Shane Lowry responds with ‘best shots I’ve hit all week’ and two birdies after double bogey

TROON, Scotland – If Shane Lowry wins his second Open Championship, it will likely be his adventure on Royal Troon’s 11^th hole during a gusty second round that will prove pivotal.

The Irishman was cruising along at 7 under for the tournament – 2 under for the round – when his tee shot at the par-4 11^th hole bounded into the right rough.

“I did the hard part. I hit my drive where you could find it, which is obviously a hard thing to do on that hole,” Lowry said of the 11^th, which runs parallel to railroad tracks. “I had a nice lie in the rough. I got a little bit distracted on the right [by a cameraman] just as I was over the shot, and I kind of lost a bit of train of thought. You’re so afraid of going right there that I just snagged the club and went left.”

‘Just get back there!’ Open leader Shane Lowry gets off rails at 11 with lengthy, crazy double

Lowry was leading The Open by two shots until he ran into trouble at the 11th hole.

• Brentley Romine,

• Brentley Romine,

Lowry’s shot wasn’t just left; it landed in the gorse. Fearing it lost, he hit a provisional ball onto the green. When asked if he wanted to search for the wayward shot or take the penalty and play the provisional, he told the official not to look for the ball.

“Then we get down there, and somebody had found it. So, apparently you have to go and identify it, which I thought, if you declared it lost before it was found, that you didn’t, you didn’t have to go and identify it,” said Lowry, who was forced to play his original ball and eventually took a penalty drop after a complicated ruling that took nearly 20 minutes.

Lowry made a double bogey on No. 11 to fall into a share of the lead with Daniel Brown, but it was how he responded to that miscue that gave him confidence the rest of the round.

“To be honest, I was happy enough leaving there with a 6. It wasn’t a disaster. I was still leading the tournament,” he said. “I think the 12th hole, for me, was key. [No.] 12 was playing very difficult, straight into the wind. I hit driver, 4-iron there, too, the best shots I’ve hit all week, to about 30 feet and made par there. From then on, I felt like [the wind being] down out of the left coming in, it was playing quite difficult, but I felt like you could give yourself chances on the way in, and that’s what I did.”

Lowry played his last seven holes in 2 under, including a birdie at No. 18, for a 69 and two-stroke lead at 7 under over Brown (72) and Justin Rose (68).