Irishman shakes off self-called penalty for two-stroke lead
OAKMONT, Pa. — If Shane Lowry goes on to capture his first major championship in the 116th U.S. Open, a trophy won’t hardly be big enough to hold the respect for him in the golf world. The bearded, big-bellied Irishman will be toasted from Pittsburgh to Dublin.
Lowry will lead the Open at Oakmont Country Club by two shots when he wakes up before sunrise today and goes out to play four more holes in the third round. There’s no telling where he’ll stand when the final round begins in the afternoon.
He does know this: He has spotted the field one shot.
Lowry did what any golfer is supposed to do. At a critical time in his second round Saturday, as Lowry worked to keep pace with leader Dustin Johnson, he called a penalty on himself.
It was the most inconsequential of errors. Lowery settled his putter behind the ball on the 16th green, and, unbeknownst to anyone but him, the ball moved ever so slightly back to touch the putter face.
The change in position of the ball? Maybe no more than a couple of dimples.
The damage to Lowry’s possible fortunes? Immeasurable.
Lowry did the right thing. He called over the U.S. Golf Association official, informed him, and gulped down his medicine: a one-stroke penalty. Lowry quietly stewed, holding the putter behind his neck, and then, somehow gathering himself, he drained an 8-foot putt to save bogey.
“To hole that second putt was massive for me and massive for my whole day,” Lowry said.
Lowry was matter-of-fact about the penalty.
“I had to penalize myself,” he said. “It’s very frustrating in a tournament like that.”
They don’t get bigger than a major, and Lowry has a chance to seize his first. Going into today’s third-round resumption, Lowry stood at 5 under total, two shots up on American qualifier Andrew Landry, who was through 13 holes.
Three shots behind at 2 under was a trio that knows something about major championship infamy: Lee Westwood (through 15 holes), Sergio Garcia (through 14) and Johnson (through 13). The three have played in a combined 170 majors without a win.
This is Lowry’s 14th major, with a couple of ties for ninth (including last year’s U.S. Open) as his best finishes.
Lowry, 29, took his first lead of the tournament at No. 7, where he made his third birdie in a fourhole stretch. When he looked up to see his name on the top of the leaderboard, he said his caddie “had to talk me off my pedestal.
“And then I went ahead and bogeyed the next hole.”
Lowry bounced back with birdies at 9 and 12 to get to 3 under for the round when play was halted with nine of the top 20 players on the board still on the course. They were to resume play at 7 a.m. today.
There are two key players who might have gotten a big break by finishing their third rounds. Jason Day and Branden Grace each fired 66 and got to sleep in. Grace sat at 1 under, while Day was 1 over. Day, the world No. 1, was 43rd when the third round started. He stumbled to 76 in the first round.
Day had a torrid first nine of 31, making birdies on four of his first five holes. He only put up one red number on the second nine, but it was big — an eagle after reaching the par-5 fourth hole in two shots.
Johnson, who didn’t have to play on Saturday morning after going 36 holes on Friday, got wild with his driver early in the round, suffered from a couple of chipping errors, and had a number of misfires on makeable putts.
A double bogey at the par-4 third was particularly painful. Chipping short of the green, Johnson didn’t get the ball up the slope and it rolled back down to him. He chipped again to 7 feet and missed.
The longest birdie putt Johnson made was 4 feet, though he did make par saves from 6 and 9 feet.
“I’m giving myself opportunities,” Johnson said. “I feel like I’m hitting my putts on my line with correct speed. At some point, they will start to go in.”