of the par-5 12th when his ball appeared to slightly roll back after taking a practice swing.
Video footage emerged on social media of the incident, with Lowry said to have been told by an R&A official that a ruling would be assessed after the round.
Per Golf.com, the Golf Channel’s Todd Lewis reported that Lowry and his playing partners Scottie Scheffler and Collin Morikawa spent 20 minutes reviewing the video once they had finished up on Friday evening.
“Well, I didn’t know anything happened until walking up the 15th fairway and then the rules official came over and told me that there was a possibility the ball moved on the 12th for my second shot,” he explained after his round.
“So I said – I’ve asked him, how many shot penalty is that if it did, and he said, two. Obviously then I feel like I’m on the cut mark then, which is not very nice.
“I feel like I played well on the way in and then obviously waited to see. I mean, yeah, I was in there with the rules official and wasn’t arguing my case, but I’m disappointed that they don’t have more camera angles on it.
“The one zoomed in slow motion – they’re trying to tell me if it doesn’t move from the naked eye, if you don’t see it moving, it didn’t move.
“I told them I definitely was looking down towards the ball as I was taking that practice swing, and I didn’t see it move. But I had to take the penalty because – I’m still not sure, to be honest, whether it was or not, 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. Look, I’ll just have to dust myself off and get out there tomorrow and give it a go.”
(Image credit: Getty Images)
“Ultimately in golf it’s up to the player, and I felt like Shane was put in a pretty tough situation there when they were zooming in on his golf ball,” Lowry’s playing partner Scottie Scheffler said.
“In the rough it’s hard to tell. From what I looked at very briefly on the video, it looked like it was very difficult…
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